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	<title>Impracticality</title>
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		<title>Impracticality</title>
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		<title>Change of Location</title>
		<link>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/change-of-location/</link>
		<comments>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/change-of-location/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 25 May 2010 11:55:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vince</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://impracticality.wordpress.com/?p=33</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[To cut a long story short, one girlfriend and a job offer later and you could find yourself in Sydney Australia if you aren&#8217;t careful. Yes, I&#8217;ve up and moved, leaving all my tools behind in the UK and am starting anew here in the distand lands of Australia, where the spiders can kill you [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=impracticality.wordpress.com&amp;blog=9067345&amp;post=33&amp;subd=impracticality&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>To cut a long story short, one girlfriend and a job offer later and you could find yourself in Sydney Australia if you aren&#8217;t careful.<br />
Yes, I&#8217;ve up and moved, leaving all my tools behind in the UK and am starting anew here in the distand lands of Australia, where the spiders can kill you are online ordering is a shambles.</p>
<p>Still, there are a huge number of advantages to this new situation:</p>
<p><strong>Time and a change of perspective</strong><br />
A lot of my posessions, including all my woodworking reference and 3d toolkit are in shipping, somewhere between china and Australia. Not having any of the reference I normally would has let me re-research some aspects and even find better ways to do things than what I had previously planned.</p>
<p><strong>New set of tools</strong><br />
I&#8217;ve sold all of my old tools before leaving the UK and will be buying new ones, however this lets me correct a few issues I&#8217;d been experiencing;<br />
The Cordless Dremel I had was lovely in that I could take it anywhere I wanted and fit it in stupid locations, however having to charge the damn thing every 45 minutes was a real pain in the ass, and the lithium batterys discharge was not linear, meaning a low charge would produce low power and any kind of torque applied to the bit would stop it from turning.<br />
The Black &amp; Decker Drill was good enough, however the chuck seemed to be a touch on the loose side and lot of slippage would occur if the drill bit were to bite into a piece of material.<br />
The rubber pads on my two clamps were shot to shit. In retrospect, who gives a crap about rubber pads, I&#8217;ll just use something like a piece of actual rubber or spare wood section as a pad in future.</p>
<p><strong>Workspace</strong><br />
For the longest time I was concerned I wouldn&#8217;t have anywhere to work &#8211; the garage being my usual location for such dusty endeavours. Luckily our new residence has a garage which is approximately 10cm large in all dimentions than the one in the UK. Hurrah!</p>
<p><strong>The one downside</strong><br />
The only problem with this move is it makes you realise how not-permanent a lot of things are. I&#8217;d never considered leaving the UK before, and always figured anything I create would be easy to transported. There are all sorts of crazy concerns involved if you want to internationally ship a wooden dolls house, or if I&#8217;m insane enough, a Viper mk II.<br />
My one worry is that all things come to an end, and if we have to leave Australia for whatever reason, wherever we&#8217;re going, am I going to find myself ordering a shipping container to the door, or ditching whatever I&#8217;ve come up with?</p>
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		<title>Simple changes</title>
		<link>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/simple-changes/</link>
		<comments>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/simple-changes/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:01:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vince</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Dolls House]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Misc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drill]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[filing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jigsaw]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[techniques]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[woodworking]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://impracticality.wordpress.com/?p=29</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Techniques I should already know, put down on paper so I remember them.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=impracticality.wordpress.com&amp;blog=9067345&amp;post=29&amp;subd=impracticality&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I decided it would be worth spending some more time meddling with spare pieces of wood before getting stuck in with the project itself, where my cuts would matter. Here are the simple lessons I&#8217;ve gleaned, even if they are obvious:</p>
<p><b>Jigsaws can&#8217;t be used on miniscule pieces</b></p>
<p>You can&#8217;t make cuts on a small piece of wood with a jigsaw as the jigsaw safety bracket/guide will get in the way and bump into whatever is holding down the wood.</p>
<p>The only way around this is to move the clamps further away from the jigsaw, such as securely fastening a large piece of wood, drill holes into it so your jigsaw has a location to start from, then cut the shape out starting from those holes<br />
Ideally you would make all the cuts you intend to with the jigsaw before cutting so much that the target piece is flimsy or detatched from the main piece.</p>
<p><b>Use the right damn blades</b></p>
<p>Common sense I guess, but there&#8217;s a huge difference between a Clean Cut jigsaw blade designed for 2-10mm soft wood and a Quick Cut blade designed to cut through 30mm of hard woods.<br />
Its more than worth the £10 to buy a set of blades allows you to pick between fast cuts and clean cuts.</p>
<p><b>Always cut outside the lines</b></p>
<p>I&#8217;m always really tempted to try and speed things up by cutting with the jigsaw along the lines I&#8217;ve marked for the final width of the wood I&#8217;m cutting. This usually ends up with me overshooting the target and cutting inside the lines, which ruins the piece I&#8217;m working on.</p>
<p>Its far better to cut outside the lines and file/sand/cut further portions out, than it is to risk cutting too much from your target.</p>
<p><b>Drill soft wood between hard woods</b></p>
<p>When my drill bits penetrated the back of any hardwood piece, it would usually push out the fibers and cause a real mess. Even the side being drilled into would rise up slightly due to the pulling motion of the drill bits grooves.</p>
<p>The solution to stop this rising up issue is to sandwich your hardwood/fiberboard between two much more dense woods such as MDF. You can then drill through the MDF into the hardwood and then back into the MDF. Obviously as you drill through the hardboard theres nowhere for frayed wood fibers to go, so there is no visible fraying.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t try to drill blindly through one piece of wood into another lying underneath though, with this technique its best to drill a hole into the piece of MDF which will go on top, then align the hole with markings on your hardwood of there you want to drill. Secure the woods, drill down into the premade hole, into the hardwood and back into MDF.</p>
<p><b>Wear gloves</b></p>
<p>A good set of gloves, especially when filing, will save your fingers.<br />
I used mine today to balance a file as I ran it across the flat of some cut wood &#8211; this stopped me accidentally curving the motion of the file.</p>
<p><b>Try everything out</b></p>
<p>Do a test of your crazy methods before diving into the project. And on that note, I&#8217;m now going to go buy myself some more dolls house wiring items from cir-kit concepts. I still have a number of wall-related items to test, such as implementing sockets and wall plugs.</p>
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		<title>Measure Twice</title>
		<link>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/measure-twice/</link>
		<comments>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/measure-twice/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:01:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vince</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Dolls House]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[craft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hardboard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jigsaw]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[timelapse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[woodwork]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://impracticality.wordpress.com/?p=18</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[After a bank holiday weekend of fevered GeoCaching, I set aside some time buy myself the tools and materials for a start on the dolls house. I decided to purchase a cheap PC to put in the garage, this way I could listen to music and look at my reference models of the house as [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=impracticality.wordpress.com&amp;blog=9067345&amp;post=18&amp;subd=impracticality&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>After a bank holiday weekend of fevered <a href="http://www.geocaching.com">GeoCaching</a>, I set aside some time buy myself the tools and materials for a start on the dolls house.</p>
<p>I decided to purchase a cheap PC to put in the garage, this way I could listen to music and look at my reference models of the house as I attempted to build it, saving myself a lot of time. I also decided to plug in my webcam and as a result I&#8217;ve knocked togeather a timelapse video, available at the end of the post.</p>
<p>It wasn&#8217;t a particularly amazing start mind you, I swung by B&amp;Q and picked up some hardboard (fiberboard) and board pins, my intention being to create one of the dolls house inner walls and see if my design for an interior door would actually work.</p>
<p>I mentioned before I&#8217;ve no actual experience with wood, so today consisted of measuring up sections to cut, marking them, re measuring, swearing, re marking, then re measuring until the measurements finally stopped changing on me.<br />
