10/18/2023 Map Stopped Working?
Visit this post for the fix
I'm building two maps right now - a small one as practice and a dress rehearsal for a much larger one that has my home area.
- Just take the TIF file from the FAA and print it exactly how you want. I used uPrinting.com, and found their price was pretty good. It seemed like it wasn't that much more than buying two pre-printed sectionals and trying to mount them together. I could load the TIF at 300 dpi and set my crop box for what I wanted. uPrinting asks for 1/8" of bleed at the edge of the pages, so if you want a side that's 30 inches, you just have that side be 30.25 (30 + 0.125*2). They will give you a PDF preview with the cut line. When you approve, it is sent to your door already cropped and rolled up.
- I mounted my sectional on foam core board. To punch holes in the foam core for the LEDs, I used a Forstner bit in my hand drill. The Forstner bit is designed to cut a flat hole. It has a sharp edge that edges the circle, and a sharp ramp that flattens out the bottom. There's a small spike to center. Push the spike into the center of the airport and press slightly. Make sure to have spoil material below it. (With quarantine going strong, I had a ton of shipping boxes.)
Now I have to trace down the squirrelly ground on my breadboard. To avoid trial and error with breadboard sockets, I bought a solderable breadboard, which is hopefully going to be a bit more solid once I solder everything in place.
Sounds awesome! Please send pics of your build and certainly of the final products. We'd love to see them.
Thanks - Mark
Well, I'm at an intermediate step. There was nothing particularly interesting in the build log - I was punching holes with my Forstner bit, and I used grommets as a visual differentiator for an airport. Everything is just hot glued into place.
I did have to chase down one squirrely problem with the electricals - my LA sectional uses one 25-light strand; the NorCal sectional required two strands because I wanted to cover down from Monterey in the south up to Tahoe in the north. What I found is that I couldn't get solid enough breadboard connections in a regular breadboard, I had to use a solderable one.
Not hanging up yet, but they're working well enough to show a completed-ish build. (I do have one question I'll be asking before I have finished products, and I can shoot closeup shots of some of the slightly novel aspects of my build.)
Wow those are pretty. Nice job! Thanks for the pics. - Mark
@markyharris I'll try to reverse engineer a build log for you. I didn't take that many pictures along the way because I was using a combination of other people's work. Rough steps so far (without pictures):
- Printing, which I outsourced.
- Attaching the sectional to foam core, which was spray-on adhesive. I watched 3 or 4 photo tutorials, and did a solo version of this one from Adorama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wIfED-zZ7Q . I didn't buy the foam cutter tool, I just used a metal ruler to get it right on the theory that a slightly ragged edge from the utility knife would disappear into the frame.
- The Forstner bit punches through foam core easily, and it was only $7.
- I mounted LEDs with hot glue and grommets around them, as described here: https://led-sectional.kyleharmon.com/ (it's an Arduino-based project, the LiveSectional software seems to have more features)
- The frame was also as recommended in #4. PictureFrames.com will custom make you a frame to 1/4" dimensions, so I made my sectional printouts to 1/4" increments. The frame is super-deep and should easily contain the electronics.
- Lots of fiddling with breadboards to run 50 LEDs with auto-dimming. I found that soldering is required.
- Clean everything up and hang it on the wall.
As soon as I clean up the wiring to my satisfaction, I'll post some pictures with the journey.
