Power generator.

Every city needs a source of electricity and Stolzdorf is no exception. I wondered what to do… the first impulse was to hide a battery in a random building and call it a day, but that wouldn’t be me. No challenge, no fun! I needed some sort of power plant, but they are always humongous and placed far away from the cities. That made me unable to find a logic place for it in my diorama room. I kept thinking of how a city in a downfall would power itself, when pretty much every power plant would be either destroyed, sabotaged or best case scenario, captured by the enemy, and then is when I reminded the power generators we had when I was wasting my best youth years in the Spanish army. Yeah, those machines which turned fuel to electricity, making the helluva noise and stinky smoke in the process. I needed something like that, but obviously, in a bigger scale, so I created this:

This small hut, which is made of scrap plastic and covered with plaster, powers my entire diorama room, while making pumping noise and polluting. 100% like the real thing. Man, I love it!

Worry not, I am not that nerd. Even when there is smoke, I am not burning anything (yet, lol), neither I am generating electricity. The system is, in fact, rather simple but it still has some complexity: Inside of the hut there is a 2S Li-Ion battery which powers the entire device, some voltage regulators, loads of messy wiring, and, placed among all of that, a stock “Heng Long” smoke generator. I was tempted to fit one of my own modded ninja-silent smoke generators, but then I realized that, in this very case, the noise and pulse effect of the stock pump would add realism to the equation.

For obvious reasons, every fuel power generator needs fuel tanks, so I made two, which as you have guessed, are just two “Lemon Fanta” cans with some sort of handmade lids and painted. Admittedly, it would look better to print real scale looking fuel deposits, but heck, I am still poor and can’t afford a 3D printer, besides I wanted to finish it ASAP. Stolzdorf needed electricity!

How does it works?
As you can see, there are several switches.

-The biggest switch is the main one, the general switch. It powers On and Off the entire generator and all of the extra the outputs and the entire diorama.
-The second ones triggers the smoke generator, because you most likely don’t want it running non-stop.
-The dip switches are the ones which control the electricity that goes to each line of the power poles. Each dip switch controls one of those outputs, individually, so it brings me some flexibility that is transfered to the diorama, allowing me to select what I want to power.

I recorded a small video showing how it works.

I am not too sure of how the real power poles work, but for me, each upper arm is positive and the center, lower one, is the negative. Behind the generator hut there is a power pole with four positive outputs and two negative ones. The main idea is to place the generator somewhere between the industrial and civilian areas in the diorama room and send the power to the both sides of it with the bunch of power poles I built.

How am I going to stick them in the diorama room? After weeks of scratching my head I came with the conclusion that I have no idea, lol. I am waiting for God enlightment. Anyway, as today, they are supposed to work like this: Each pole has two positive lines and a negative one. Meanwhile one positive lines powers the street city lights, the other one powers the buildings, so yet again, I can activate what I want flicking those dip switches in the main generator hut.

I did not study anything related with electricity and I do it everything on the fly, after much trial-error and loads of the tragic smoke of magic, but so far, everything seems to be working flawlessly. Nevertheless, things might change with time, when the city turns more and more power hungry I might need to upgrade or replace components in the system. As today, instead of low power drain leds, I am using old incandescent bulbs which are much more power hungry, but I feel they have a nicer color and I can control the intensity better. I am not too sure if my power plant will withstand the hungriness of the bulbs, which, as mentioned, they will increase after adding every building and street light. If it ends failing, I can always replace those bulbs with leds, fit a better battery with a higher C rating, besides replacing the wiring and switches… but let’s hope all of that won’t be needed. Right now it is working and I rather not mess with it. If ain’t broke, don’t fix it! And worst case scenario, well, I guess a power shortage would add even more realism to my late-war diorama.

Enhancing the details.

This month I got myself a laser printer. It was needed at home for diverse reasons like printing labels for returning parcels to Crapmazon, for the job, for the children’s school… being all of them excuses to justify myself getting it to be able to use it in the hobby. (Don’t tell it to my wife), lol. Now, I am printing and gluing small things that brings life and detail to the diorama. This new machine is opening an endless brainstorm that will end materialized in another website entry, and yes, it looks like it is going to be a great complement to my stencils service. Stay tunned, I am planning to release the news pretty soon.