I also hadn&#8217;t used my Jigsaw since receiving it for my birthday last year, and I&#8217;ve actually never used a jigsaw on a single piece of wood, so perhaps diving right in with the first cut being along the outer wall wasn&#8217;t the best idea, but the cut was pretty straight and I left a small amount (maybe a whole millimeter?) to file down and straighten up.</p>
<p>The piece I was cutting would be a rectangle with one door segment cut out of the bottom edge, and one door segment cut out in the middle (no connecting edge). I decided to do the inner door rather than the edge door first, firing up my drill with the largest bit I had (10mm) and gently drilling through the location of the door. I then used the Jigsaw from this hole to cut curves from the hole until the blade cut along the one edge of the door, then repeat for another edge, cutting up to the corners.</p>
<p>On reflection I should have left much more room between the jigsaw blade and the edge of the doorframe, and I should have stopped cutting shy of the corners, as I had a tendancy to overshoot with the teeth of the blade and nick a 1mm block out of the door frames corners. I would have been much better to finish these areas off with a file rather than ruin them with the jigsaw.</p>
<p>Once both doorways were door I filed down the rough edges as best I could, but this too produced unexpected results. Hardboard is also known as fiber board because its made out of wood fibers &#8211; if you cut, sand or file any section of hardboard you&#8217;re likely to pull at the fibers and fray them, which was a recurring theme during my filing.<br />
Also any tool will cut through hardboard like butter, and while I was vigerously filing down an a doorway I lost my grip on the file several times, each one causing the edge of the file to scrape a little bit out of another edge.</p>
<p>Finally I cut a single door out using my newly acquired knowedge &#8211; making out the door itself, then cutting around the edges slightly larger than the outline, and using the file to reduce the edges of the door down the marked sizes. I actually had to back to the doorways and file more down on those because the door, although the right size, was too big for the inaccurately cut doorways.</p>
<p>Finally I get the door and the doorway togeather &#8211; there are two potential solutions to the problem of attaching interior doors:</p>
<p><b>1. Nailing</b></p>
<p>One option is to nail the pins into the hardboard and then cut the pin legs off on the other side.<br />
My attempt at this wasn&#8217;t too great, as the back of the hardboard was pushed out, freyed and cracked by the pin tip coming through. It really ruined the hardboard, although the pins themselves were secure.</p>
<p><b>2. Drilling</b></p>
<p>My second attempt was to drill a series of holes where the pins would sit, and then to place the pins in them. I figure this would have a similar effect as straight nailing them in, as when the pin ends are cut down there won&#8217;t be much of the pins body left to grip the hardboard.<br />
This worked, but the back of the hardboard was still pushed out when drilled. The pins offered little to no friction on the hardboard, so I decided to try adding some wood glue between the pins and hinge, to keep them in place.</p>
<p>Despite the lack of friction provided by the drilling method, it did ensure the pins entered the wood at a much straighter angle then when hammered. Providing the wood glue holds up I&#8217;ll be using this method in future, and instead of drilling directly through the hardboard I&#8217;ll place a harder wood behind it and drill through into that, stopping the hardboard from tareing or fraying.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m also fairly sure the issue of fraying when the hardboard is filed at the edges can be cleared up by using a fine-grain sand paper and some wood glue, but I&#8217;ll have to try that once I&#8217;ve got some paper.</p>
<p>The only other issue I have is with measuring up each item to be cut &#8211; it takes a long time and my measurements are questionable. It might be worth printing off outlines of the items to be cut, merging the prints into a big sheet and then using those outlines, taped to the wood to be cut.</p>
<p>Still, I leave you with the timelapse video of the days events. <i>Enjoy !</i></p>
<span style="text-align:center; display: block;"><a href="http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/measure-twice/"><img src="http://img.youtube.com/vi/OYb2HAYN5Tg/2.jpg" alt="" /></a></span>
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		<title>No Experience and Necessity</title>
		<link>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/no-experience-and-necessity/</link>
		<comments>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/no-experience-and-necessity/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:43:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vince</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Dolls House]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[3d studio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[craft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[planning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wood]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://impracticality.wordpress.com/?p=13</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lets make no mistake about this; I have absolutely no woodworking knowledge except for the two hours a week we would spend in Design &#38; Tech back in secondary school &#8211; over eight years ago &#8211; and even then my fondest memories were of the plane sander, as none of my cuts would ever come [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=impracticality.wordpress.com&amp;blog=9067345&amp;post=13&amp;subd=impracticality&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Lets make no mistake about this; I have absolutely <em>no</em> woodworking knowledge except for the two hours a week we would spend in Design &amp; Tech back in secondary school &#8211; over eight years ago &#8211; and even then my fondest memories were of the plane sander, as none of my cuts would ever come out straight.</p>
<p>With this in mind, designing a full-size Battlestar Galactica Viper at the present time seems like a really good way to end up with something structurally unstable, with inefficient use of materials. Instead, I really need to get some wood working experience under my belt and actually build something.</p>
<p><strong>The Dolls House</strong></p>
<p>My grandad was always very creative &#8211; he painted pictures of landscapes and fighter aircraft and every time me and my sister visited he would create a Morph character from plastercine and  position him on the living room mantle piece.</p>
<p>He was also very good at craft &#8211; for our birthdays he seemingly knocked togeather a range of fantastic toys &#8211; a matchbox car petrol station for me, a farmyard for my sister, a pair of matchbox car carrying boats for me, and a dolls house for my sister.</p>
<p>Today all of these toys still stand, including the dolls house he constructed and furnished so lovingly. This house, of his own design, grew slowly more tatty through its use and then neglect, while it sat for years, forgotten,  in our garden shed.</p>
<p>My sister rediscovered the dolls house recently and began renovations, stripping all the interior paint work and replacing all the broken windows and door frames, but work ceased when she went away to university and the house was left with me. I attempted to finish what she had started, but as I revealed incresingly damaged portions of the body, I felt some improvements could be made.</p>
<div class="mceTemp mceIEcenter">
<dl class="wp-caption aligncenter">
<dt class="wp-caption-dt"><img title="Original Dolls House Design" src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/blog/09-08-24/original_dollshouse.png" alt="Original Dolls House Design" width="930" height="728" /></dt>
</dl>
</div>
<p>As you can see, the original was a fairly cramped affair, with the problem areas being the hallway and garage (right lower room). The attic also lacked any kind of access and was completely sealed.</p>
<p>I figured I could create a similarly scaled but slightly larger arrangement, add some additional storage space, fix the hallway and include some eletronic lighting.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" title="New Dolls House Design" src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/blog/09-08-24/new_dollshouse.png" alt="" width="1014" height="754" /></p>
<p>The new design is much longer and deeper than the original, with a hallway big enough to fit your hand in and a grage big enough for a playmobil car.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone" title="Dolls House Hinged Roof" src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/blog/09-08-24/roof.png" alt="" width="1024" height="653" /></p>
<p>The attic has been improved by including a cut-out hinged roof which will hopefully provide storage for all the individual accessories in the house, although the structural integrity is a concern with the minimal reinforcement being used.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone" title="Dolls House Wiring" src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/blog/09-08-24/wiring.png" alt="" width="882" height="760" /></p>
<p>I hope to be able to run wired between the floor using the edges of the house and the chimney in the left hand side. The hardboard walls inside the house will also be double layered (illustrated with black arrows), with channels cut into them for the wires which connect up to switches and plug sockets.</p>
<p>I haven&#8217;t yet assessed the practicality of attaching plugs and switches to these 6mm double-hardwood walls, so there&#8217;s a chance when I try it out it won&#8217;t work, in which case I&#8217;ll fall back to single tickness hardwood (3mm) and move all plugs and sockets to the hollow exterior walls.</p>
<p>Another concern is how to attach the doors with hinges and handles, as all brads and nails are longer than the 3mm thickness of the hardboard. A combination of cut-down nails and glue may suffice, but again the integrity of the piece is questionable.</p>
<p>As the house grows in features, it grows in complexity, and I find myself wondering how it&#8217;ll ever piece togeather. While I can design as many simple fastening and easy to cut pieces of wood as I like, I still have to decide which pieces get nailed together in what order.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone" title="Exploded Dolls House Render" src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/blog/09-08-24/exploded_dollshouse.png" alt="" width="800" height="600" /></p>
