Flux capacitor for time travel

Intro

I was standing on the edge of my toilet trying to hang some LED art on the wall and I fell off, hit my head and thought I would release a version of the flux capacitor that can be printed as just a prop or have lights installed for the full effect. Wiring on this thing is relatively difficult because there is limited space in the compartment but with a little patience you'll be just fine. Parts list will be dropped at the very bottom of these instructions. Good luck and remember, keep it under 88 mph or you may find yourself in a different time period.

    Printing

    If you use the 3MF file provided there should be nothing to worry about but if not there are a few things I did on these objects to print at a higher quality. Color wise the main body and plug base can be printed in silver silk, label n plugs- white, lens- clear or white for better diffusion, wires- yellow and top gasket- black. This does not matter if you plan on painting and using whatever color you have on hand. The main body has 7% infill and painted on tree supports at because I didn't like how it turned out when I just enabled support straight up. The plugs have painted on tree supports as well to make it easier to break off. 

   *- special note for lenses: infill/wall overlap was set at 30% because 15% default meant that the bridge didn't actually connect and failed every time, bridge direction was set at 45°. Any other way I did it, it failed. For the label, I have the font sticking up enough to where if you paint the white label red and let it dry you can sand off the red paint to give it the correct effect like the original. Or paint it white and then red and the sand lightly.

WLED flashing

    ‘Flash’ the microcontroller with WLED firmware. Simply plug it into your computer and go to https://install.wled.me/ and click install and select the appropriate port that your microcontroller is plugged into. If you need help with this you can always go to the knowledge base on that website for further instructions and/or the WLED discord. Super helpful folks there. Enter in your Wi-Fi credentials after flashing the unit and now you will have access to the user interface. Click Config tab, then click LED Preferences. Change the ‘Length’ to 6 LEDs. Click Save on top. Go to the effects tab and choose Chase 2, choose the appropriate color which is an off white, turn the speed up all the way and the size to about 27. That will give you a pretty close approximation to the original but you can adjust it to your liking. Save this as a preset and have it apply at boot. Feel free to use any of the cool effects in the library and even create a playlist! Remember, its battery operated so the brighter you make it the less time it will run. I set mine at 80 on the slider. Head back to the LED preferences tab and under button 0 click unused and disabled. For button 1 gpio- 7, pushbutton. Click save. Now head over to time and macros and Scroll down to button #1. For short on→off type in 20, long on→off 0, double N/A 21. Save. Back up to the main page and add a preset. Set it as ID 20, enter in NextFX as the title, uncheck ‘use current state’ and in the text box for API command enter in ‘win&P1=1&P2=19&PL=~’ with no quotes. Now you can add a bunch of presets and when you push the momentary button it will cycle through presets 1 through 19. Create a playlist if desired and set that to ID #21 so that when you double press on the momentary button it will enable that playlist. This is optional. Screenshots included.

Assembly

    Paint as necessary first and let it dry. There's a slight imprint on where to place some things. Use the picture provided as a guide as well. Now jump to the wiring section and come back here when done. After completing the wiring you can finish gluing all the rest of the pieces on the unit and controller module can be glued into the module compartment, along with the lid, to prevent movement when you plug it into charge.

Wiring

    I provided a nifty little frame that can house an ESP32 C3 controller, a charging module, momentary button, slide switch, and PH 2.0mm plug. This gives us the option to use this as a stand alone battery operated unit. The 2.7mm LED strips are difficult to work with because of the small size and fragile nature. The LED strip itself will already come with the starting end wired up, so you can just cut the plug off but keep the wires as long as possible. Cut the strip at the solder pads at 6 LEDs length (pic). You will need to make two more strips. The solder pads on the bottom side will have a little bit of adhesive from the double sided sticky tape you'll need to gently scrape off so that you can tin the pads. Make sure after soldering the three wires on the ends(5+ red, GND white, Data green) that you put some heat shrink tubing(see pic) over the soldered end to strengthen the connection. Otherwise, they will break the pads off very easily. Make the wires long, around 150 mm or 6 inches so you have plenty to work with. You'll be cutting a lot of it off but you don't want to short yourself. Insert the soldered strips through the back and attach them to the front side(see pic), leaving room for the lenses to go over it. On the backside, cut all of the red wires evenly to be able to sit inside the larger portion of the cavity . Strip the ends(about 10 mm) and twist them all together along with one additional red wire, which will be fed into the controller assembly compartment. Solder them together. Do the same with the white and green wires. Use electrical tape or heat shrink tubing for protection of the bare ends. Feed all 3 wires into the assembly compartment.

    Glue in the switch, button, charge board(into the bottom slot), and PH 2.0mm plug as pictured. DO NOT USE TOO MUCH GLUE or you will glue the switch open or closed! Color coding the wires will be helpful so as to not get confused. White for ground, red for 5 V+, green for data signal(GPIO2).

           Now inspect the battery's plug orientation against the mounted plug to verify - and + side. Solder a white/red wire(see pic) from B- and B+ of charging board to the corresponding pins of the PH 2.0mm connector (make these wires as short as is reasonable). CHECK THIS TWICE as it's VERY important! China has been known to ship batteries that are not orientated the same as a previous batch. Now solder a red wire from OUT+ of charge board to one side of the switch(cut to length and make it as short as possible). Solder one end of another red wire (about 50mm) to the middle pin of the switch. Leave other side wild(unconnected) for now. Solder a 50mm white wire to the OUT- of the charge board. Leave the other side wild. 

   Before inserting the microcontroller to the top slot, solder a 50mm red wire to ‘5V’ pin, 50mm white wire to G pin, 50mm green wire to the GPIO2pin, and another 50mm green wire the GPIO7 pin(for button) and strip the ends about 8mm. Slide the microcontroller in the top slot in a backwards orientation (see pic). Now twist the red wires from switch/5V pin/LED strip and solder them together. Do the same with the white wires from OUT- of charge board/G pin/button/LED strip. Solder the green wire from GPIO2 to the green data wire of the LED strips. Solder the green wire from GPIO7 to the button ( make sure to solder it to the correct tab which is indicated in the picture). Protect the bare ends with electrical tape or heat shrink tube(see pic). 

       Now for the fun part. Plug in the battery and test function of switch, button, and LEDS. Once confirmed all is working, you can glue the lenses on. On the compartment side, gently ‘squish’ the wires into place and check the lid to make sure everything is loose enough to function properly. You may have to open up the holes a little bit so that the slide switch and button work with ease. You can now finish assembly by gluing the rest of the parts into place.

   If you have any questions feel free to comment and I'll try to help out as best I can. Good luck and remember it's best not to show yourself to your other self when you go back in time or the universe could implode!

Parts List

( some links may be invalid due to stores opening and closing all the time or products no longer available)

ESP32 C3 controller- https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805781327184.html

WS2812B LED strip(160/m pitch)- https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806510961905.html

102530 battery(with PH 2.0mm connector. ‘102530’ is the dimensions so be careful not to deviate)- https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809917075229.html

Slide switch(5mm)- https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806149664764.html

Charger board(USB C)- https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806441171319.html

PH 2.0mm connector(2 pin)- https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802283569294.html

22 AWG LED 3 wire- https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256801728933470.html

Momentary button (5.5mm) https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805639981565.html

Design by BlownToBits on MakerWorld (license: CC0).