Apr 292020
 

Today we pay tribute to a project that I never posted when it worked, but should have, because now it’s too late.

I downloaded the STLs for this mini (MAC) moving head light about 4 years ago and printed them immediately.

Then for the next 4 years I made several half-hearted attempts to assemble the thing and get it running with an arduino sketch. At some point I had it together with 9g hobby servos, then I decided I wanted metal gear servos so I swapped them out. Getting the tilt servo and LED wired in through the head is a pain, and I think the design puts a lot of stress on the tilt servo that even a MG servo can’t handle indefinitely.

I used a Lolin32 to drive the servos and LEDs, and at one point I got a YAML config that let me drive the servos and LED via Home Assistant. But I never really used it for anything, every time I got it working with something I’d pack it back up after a couple of days because it wasn’t very fun to control.

But then I finally got Art-Net working on other ESPs and QLC+ provided the kind of control I wanted. So I got a pretty crappy sketch going that was able to execute Art-Net commands for the LEDs and servos. I watched it draw a figure 8 pattern on my ceiling for about a half hour.

So yay! I finally found a place for my little MAC light! I’ll just let it sit in the corner and set up some little light show functions for alerts and that will be cool.

Hey- what’s that’s smell? Did something short out? idk… oh well, I’ll find it when it catches fire or something doesn’t work any more.

Hey… the little MAC light is at a weird angle, thought I had it default to centered…

Oh, the tilt commands aren’t doing anything, not even a sound from the motor. I wonder if the servo connector came loose- nope it’s on there. I guess I have to pull it apart.

Hmmm… servo’s a little warm, that’s not great. Do you remember how the servo horn is secured in there? Did I glue it? I don’t think so… it’s just stuck in there probably, I just need to pry it up a litt… SNAP… oh it was screwed in- and the infill density on that part was super low so… yeah, that’s totally broken now… and oh, the tilt motor is utterly frozen, can’t even turn it with pliers.

So that’s how it happened. I could reprint the part but I won’t, I like pan\tilt lights but this particular design maximizes the MAC light look but probably isn’t the best design for functionality.

But I spent a lot of time messing with this thing and looks like I’ll never get to post it in action so here’s a rememberance.

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