<p>Because there are a <em>lot</em> of tiny pieces to this puzzle, and I haven&#8217;t even bought a splinter.</p>
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			<media:title type="html">Vince</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Original Dolls House Design</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">New Dolls House Design</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Dolls House Hinged Roof</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Dolls House Wiring</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Exploded Dolls House Render</media:title>
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		<title>Future Installations</title>
		<link>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/future-installations/</link>
		<comments>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/future-installations/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:54:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vince</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Misc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dollshouse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[planning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Viper]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[One project out the way, now would be a great time to go over some of the other projects I've had in mind for a while. Here they are, listed in order of ridiculousness.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=impracticality.wordpress.com&amp;blog=9067345&amp;post=11&amp;subd=impracticality&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>One project out the way, now would be a great time to go over some of the other projects I&#8217;ve had in mind for a while. Here they are, listed in order of ridiculousness.</p>
<p><strong>Wireless MP5</strong></p>
<p>A few friends have each suggested attempting to make the Monitor for my Gyroscopic MP5 entirely wireless, using some form of wireless USB bridge. One of them went so far as to link me to the <a href="http://petetek.blogspot.com/2009/05/petetether-11-wireless-usb-portable.html">PeteTether, a wireless USB bridge by fellow blogger .. pete</a>.</p>
<p>Each time someone mentioned it I have to reiterate my concerns:<br />
I&#8217;m worries that the wireless USB connection would add another layer of lag between the PC and the screen, while the lag between the gyroscopic mouse and the PC is already enough.<br />
I&#8217;ve also discovered that the Samsung U700 monitor needs the full 5 volts supplied by the USB connection in order to start. It&#8217;ll run on less than 5, but it needs the 5 to turn on.</p>
<p>Despite this I did go looking for a wireless USB bridge dongle, but all I could find was one US site offering international shipping. The bridge would have cost £44, while shipping would have run me £25. It seems like until the bridge is released in the UK it won&#8217;t be feasible to get my hands on one.</p>
<p><strong>Fishtank PC</strong></p>
<p>I run a server downstairs which is online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This fatass machine pisses out a whole ton of heat and needs to be cooled by a small array of fans, which produce a lot of irritating noise.</p>
<p>A while back someone liked me to an article about dunking the whole of your PC internals into a tank full of mineral oil, allowing the oil to passively cool the hardware and forego the need for fans. Here&#8217;s a youtube video covering the same <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwdCn1nlAkA">Mineral Oil Fishtank PC</a> idea.</p>
<p>I did a whole ton of research on this and discovered that &#8220;Mineral Oil&#8221; in this country is actually called &#8220;Liquid Paraffin&#8221;, not to be confused with <em>actual</em> Paraffin which is flammable.</p>
<p>The Arcadia 20 Liter aquarium looks the ideal size for the PC componants and costs around £35. 20 liters of liquid paraffin will run you £52.92 from the cheapest supplier, <a href="http://www.molevalleyfarmers.com/">Mole Valley Farmers</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Dolls House</strong></p>
<p>When I was a wee kiddie, my grandad constructed a Dolls House for my sister, a petrol station for myself and a farmyard set for us both. Of these three items the dolls house ended up needing some serious attention.</p>
<p>My sister had already started rennovations when I hitched upon the idea to use his original house design and styles in order to create my own. I&#8217;ve always considered this project an ode to my grandad rather than gaying it up playing with dolls.</p>
<p>With help from my girlfriend we painstakingly working out how the house was put together and replicated it on 3d studio, before my sister took back the original dolls house.<br />
Using this 3d model we came up with a new design based heavily on the old one, but including features such as electric lighting and access to the attic. I also improved upon several shortcomings from the original, such as expanding the difficult to access (even for childs hands) hallway, recessing the windows, adding window sills and making the garage large enough for a Playmobil car.</p>
<p>Last time I worked on this project I believe I&#8217;d just finished working on the staircase and was struggling with the hinges on the interior doors. I&#8217;ve since seen minature hinges in our local toy shop Trinders, which might work wonders.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/blog/09-08-14/dollhouse.png" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong>Battlestar Galactica Viper Mk2</strong></p>
<p>A way back I saw an image from the 1978 show Battlestar Galactica, showing two half-built Mk1 Vipers. For some reason I also stumbled across fellow blogger <a href="http://www.pedaltheocean.com/">Greg Kolodziejzyk&#8217;s PedalTheOcean.com blog</a>, which mostly centers around ocean boat construction.<br />
Somewhere in my head these two sites met up, shook hands, and told my brain &#8220;you can do this, its not that hard!&#8221; and my brain took them seriously. As a result I&#8217;ve spent way too long considering the ins and outs of attempting to construct a Battlestar Galactica Mark 2 Viper in our garage.</p>
<p>Essentially the concept is very simple &#8211; model the Viper, then render silhouettes from segments placed along the length of the model. Using a thin strips of the flexible wood, nailgun the flexible wood to the segments and you&#8217;ll have yourself a pretty good looking frame.</p>
<p>Of course, this straight forward approach only works if you have a warehouse to construct the Viper in. In my case, our garage measures approximately 500x220x184, and the viper is 840x470x270. The solution? Create the Viper in segments!</p>
<p>The idea I&#8217;ve hitched upon is to separate the viper into 10 separate pieces:<br />
- Nose Cone<br />
- Neck<br />
- Body/cockpit<br />
- Left Engine<br />
- Right Engine<br />
- Center Engine<br />
- Left Wing<br />
- Right Wing<br />
- Tail Fin<br />
- Landing Gear</p>
<p>Each piece would need to be created <strong>in full</strong> before moving on to the next segment. The last piece to be constructed would be the main body/cockpit section, as it is the largest and would need to be stored inside the garage at all times, and would barely fit.</p>
<p>So far I&#8217;ve managed to get my hands on a copy of the Battlestar Galactica Viper Mk2 model, and using this I intend to replicate the frame of my build and come up with a design for the entire Viper. A flawless design will be required before starting any construction due to the fact I can&#8217;t test pieces out as they&#8217;re built.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ll also need to use the design to figure out exactly how much the project will cost, at least in guesstimated figures of wood quantities, meters squared of fibreglass roving, paint and other hardware. It may be that even with a brilliant design the construction just isn&#8217;t feasible.</p>
<p>Of course the other problem to contend with is the only option I would have, should the viper be completed, is to sell it. Otherwise it would do nothing but eat up space in our back garden and garage.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/blog/09-08-14/viper.png" alt="" /></p>
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		<title>Virtual Reality Gyroscopic H&amp;K MP5A5</title>
		<link>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/virtual-reality-gyroscopic-hk-mp5a5/</link>
		<comments>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/virtual-reality-gyroscopic-hk-mp5a5/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:47:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vince</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Wiimote MP5]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dowel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gyroscope]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MP5]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Samsung U70]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Reality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[VR]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wii]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wiimote]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://impracticality.wordpress.com/?p=9</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A while back someone linked me to TheRedneckTechie's VR GameGun - a fantastic device which looked like it had some potential.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=impracticality.wordpress.com&amp;blog=9067345&amp;post=9&amp;subd=impracticality&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="font-family:verdana;">A while back someone linked me to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ym0tZSWGMc">TheRedneckTechie&#8217;s VR GameGun</a> &#8211; a fantastic device which looked like it had some potential.</span></p>
<p><strong>What is it?</strong></p>
<p>The VR GameGun as made by TheRedneckTechie is a display, a gyroscopic mouse, all bolted onto an inexpensive gun body.</p>
<p><strong>Why make one?</strong></p>
<p>Obviously after seeing the gun on youtube my first thought was &#8220;Well, I&#8217;m half way there already&#8221;. Besides, after making the MP5 Wiimote there were only limited applications &#8211; mostly playing GhostSquad. This would breathe new life into the MP5 and give me something cool to keep me occupied.</p>
<p><strong>Equipment</strong></p>
