New hogwarts dementor car upgrade

I'm a big Harry Potter fan and your modifications are fantastic! Lighting is much better and the sounds are great! Thanks for sharing and I may be asking for your help to do this to my dementors car. The new effects add a lot!  Terry

thanks for the kind words Terry!

 

The pictures, I just realized, do not show the LED's installed.  If you are Harry Potter fan check out my other upgraded car as well.  Next year I'm finally going to put cruise via TMCC upgrade into the engine. 

 

If I were to do this install over, I would change some of the wiring I did so that when my LED's light up (Harry casting spell) the lights for the car turn off.  Which would have been quite easy since I am using a relay to turn the LED's on, but I like the effect just fine as is.  I'd be happy to help if you decide to tackle a similar upgrade.  It is not overly difficult if one has right supplies and takes time.

Very cool.. now if you could get the windows to frost over...

huge harry potter fan, would love to see video of the whole train...

thanks for the complements.  My Fiance was disappointed that Dementors do not actually disappear when the spell is cast.

 

@DL&W Pete - I told myself I would do a video of the whole train until the engine gets ERR upgrade.  I know that might sound silly, but it sort of motivates me too keep working on the project so I can finish and shoot video and share with family/friends/forumites.

Making the Dementors disappear would be a neat trick, I'll have to think about that one.

Hmmmm, Move the shadowed window to it's own light to shut off?

do you have a detailed parts list?

Hmmmm, Move the shadowed window to it's own light to shut off?

 

Yes that is an interesting challenge and concept. In viewing the car's interior, the "dementor paynes would have to be cut out and replaced with non print window paynes [I'm thinking Matte Finish Magic tape]. The cut dementor paynes would be the cover of a small shadow light box [lit by a small led when dementors are activated] inside the car near the window but just way from the window that the regular car's interior light can escape through the window when the spell is cast and the "dementors" disappear [shadow light box off]

Any chance I can get the audio clips you did for this one as well as your earlier passenger car audio project?  I'm considering a similar thing, I just finished up putting TMCC and fan driven smoke into the Hogwarts locomotive.

 

I think I can make that happen.  I will try an accomplish this evening.

Great, I just finished the Hogwarts locomotive, though I want to go back and light the little lanterns on the pilot and maybe add a tender reverse light...

 

Perfect timing for me.  Found several Hogwarts coaches in the $10 pile this weekend and wound up getting the set to go with them.  Will eventually be looking to do some upgrades.  Lots of ambition for a guy with a pile of plywood in a basement room with no drop ceiling yet.

The engine will be my next project.  I had some very ambitious ideas for it, but have since decided that just cruise and sound will be all (for now).  Once the loco is complete, I will call the set done (again, for now).  I think it will be one of the cooler hogwarts sets out there - of course if you are you tinkering yours will likely outpace mine

I don't know that I'll out-do you, but I will have better smoke!   I put the MTH smoke unit and the Super-Chuffer in it, it really pours out the smoke on the high setting!

I'll be interested to see what you do.  After my basic TMCC upgrade, I may look at doing some smoke features (probably a 2016 project, 2015 budget is almost all spoken for and we are still in 2014).  I may have to pester you about smoke unit selection

 

 

I use MTH smoke units, I get good results with those.

 

John - did you put a coil coupler on the tender? If so could your provide details. I have a coil coupler, but not sure how to make it spring back to center yet. 

I did not equip that one with an electrocoupler, I may in the future.  I figure it's going to usually run with the passenger cars, so the EC would get limited use.  I was thinking of adding a tender backup light and lighting the lanterns on the pilot of the locomotive.

 

Thanks for the response! I'll be interested to see your lighting endeavors if you do them. 

 

I roo too thought about skipping the coupler too because of its passenger service. But my roster is small so it would be good to pull extra work. 

I'll eventually do the lighting, I just have lots of stuff piled up right now, I guess the Christmas rush is on!

 

jrmertz,  Can you be more specific in which sound card you used. How it is loaded with your soundfile, and what method you use to trigger it with TMCC?  Or is it triggered with a DC offset from a normal whistle/bell button.  Thank you, G

He triggers it with TMCC using the ERR Accessory board.

 

I get the sound boards like these:
http://ittproducts.com/products.html

George the site owner, will load custom sounds. The sounds can be activated by a push button and play thru one time or by a switch and will play repeatedly.

For my dementor car I activate the sounds using the err acc board and play them continuously and they will repeat if I hold my aux 1 button for more than a minute.

My other sound car the sounds only play one time. I built a tiny board that when I hit aux 1 or 2 it power a relay to act as a push button to play a sound file only one time.

Have a busy weekend of you need more details i can try and add more later.

Got it that explains it.  I just wasn't sure if a serial data translator was being used.  Now I understand.  Pretty neat with all the integration into the car.  G

How about you made a chamber out of the space between the shadow and clear windows, and sealed it. Smoke could fill it, and be expelled quickly.

 

Colored semi-transparent silhouettes, on the backside of frosted glass, with colored lights can make figures move, or vanish. Like 3d red/blue, you can only see one image well per color flash. I have I have a home built example, but it photos very poorly. I'll try to play with the camera fps speed, & filters again to show it better.  

 

I believe an easier way of making them disappear is a two-layer rig.  A clear window, a strip of lights above it, the dementors strip about 1/4" in, and another strip of lights behind them.  If you turn on the outside strip, they disappear, the inside strip makes them appear.  A little tinkering with the intensity should make the effect look pretty cool.  You could also slowly bring up the intensity of one string of lights and the other one down to make them fade in and out.