I decided to start working on the rear display when I found a relitively cheap flasher circuit kit that I really liked. It fades the colors from one to the next instead of blinking them on and off. The circuit uses a PIC controller to change the pattern amongst the 8 outputs. (Link to Kit)

My next step was buying the LEDs. I found a place online that had LEDs as cheap as 9 cents each. I bought 150 LEDs (not yet knowing how many of each color I needed) in the quantities of 70 green, 50 red, 20 amber and 10 yellow.(link to LED supplier). One draw back is they have a $25 minimum order, and the LEDs were only 12 bucks. So I had to find other stuff I needed there. In retrospect I should have bought more red LEDs. I had a high failure rate with them, and ended up needing more reds than I ordered.

I then layed out the colors in Illustrator after watching the clip of the ILM R2's rear logic display (you can view that video clip here). You can see the color lay out in the picture at right. I'm departing from my ideal of building an ANH R2 in this respect. After viewing ANH looking specifically at the rear logic display, I realized that in ANH the rear logic appears to be ALL GREEN! Its times like this that I wish LEDs were available in a wider variety of colors.

Knowing the opening in the rear logic display box is 3.563" x 0.531", and that there are 108 LEDs I had to fit in (4 x27 pattern like the original) I worked out that I needed to drill my holes with a spacing of 0.1315" between centers. The aluminum piece at right is the finished piece. Its hard to tell in the small picture, he darker holes have LEDs in them to test the fit. .

One draw back I found was that the shoulders on the LEDs would hit each other, so I had to nip them off and file them flush. It went much smoother then I imagined it would. The posts also have to sit at a 45 degree angle to fit.

Now came the part that drove me nuts. Wiring up the 108 LEDs. I first had them all wired up for being run in parallel. Then I read what someone posted about the current needs being much lower if in series. So I changed them to 8 chains of 13 or 14 LEDs. One hold up was I kept running out of heat shrink tubing. In retrospect I should have bought tons of the 1/16th" size. I finished wiring all the LEDs, and tested it... it worked great. But then after installing the LEDs in the mask, 3 strands refused to work. I took them all back out, and found broken wires. Now repeat this process about five times and you will have an idea of why what I thought would be simple was complex.

At right is a picture of the assembled and running display.

You can view a QucikTime movie of the Rear Logic LED in action by clicking here.

My biggest fear now is that the Rear Logic display box will cover some of my LEDs. After all this the opening will be too small for wht I made. (an obvious draw back of making a part without having the housing handy). This is where I lay my trust in the "complete" plans.

I've ordered a 12 volt DC to 36VDC converter from MPJA for when I switch everything over to being run off a battery. I plan on using a small voltage regulating circuit to drop that down to the 30 volts I've been running things at

Here's the start of my front logic display. This time I did a step by step assembly. For those of you with a fast connection, there is a set with larger pictures (link at the end of the first paragraph on the front logic page)

I'm using the same PIC flasher kit on the front as I used on the rear logic display.

This time I ordered most of the LEDs from an auction on ebay. The ebay prices were roughly $10 for 50 blue LEDs. About $14 for 50 whites. You need a total of 90 LEDs for the two 5x9 grids. I did order a few LEDs from superbrightleds.com. They were the only place I've found that had the aqua LEDs. I figured paying the $1.38 each for four or five LEDs wasn't going to be that bad.

I have yet to take picts of the masks I made for the fronts, but will have pictures of them up soon.