<p>While TheRedneckTechies gun used the <a href="http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=898725">Gyration Gyro Air Mouse</a>, I managed to find, and recieve for my birthday (thanks girlfriend!), a <a onclick="return mugicPopWin(this,event);" oncontextmenu="mugicRightClick(this);" href="http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/5368982/Gyration-GyroTransport-AirMouse-Presenter/Product.html">Gyration GyroTransport</a> presentation mouse, which is a tiny little thing that uses exactly the same gyro sensor.</p>
<p>The screen I decided to use was a new consumer-level USB monitor, the Samsung U700. This tiny monitor is 7&#8243;, 300 grams, 800&#215;480 and only requires one USB connection. Something like £65 including shipping.</p>
<p>I also required one 30m scope mount base (conveniently I already owned one) and a piece of 27mm dowel.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update2/000_parts.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Unknown to me while I was purchasing the product, the Samsung U700 monitor has a conveniently wide support leg and ball-joint on the back &#8211; the support leg is about 30mm wide and the ball joint is fairly stiff. This was great news as I could just bolt the damn thing straight onto the dowel with minimal modifications.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update2/001_screen.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>The MP5 already has a 20mm Weaver Rail attached to its body, so the plan was to have the 30mm scope mount attached to the rail as far forward as possible, secure the dowel in the scope mount and mount everything to the dowel.</p>
<p>The dowel itself was 27mm in diameter, so I had to use one half of a 30mm-to-25mm scope adapter ring set. This helped to clasp the dowel firmly in place.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update2/004_dowel_preview.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>With this setup I checked how I could mount the monitor &#8211; the distance from my eye when holding the gun would be almost optimal, fitting with no issues whatsoever.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update2/003_screen.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>The height was a different story though &#8211; the monitor would be sitting a good inch above where I&#8217;d like it to be as the leg stand was far too long. The only option would be to cut the bottom off the supprting leg.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update2/002_screen.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong>Burnout</strong></p>
<p>After flattening the battery on my wireless dremmel three times, I eventually cut a section of the dowel off and sanded it down to be perfectly flat. The cut was pretty spiffy to begin with, so sanding only took a few seconds.</p>
<p>During the design process I decided to make the mounting surface at a slight angle, as this would allow the screen to be rotated through the widest range of angles on its ball joint. I would be able to pivot the screen down or up at pretty reasonable angles.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update2/005_mount.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>On the opposite side of the dowel I&#8217;d hitched upon a plan to mount the Gyro Mouse. The mouse itself is intended to go on your keyring and be ported to and from presentations along with its 512mb drive/receiver. The keyring loop sticks out a very short distance from the rear of the mouse and has a hole exactly 3mm in diameter, the same size as the screws I use.</p>
<p>With this in hand, I left some excess dowel sticking out the front of the scope mount and cut a 180 degree segment out of the rod. This left a nice flat surface for the gyromouses rear to press against, and I then drilled and tapped a hole for a 3mm screw.<br />
After all was said and done, the gyro mouse sat absolutely perfectly, level, and secure, exceeding my expectations. This meant no modification to the mouse, and no elastic bands.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update2/006_mount.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong>Warranty Void if Removed</strong></p>
<p>Finally its time to vandalise the monitor. I didn&#8217;t fancy getting dust all over the ball joint or inside the screen, so I covered the monitor with the plastic sheeting it came in and taped up all the gaps with electrical tape.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update2/007_screen.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>After about ten or so &#8220;ok, <em>this time</em> I&#8217;m going to cut it..&#8221; movements in the direction of the support leg, I eventually grew a pair of &#8220;oh cock it&#8221; balls and pressed the dremmel into the leg and it cut like butter. Like black, plasticy, foul-smelling butter that sends tiny curled shards of crap everywhere.</p>
<p>Afterthe cut I simply sanded the cut flat and took my drill to both the dowel and the newly cut mounting bracket, then tapped the holes in the dowel. My marking of the holes was pretty shoddy, so when it came time to put the third screw into the dowel, it didn&#8217;t line up with the hole cut into the monitor leg. Oh well, it still works.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update2/008_screen.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Finally the screen was mounted on the dowel and 30mm scope mount. With the GyroMouse attached to the front the entire setup looks something like this:</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update2/009_mount.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>This configuration pops straight onto the MP5s weaver rail, and we then run a single USB cable from the back of the monitor, loop it through the MP5s stock to stop it snagging the breaking the whole thing into tiny pieces, and down onto the floor and into my computer machine.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update2/010_game.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong>So how cool <em>is</em> it?</strong></p>
<p><em>Pretty cool</em>. The latency was my biggest worry, but it turned out to be <em>extremely</em> responsive.<br />
Seeing as everything except the monitor is wireless (bluetooth WiiMote, radio gyro mouse) I had expectations of latency between my movement and the movement registered by the gyroscope (I expected something like an arcade games delay), but its even more responsive than the IR Camera setup used by the Wii.</p>
<p>I figured the cable running down to the floor for the monitor would also be a pretty big issue, but with the monitors USB cord plugged into a 10m USB extension cable I&#8217;ve yet to trip over it.<br />
I also discovered when I turned around in a game I would actually pivot my body around the muzzle of the gun, rather than turning my body on the spot. This meant the cable would just dangle down and I&#8217;d rotate around it, never stepping over it. A couple of times its ended up wound around my leg, though.</p>
<p>The biggest problem with the gun turned out to be human error &#8211; I&#8217;m constantly running around trying to figure out in my mind how to aim, and then realising I have to actually point the gun in the enemies direction!<br />
I&#8217;ve actually had to disable strafe (side step) on the nunchucks joystick until I get used to the aiming, otherwise I&#8217;m constantly strafing in order to get the enemies into my crosshairs rather than rotating to point my gun at them. The whole experience requires you to re-learn how to interact with the game.<br />
It feels pretty natural once you stop trying to play it with a keyboard and mouse in your mind, and get used to the fact the world moves when you do, even if the edges of the screen don&#8217;t.</p>
<p>Left4Dead was especially cool, as I configured the WiiMote using GlovePIE to have the accellerometers trigger the Melee attack when the gun was thurst hard to the front &#8211; now when I do my own melee swing, the game does one in kind.<br />
The monitor has yet to go airborne, and the ball joint holds up pretty well to the violence.</p>
<p>I also fired up Half-Life 2 and loaded my last save game, which was at the end of the coastal driving section which has a little lighthouse. After dying repeatedly during the ensuing ambush, I retreated to the safety of the lighthouse and made a run upstairs to gain a good vantage point on the enemy.<br />
By the time I finished running up the lighthouse staircase I was so dizzy I had to sit down. I bet the game designers never considered that would be an issue!</p>
<p><strong>Worth it?</strong></p>
<p>Totally. Although it did help to have the WiiMote portion already.</p>
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		<title>Going Loud</title>
		<link>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/going-loud/</link>
		<comments>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/going-loud/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:59:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vince</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Wiimote MP5]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[airsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MP5]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wii]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wiimote]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The original Wiimote MP5 build was fairly good, but there were two points I particularly disliked - the silencer and the foregrip.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=impracticality.wordpress.com&amp;blog=9067345&amp;post=6&amp;subd=impracticality&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The original Wiimote MP5 build was fairly good, but there were two points I particularly disliked &#8211; the silencer and the foregrip.</span></p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update1/001_artsy.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>The problem with the silencer was this big long weight added to the front of the gun, and its only purpose is to be a container for the camera. I figure maybe the edges of the camera can be trimmed down and fit into the regular MP5 muzzle.</p>
<p>The foregrip had a few shortcomings mentioned during the build, the most significant was the need for rods to support the nunchuck attachment, which protruded from the body of the foregrip.</p>
<p><strong>Camera</strong></p>
<p>For the camera I discovered that the 14mm block is actually a container for a 9mm camera &#8211; the 9mm camera has a set of eight 0.5mm tracks on the back which connect to spring-like arms in the 14mm &#8220;cup&#8221;, and these arms run out the base of the cup, forming the 8 legs I had previously soldered.</p>
