Off In The Woods

The PIC light controller has been getting most of the attention over the last couple of weeks. I needed to be sure it was going to do what it said on the tin before things get too far. I didn't want to get the whole neck finished and then discover that the Pacman LEDs are too dim to be seen, or that the ghost flashing on and off induces fits to anybody within a 10m radius.

If I'm honest (and it's about time...) it had a lot to do with the fact that I really like flashing lights. I wanted to see if the whole animation thing was going to hang together, or if it was going to look a bit half-hearted.

I have tried to take a couple of pics, but my camera gets confused with things chucking out yellow light, so they look a bit grim. Once it is mounted in the neck, there won't be any stray light leaking out and it should have some more contrast. I didn't bother to take pictures of the dots, and the ghost part hasn't been done yet. I'm hoping that if the pacman works OK, then I just have to do the same things and the ghost will come out alright...

On a nerdy technical note, I am using a PIC with an internal oscillator (timing accuracy to within 0.5% should be good enough to see his jaw wobble up 'n' down). I started off governing the animation timing using interrupts which worked well for a short time and then it just stopped. If I changed the timer preload value, to set a different time between 'frames' it would go off in the woods at a different point (seemingly random). I could not get it reliable enough using interrupts, so I'm back to a good old fashioned loop that counts up to a big number before it carries on. Retro? or lousy programming? Who cares! It flashes lights!

Talking about wood, I thought it was about time to remember what the real meat and potatoes was all about. I decided that the headstock ought to get trimmed. I traced my original design onto another sheet of paper and stuck it on to the headstock. I had also previously marked (fairly unsuccessfully) the outline of the fboard with white undercoat. Pencil doesn't show up on Padauk and Wenge (well, not to my eyes).

The paper template was left to dry and then with a brand spanking new coping saw I set to work on trying to saw without going over the lines. I am sure sandpaper will fix it later...

I wanted a different looking headstock so I decided on a cross between a fish and a pretzel. Perhaps it is a fish flavoured pretzel. Does anyone make them I wonder?

It needs a bit of carving later to give it that overlapping look, and to thin it down a bit as it is still 20mm thick in most places.