<p>Removing the camera from the cup was easy &#8211; just take the metal surround off and it&#8217;ll pop right out. Once the camera was by itself, I painstakingly soldered 8 wires onto the tiny 0.5mm tracks.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update1/002_camera.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />
During this arduous task I accidentally soldered two tracks togeather, and while removing the cables that had merged, the heat and force I was using to extract the wire actually tore the track straight off the back of the camera! This left me with 7 tracks connected just fine, and one missing, broken track.</span></p>
<p>The solution to this, was the track connects to the actual circuitry of the camera through an even smaller 0.25mm circular indentation. Copious amounts of flux and a pinch of solder, I managed to attach a single cable directly (tip-to-tip) to the camera. This flimsy connection was so risky I decided to super glue the table in place.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update1/003_camera.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p><span style="font-family:verdana;">I subsequently superglued the cables in a number of other locations to stop tension ripping the connection apart.</span></p>
<p>The MP5s muzzle was actually 9mm in diameter, but as we&#8217;re fitting a square peg in a round hole, the diameter needed to be expanded to 11mm. A good drill bit, a whole load of time, and this was a pretty easy thing to do.<br />
I then capped this off with an Infra-red plasic panel, cut to size and placed over the end of the muzzle. The camera then merely presses up against this window.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update1/007_camera.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong>Foregrip</strong><br />
<span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />
The foregrip was less then stellar, but once the holes were cut there was little to do. My solution was to purchase another MP5 handguard (approx £15), measure and cut the previous button holes and re-drill/sand the nunchuck joystick location.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The main difference this time around is that each button had a threaded neck, so instead of using their supplied nuts to hold them in position on the exterior of the foregrip, I drilled holes the right size for the threaded switch necks, tapped out the holes to the appropriate thread sizes, and carefully screwed each switch into place.</span></p>
<p>The nunchuck itself, I merely took the rods previously cut and instead of feeding them into the body of the foregrip I simply glue-gunned the rods to the side of the foregrip. This worked really well as there is now a tiny amount of give when putting pressure on the nunchuck joystick.</p>
<p>The final point was to purchase a black nunchuck body, which included a black nunchuck joystick.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update1/008_foregrip.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong>Additional Features</strong></p>
<p>Two more minor modifications, I took the rumble motor out of the Wiimote and glue-gunned it to the inside of the MP5 grip, the side my hand would normally grip the gun. The wires for the rumble motor could be fed up through the holes supplied for the airsoft motor.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update1/004_rumble.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>The Wiimote speaker, which I had previously suspected to be broken, actually had a teeny-tiny bit of life left in it. With that in mind, it fits perfectly in the recess behind the gearbox, just underneath the stock cap.</p>
<p>A quick solder job, some glue, and the speaker was placed fairly close to where my head would be when using the gun.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update1/005_speaker.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />
The final changes</span><span style="font-family:verdana;"> leave the gun looking a lot tidier than before, adds some missing features and reduces the weight.</span></p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/update1/006_assembled.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
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		<title>Wiimote MP5</title>
		<link>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/wiimote-mp5/</link>
		<comments>http://impracticality.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/wiimote-mp5/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Feb 2008 23:28:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vince</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Wiimote MP5]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[This is the story of how I merged an Airsoft ICS MP5A5 and a WiiMote and Wii Nunchuck into a WiiZapper substitute.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=impracticality.wordpress.com&amp;blog=9067345&amp;post=3&amp;subd=impracticality&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="font-family:verdana;"><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/000_title.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>This is the story of how I merged an Airsoft ICS MP5A5 and a WiiMote and Wii Nunchuck into a WiiZapper substitute.</p>
<p>While I&#8217;m a <a href="http://blog.livedoor.jp/fumi23okmr/archives/51976000.html" target="_blank">little late to the party</a> and <a href="http://imakeprojects.com/Projects/wii-ak47/" target="_blank">this sort of thing has been done before</a>, previous modifications have always left something to be desired, usually a good solution for the nunchuck.</p>
<p>I also didn&#8217;t like a number of things about the Wii Zapper.<br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/000_wiizapper.jpg" border="0" alt="" /><br />
- The Zapper has no sights, so aiming is difficult.<br />
- The Zapper has no stock, you hold it in midair which can become tiresome, offset your aim and feels weird.<br />
- The Zappers button configuration is the reverse of an intuitive layout, with B as fire and Z as action, leading to your trigger hand being in front of your supporting hand.</p>
<p>After playing Ghost Squad for about five minutes I decided the Wii Zapper wasn&#8217;t up to much, so I thought I&#8217;d see if I could do it better.</p>
<p><strong>Waste Not Want Not</strong></p>
<p>I decided to use an <a href="http://www.redwolfairsoft.com/redwolf/airsoft/ProductDetail?prodID=8886" target="_blank">Airsoft ICS MP5A5 Sub-Machinegun</a> for this project due to several reasons, partly because it was one of the more &#8220;realistic&#8221; items in my airsoft collection, featuring a metal body and several compatible accessories, but mostly because the little bastard had never fired more than five shots before breaking since the day I bought it. I&#8217;d spent way too much money trying to get it to work as an Airsoft gun, so I figure turning it into a WiiMote couldn&#8217;t do any harm.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not one to waste a perfectly good airsoft body however, especially since the <a href="http://www.gun-control-network.org/PA04.htm" target="_blank">Violent Crime Reduction Bill</a> came into effect, banning the import and sale of &#8220;Real Imitation Firearms&#8221; without being registered to an airsoft site within the UK, so this was going to require some planning before I risked fucking up one of my guns.</p>
<p>To begin with I just held the MP5 as I would normally, then I traced with a pencil around my hand on the gun, and I&#8217;d repeat this process until I was certain of where my hand would naturally grip the gun. I then taped some pieces of hard foam togeather to represent switches and the analog stick, then I gripped the gun again and adjusted the placement of the foam until they were in comfortable locations.</p>
<p>Using some 3d models from <a href="http://shiftrunstop.com/tap/download.php?&amp;section=down" target="_blank">a previous project of mine</a> that didn&#8217;t go as far as I&#8217;d have liked, I was able to produce some plans of where buttons and other items could be located on the foregrip of the MP5.</p>
<p><strong>Foregrip left side</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/001_render_01.png" border="0" alt="" /><br />
Most buttons remain in a Wiimote layout as the switch heads are too small to label. This makes it easy for me to remember what they are each used for.</p>
<p><strong>Foregrip right side</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/002_render_02.png" border="0" alt="" /><br />
The A button is placed on the tip of my index finger, while the Z button is on the tip of my middle finger, and the C button is accessible by the base of my middle finger.<br />
Power and Sync buttons are also on harder-to-press click switches well out the way.</p>
<p><strong>Inside</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/003_render_03.png" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>While most buttons fitted without issue there were some concerns about the internals, as the highlighted areas were intersecting, where the PCB of the nunchuck and the legs of a switch collided with a piece of metal from the MP5. I could have re-planned the position of these components, but my chosen method was to bend the legs of the switch and cross my fingers about the nunchuck PCB. The intersection was only 1mm, and that was well within the margin for error on my diagram.</p>
<p><strong>Its full of stars</strong></p>
<p>With my concerns about stuff fitting alleviated, it was time to take the bitch apart and figure out what needed to be done to fit the WiiMote inside.</p>
<p><strong>An Airsoft ICS MP5A5 and WiiMote</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/004_mp5_closed.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>To begin disassembly you need to remove the two locking pins, one in the stock and one by the magazine release catch. You can then pull the stock away from the receiver, and pulling backwards on the lower receiver will allow it to slide out from the upper receiver.<br />
This is an important point to note, in that the lower receiver and gearbox must slide into the upper receiver from the back, otherwise the gun cannot be reassembled.<br />
I&#8217;ll also remove the magazine and foregrip, which is released by taking out the forward locking pin and tilting the front of the grip downwards, then pulling it forwards away from the receiver. Again, this is the only way this item can be removed or reattached.</p>
<p><strong>MP5 Disassembly, separated receivers</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/005_mp5_open_1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Here you can see the gearbox and lower receiver removed from the rest of the MP5. You can also see the battery connector and brass barrel, which are to be removed.</p>
<p>Unscrewing the butt of the grip reveals the motor of the MP5, which is then just disconnected and pulled downwards straight out of the grip.</p>
<p>Below the motor are a pair of screws which hold the gearbox onto the lower receiver and when removed you can pull the garbox off the receiver, as is the picture.</p>
<p><strong>Gearbox and lower receiver separated</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/006_mp5_open_4.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Prior to this I had also removed the fire selector, another important piece I wanted to integrate into the mod. The fire selector is comprised of two parts, a lever connector to a rod which runs through the gearbox, and another lever with a grub screw which grips the rod from the other side.<br />
The airsoft implementation of the fire selector has the rod run through a piece of plastic which when rotated pushes the black plate (shown attached to the gearbox) back and forth, toggling between safe, semi and fully automatic fire modes.</p>
<p><strong>Gearbox internals</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/009_gearbox_stolen.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>From this stolen image you can see the internals of an airsoft version two gearbox, of which only the trigger mechanism would survive into my mod. The trigger mechanism is basically two open poles which can be shorted (closed) by another pole which is spring-loaded to return to the open position. This pole is pushed into the closed position by the spring loaded trigger. Nice and simple.</p>
<p><strong>Upper receiver</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/007_mp5_open_6.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Removing a single screw from just above the rear of the barrel lets you detach the front of the receiver, usually hidden by the foregrip.<br />
Only three more screws hold the receivers two halves togeather, and comes apart surprisingly easily.</p>
<p><strong>Upper receiver separated</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/008_mp5_open_7.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Inside the receiver there&#8217;s little to look at now the gearbox is gone. The brass barrel runs into the hop-up assembly and the power cables run from the foregrip into the receiver via a small recess.</p>
<p><strong>WiiMote PCB and the Upper Receiver</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/000_PCB-inline.png" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>The previous picture failed to show this too well, but the WiiMote PCB is just slightly bigger than the space above the upper receivers indentations. The receiver has ample metal on these joints, so it is possible to cut a few millimeters into the receiver and create a recess big enough for the WiiMote to set in comfortably.</p>
<p><strong>Gearbox Plans</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/010_mp5_open_8.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>With the knowledge that the upper receiver can comfortably house the WiiMotes PCB, I worked out what modifications needed to be made to the gearbox to accommodate the WiiMote.<br />
As I mentioned before, the gearbox has to slot in to the gun from behind, so the areas marked with black lines needed to be removed. I had hoped to leave some of the front and top gearbox segments intact, so they could rest of pieces inside the upper receiver and ensure a snug fit between the upper and lower receivers.</p>
<p>My plans for the fire selector were also fairly simple &#8211; as the fire selector would pass through the gearbox, I could attach an arm to the rod of the fire selector at a fixed angle, and place microswitches above and below the arm which would be toggled as the fire selector and arm were rotated. Springs could be attached to the arm to supply tension and ensure the arm always returns to the center position.<br />
The only way I could think of effectively attaching an arm to the 3mm rod of the fire selector was to use [url=http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=getProduct&amp;R=4350898] a 3mm bore collar[/url], which would clamp onto the 3mm rod of the fire selector. Using a long screw to tighten the collar, you would then have a rod (the screw) protruding from the collar on the other side, which could hit a pair of <a href="http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=getProduct&amp;R=4728106" target="_blank">lever-action microswitches</a>.<br />
Perfect !</p>
<p><strong>Mr. Stabby</strong></p>
<p>Now it was time to crack out the dremel and cut some chunks from the gearbox and receiver. I began working in the kitchen due to how cold it was outside, but this wasn&#8217;t to last very long.</p>
<p><strong>It begins</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/011_gearbox_cutting.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>After covering the floor with a fine layer of aluminium I was relegated to the garage:</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/012_garage_before.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Which of course needed tidying</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/013_garage_after.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Slightly better, minus the dust.</p>
<p><strong>Gearbox Cuts</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/014_gearbox_cuts.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Here you can see what I ended up with &#8211; to accommodate the PCB a vast majority of the piston guide and spring housing has been cut out, leaving only a small chunk to keep some rigidity on the top bar. The front of the gearbox has also had its top half removed.</p>
<p>A tiny amount was removed from the upper and lower areas around where the fire selector mechanism needed to go, as otherwise the microswitches and collar would not fit. I also drew on a few lines to indicate where the arm should be able to reach, and added some crosses where the holes needed to be drilled in order to attach the switches and spring anchors. More on this shortly.</p>
<p><strong>Receiver recess</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/015_reciever_cutting.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Both sides of the receiver needed to lose 1mm from the middle bar in order to accommodate the PCB. I ended up using tape to show myself the boundaries of where to cut. I had intended on making an elaborate setup with a ruler and a dremel attachment so I could cut in a straight line without too much thought, but alas nowhere could I place the dremel attachment where it could reach the area I needed to cut&#8230; oh well.</p>
<p><strong>Gearbox Drilling</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/016_gearbox_collar.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Back to the gearbox and you can finally see the fire selector and collar in the final stages of planning the fire selector.<br />
SW2 changed location a few times as i confirmed the extremes of the fire selectors reach.<br />
After I drew on the final crosses of where the microswitches would be placed, I took the gearbox downstairs, smacked four dents into the casing with a punch, and took them out back for some vandalism.</p>
<p><strong>Fuck my ass.</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/017_gearbox_dropdeadthread.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>My first major mistake is made; after drilling the first hole for SW1 I neglect to confirm the location of the second screw hole. As a result I drill the hole way too far over. Luckily this is far enough for me to drill a second hole beside it, and thread it effectively.</p>
<p><strong>Fuck my ear!</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/018_gearbox_cracked.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Mistake number two isn&#8217;t quite so bad, but in the process of tightening the bolts on the microswitches I go a little overboard and crack a</p>
<p>chunk out of the casing. Luckily there&#8217;s no damage to the internals of the switch.</p>
<p><strong>I should have planned this better</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/019_gearbox_frame.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>After attempting to put the gearbox togeather for the first time it became abundantly clear that there is no way in hell the collar or spring mechanism were going to stay in place long enough for me to fit the fire selector rod. Let&#8217;s not forget that the way the gun goes togeather, the gearbox must be closed, done up, attached to the lower receiver and screwed on before the fire selector can be attached.</p>
<p>My new plan is to have a plate made to fit the gearbox and bolted over the top of the collar. Several screws around the collar will help to keep it in places while the rod is not present. I decided to use one of those murderously sharp pieces of aluminium from new PC case 5&#8243; drive bays, and in the above image you can see the pencil marks of my planned cutout on the piece of metal.</p>
<p><strong>Spring loaded</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/020_gearbox_assembly.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Four very short screws hold the collar in place, while two more have springs pulling the collar to a middle point. A third screw makes sure the assembly stays level.<br />
This setup works perfectly with the gearbox open, but trying to close it reveals two problems:<br />
1. There isn&#8217;t enough room for the trigger mechanism.<br />
2. The uppermost bolt, Anchor 1, in placed in the exact location of the spring anchor for the trigger mechanism.</p>
<p>Mother f..</p>
<p><strong>Trimmed fire selector plate</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/021_gearbox_assembled.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Some minor adjustments, two drilled and threaded holes later and the gearbox can be closed.<br />
<em>Hindsight: When I relocated Anchor 1 I neglected that I would be offsetting the midpoint of the fire selector. This turned out not be a huge problem, but it was certainly less than optimal.</em></p>
<p><strong>Cracking open the Wii Mote</strong></p>
<p>There are guides all over the internet on how to open up the wiimote &#8211; a tri-wing screwdriver and a little determination, although what most guides neglect to mention are the difficult-as-fuck-to-remove clips at the front of both the WiiMote and nunchuck. In both cases the best way to deal with these is a good penknife and some leverage. Remember to point the blade away from you, and the top should be levered outwards. I managed to get my WiiMote innards free with minimal damage to the casing, so I might turn it into WiiTorch or something like that, I don&#8217;t know.</p>
<p><strong>WiiMote Bits and Bobs</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/022_wiimote_pieces.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>As it stands there wasn&#8217;t too much to do to the WiiMote, mostly it was going to be a case of carefully attaching cables and removing switches.</p>
<p>To begin with however we needed to have the nunchucks analog stick available so we could begin on the foregrip.</p>
<p><strong>Drilling the foregrip</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/023_foregrip_drilled.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>If I drilled a hole wrong on the foregrip there wasn&#8217;t much going back, so my approach as to do as little as possible and double check every holes distances. Using my caliper I put a number of small indentations into the foregrip itself as distances taken from the 3d layout I constructed earlier.</p>
<p>Clamping the foregrip to my workbench and wedging a piece of wood between the left and right sides to dampen vibrations, I slowly drilled into the plastic with a small drill bit, and slowly scaled up the hole with the next size bit. This seemed to keep the hole nice and straight, and stop the bit from biting on the plastic at slower speeds.</p>
<p>Cutting out the hole for the analog stick was done in much the same way, however once I drilled up to the largest bit available it was time to crack out the dremel and a coarse sanding attachment. In order to cut out a circle I first scored a circle into the plastic using my caliper at a fixed radius, which was taken from the opening on the nunchuck body itself, and then I used tape to mark out the edges of this circle. I could then sand the plastic until i reached the edge of the circle and started to cut into the tape.<br />
Once the rough circle had been sanded out, I used a fine sanding attachment to repeatedly go around the edge. At this point I began to place the detached analog stick inside the hole and rotate it to its extremes, and look for any edges which were not angled correctly.<br />
I could also use this method to see if any light was showing through between the analogue stick and the foregrip, and could sand more off as needed.</p>
<p><em>Hindsight: Drilling holes onto an angled surface is very weird. Always use a guide to confirm you&#8217;re drilling at a right angle to the surface, as even your best guess could be way off.</em></p>
<p><strong>Securing the nunchuck assembly</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/024_foregrip_frustration.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>My original idea had been to use nylon thread and some nylon spaces to secure the nunchuck in place. Essentially the PCB would have two legs</p>
<p>sticking out the back and pushing the analog stick into the hole. Unfortunately this was a very flaws way of doing things:<br />
- The legs needed to be attached before they were placed inside the foregrip. The result was incredible frustration when trying to position the assembly.<br />
- Extending the spacers/legs when the assembly was in position was nigh-on impossible<br />
- The nylon spacers offered almost zero friction, and the assembly would slide out of alignment<br />
- With the analog stick pressed up against the foregrip hole, there was too much friction to use it.</p>
<p><strong>What do I do now dad?</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/025_foregrip_revised.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>With all these problems I decided that it wasn&#8217;t worth the hassle, and thus drilled and threaded another two holes into the foregrip. Nylon thread could then be run through these holes and into the assembly, holding it in place. This worked way better than I was expecting, and made the nunchuck 100% usable.</p>
<p>Legs were still present leading to the back, and stopped excess pressure on the nunchuck making it fall back inside the foregrip.<br />
Unfortunately I had to gluegun the threads in place, as the legs leading to the rear were not threaded.</p>
<p><em>Hindsight: After gluegunning the legs in position I realised the nunchucks analog stick was off-angle very slightly. This turned out to be nothing major, but it doesn&#8217;t look as good as it could.</em></p>
<p><strong> A, Z, C</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/026_foregrip_revised2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>This shows the analog stick from behind, but also illustrates another problem; I had to order a second red switch for the Z button after I accidentally overheated the first one, causing the leg to melt the casing and recess into the switch body.</p>
<p><em>Hindsight: Almost goes without saying, but solding onto any delicate components, and components with meltable bodies, you should attach a heatsink of some kind such as a crocodile clip to the piece being worked on.</em></p>
<p><strong>Its full of cables</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/027_foregrip_wires.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>After attaching every single switch to the foregrip the end result was a complete mash of wires, each labeled for their given purpose.<br />
In the end there were 29 wires running out of the foregrip (2 per switch, 5 for the nunchuck).</p>
<p><strong>Magazine != clip</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/028_magazine_disassembled.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>While waiting for the new switch to arrive I decided to sort out the magazine, which would house the batteries for the wiimote. This seemed like the ideal position due to its size, easy accessibility and the weight would be in the centre of mass.</p>
<p>Simply soldering a pair of 9v battery clips togeather and cutting the original magazine shaft in two worked fantastically.<br />
The battery assembly and plastic magazine shaft are inserted into the metal magazine shell, and a single metal rod is inserted to keep the shaft in place.</p>
<p><strong>Plug n Play</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/029_magazine_assembled.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>The end result is fairly simple.</p>
<p><strong>Some of the worst soldering in my entire life</strong></p>
<p>The following is mostly solder-related shenanigans of trying to connect up the WiiMote and its assorted components. Simply extending the</p>
<p>WiiMote buttons to elsewhere shouldn&#8217;t be that difficult, right?</p>
<p><strong>Camera and nunchuck attachments</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/030_wiimote_desoldering.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Both the WiiMote IR Camera and the Nunchuck socket were painful items to remove, as while their tiny pins were easily desoldered, neither of their larger brethren which hold them securely to the PCB wanted to come loose. In the end I had to heat up the large legs while applying force to detach both items, which lead to burnt fingers and bent legs.</p>
<p>I also had great concerns about overheating delicate components such as the IR Camera with the excessive heat I needed to apply to free the damn thing.</p>
<p><strong>Disaster!</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/031_speaker_fuckup.jpg" border="0" alt="" /><br />
During the course of desoldering the WiiMote IR Camera, reaching over my desk to re-tin my soldering iron I waved the iron too close to the magnetised speaker. The speaker promptly leaped off the table and attached itself to my soldering iron, burning through the thin layer of plastic which makes it function.</p>
<p>Gutted.</p>
<p><strong>Appalling</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/032_wiimote_soldered.jpg" border="0" alt="" width="711" height="800" /></p>
<p>As previously mentioned, some of the soldering onto the PCB was pretty bad. Soldering onto flat points never tends to go very well, and some of these attachments really didn&#8217;t want to stay in place. Several things were made abundantly clear:<br />
- Use flux<br />
- Use even more flux<br />
- Use tape<br />
- If the fucker still falls off, use your glue gun.</p>
<p>I had origionally intended not to desolder the flat buttons on the wiimote, but when one came off almost by accident I decided to remove them all. I could then solder the cables directly to the points on the board. While attempting to attach the minus wire however I overheated the track causing it to semi-detach or raise up from the board. Immediately I was paranoid and gluegunned this bugger and his friends straight down.</p>
<p><strong>Capacitor</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/033_capacitor.jpg" border="0" alt="" /><br />
I also had to relocate the capacitor as it collided with the gearbox in its original location. I ended up relocating it twice as my first attempt put it in an even worse location.</p>
<p><strong>Cthulhu</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/034_wiimote_cables.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>With all of the soldering directly onto the PCB done, the wiimote was now looking very intimidating. I suddenly had the realisation that there was no way in hell these wires were going to fit through the gaps I had origionally intended. Oh well, more bridges to cross.</p>
<p><strong>Smile for the camera</strong></p>
<p>In order to put off dealing with the huge number of cables I&#8217;d been presented with, I decided to get to work on making the IR camera assembly.</p>
<p>This would mean I could test the mod before putting it all togeather, and tell me if I should continue to completion, give up, or look for splashed solder all over the PCB.</p>
<p>Before creating a method of mounting the camera I first had to find a suitable location to mount it. It was made clear to me pretty quickly that there would not be enough room in any parts of the MP5 I had available without the camera being glaringly obvious.<br />
To this end I rummaged around in my draw of goodies and produced a [url=http://www.kastwayairsoft.com/images/products/King%20Arms/KA-SIL-18_medium.jpg]SOCOM type suppressor[/url]. An airsoft suppressor is fairly simple in its design, it is an outer casing which attaches to your rifle, and inside this casing are donut shaped foam inserts. Simple!</p>
<p><strong>Best Laid Plans</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/035_wiicam_prep.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>My plan was to try and mount the IR Camera at the front of a piece of 14mm dowel, and to do so I hitched on a plan involving the last of the drive bay plate metal. I decided I could sandwich the camera between the metal and the IR filter pane by drilling and tapping holes into both.</p>
<p>I could then fold the plate metal along the dowel, drill another hole through both the plate metal and the dowel and securely bolt the items togeather.<br />
This would assure the camera was flat and always pointed forward, whilst being protected from damage by the IR filter pane, AND in a position where it could easily be removed, rather than permanently locked into position.</p>
<p><strong>Warranty void if dropped</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/036_wiicam_fuckup.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>As brilliant as my idea was, I could still fuck it up. Case in point, I somehow decided it was a good idea to prepare the drill holes with the punch instead of my usual method of reaming a dent into the plastic followed by rotating a small drill bit carefully.<br />
The result of twatting it with a hammer was for the thing to fly across the kitchen and split clean in half&#8230; Luckily there was still plenty available to drill with the upper half, so off to the garage I go to dremel and drill my way out of a hole.</p>
<p><strong>Pre-Assembly of the camera mount</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/037_wiicam_example.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Here you can actually see the assembly I devised. I added a piece of foam to the mix to avoid damaging or shorting out the camera.<br />
A piece of 14mm dowel is inserted from the bottom and bolted into place, while bolts are inserted from the front though t he IR filter and into the plate metal to secure than camera firmly.</p>
<p><strong>Super Solder</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/038_wiicam_soldered.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>With every other task complete on the road to getting dis bitch back in working order it was high time I actually got on with the troublesome and angering soldering. The WiiMote camera proved to be an absolute bastard to solder, the combination of tiny legs in close proximity to eachother led me to much worry and paranoia about overheating the camera itself or accidentally snapping one of the legs clean off.</p>
<p>Once the camera was soldered securely I taped these thin wires to the 14mm dowel and soldered extensions onto these with much ticker wire (of which I had more). The tape would hopefully anchor the wires in place on the camera assembly, and stop excessive forces pulling wires free.</p>
<p><em>Hindsight: When labeling wires, remember that the numbers 9 and 6 will look identical. Also remember to only cut a single wire at a time when their labels are on the side being cut off.</em></p>
<p>At this point I also started to attach <a href="http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=getProduct&amp;R=2305054" target="_blank">some</a> <a href="http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=getProduct&amp;R=4987901" target="_blank">connectors</a> so parts of the mod could be connected up, in preparation for the next stage&#8230;</p>
<p><strong>Testing</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/039_test.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Almost scared of the result I plugged the camera and battery onto the WiiMote. Shorting the power switch the Wii blinked and turned on.</p>
<p>Shorting the A button the main screen came up. Looking good!</p>
<p>Waving the suppressor at the TV yielded little results. Dismay. Looking at the connector layout I soon realised I had cocked up the connection.</p>
<p>A quick disconnect and reboot later and a pointer showed up on screen, albeit way off from where the suppressor was pointing. Good enough for me!</p>
<p><strong>Jamming it all togeather, and Revisions</strong></p>
<p>In order to get the gun back togeather it required a hell of a lot more work then I had expected. Origionally I expected it to take 48 hours, but this turned into almost two weeks.</p>
<p>The first main problem was due to the sheer number of cables going through the receiver</p>
<p><strong>Spaghetti</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/040_gearbox_revised.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Here you can see marking on the gearbox, located where it would sit when the gun is assembled.<br />
The lower portion had to be removed to allow the cables to fit through next to the hop-up unit, which itself had to be cut in half to make room. The upper portion of the gearbox was removed for even more cables to fit, and to minimise interference with the WiiMote.</p>
<p><strong>Clean Shaving</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/041_gearbox_revised.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Here you can see the result. I decided to leave a bit of the gearbox bottom in place as there is a supporting pillar there.<br />
This cutting of course required the gearbox to be opened up, cleaned and re-greased. God damnit.</p>
<p><strong>Too many god damn wires</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/042_prep_assembly.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Here the wiimote is located between the receiver and the gearbox as it would when the gearbox is closed. From here I measured how much needed to be cut off from the foregrips cables for them to reach. Lets not forget these cables needed to be connected before the foregrip could be attached, so some excess was required.</p>
<p>Conveniently the rumble motor fits exactly in the space where the airsoft barrel would exit the receiver, so it could be easily and snugly located in the middle of the gun.</p>
<p>I also had to cut a large 1&#215;1 centimeter square from the receiver in order for all the cabled to fit. This was way more than I had previously been expecting to remove to fit all the cables.. it was starting to dawn on me that the foregrip might be troublesome.</p>
<p><strong>Cramp Twins</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/043_foregrip_connectors.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>In truth, the foregrip was a mess of cables with far too little room to fit anything. None of the wires (1 strand, 1mm thickness) were flexible and connectors didn&#8217;t want to stay attached when they were forced into recesses.</p>
<p><strong>Assembly?</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/044_receiver_assembled.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>In fact, trying to assemble the damn thing revealed a few problems:<br />
- The camera cables were far too long, and the excess was not flexible.<br />
- The power cable was far too long<br />
- <span style="text-decoration:underline;">There was no way in hell the foregrip would go on.</span></p>
<p>Damn.</p>
<p>After a lot of consideration I decided the only simple way to solver this problem would be to run out to Maplins and grab some 10 strand 0.1mm wire and re do all of the connectors in the foregrip.</p>
<p><strong>I&#8217;m Melting</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/045_foregrip_recabled.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>1. Unscrew switch<br />
2. Cut heat wrap from connector (x2)<br />
3. Desolder connector (x2)<br />
4. Desolder switch (x2)<br />
5. Resolder switch (x2)<br />
6. Slip on heat wrap (x4)<br />
7. Resolder connector (x2)<br />
8. heat up heat wrap (x4)<br />
Repeat (x12)</p>
<p>On a plus side my soldering was far more awesome than before, but on a down side it took all day. Luckily Z and C connect directly to the nunchuck so they didn&#8217;t need doing. The nunchuck itself was still in a position where I didn&#8217;t want to try and remove it, and as such I cut the original inflexible wire in half then attached more flexible wire to that.</p>
<p><strong>Aah, Much better.</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/046_foregrip_cabled.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Here the foregrip sits with its new hairdo, a mess of flexible cable unraveled for my convenience. It felt almost like 75% of the cables had been removed.</p>
<p><strong>Assembling the lower receiver</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/047_lower_assembled.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>As you may remember, the fire selector is controlled by the collar inside the gearbox. The rod for the fire selector (which I&#8217;m holding in the picture) has to be inserted after the gearbox is closed, and the lower receiver has been attached. This provides an interesting conundrum of how to tighten the collar up when the gearbox is closed.</p>
<p>My solution was to attach the alan key to the collar before closing the gearbox, and to assemble everything with the alan key in position.<br />
Once everything was assembled, the fire selector could be inserted, rotated to the extreme clockwise position, and the alan key tightened to lock the collar around the rod.</p>
<p>This took several attempts, sometimes the springs would pull the collar back to the neutral position and the alan key would slip free, sometimes the springs would detach from the collars arm. In the end I took the collar out and dremeld down the thread on the collars arm, preventing the springs biting and releasing themselves from the assembly.</p>
<p><strong>Some assembly required</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/048_assembling.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Finally with every other cockup taken care of I started to put the damn thing together.<br />
- Attach both halves of the upper receiver (2 screws)<br />
- Attach the front of the upper receiver (1 screw, 5 connectors)<br />
- Attach the lower receiver and gearbox to the upper receiver (2 locking pins, 3 connectors)<br />
- Attach the foregrip to the upper receiver (1 locking pin, a billion connectors).</p>
<p><strong>Convenience</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/049_trigger_connectors.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>As I hadn&#8217;t mentioned it previously, the gearbox connects to the Wiimote via connectors in the back of the gun. This is exactly how the airsoft implemention would connect to the battery.</p>
<p><strong>Finished Article.. ?</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/050_assembled.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>With the MP5 finished the togeather I decided to try it out. Pushing the power button revealed.. nothing. What? It worked before!<br />
Disassembling the gun revealed nothing, and the WiiMote powered up without issue, however assembled the gun would refuse to turn on.</p>
<p>Mistake #1: The power cable adapter ran to a pair of connectors, which then ran to the WiiMote. This measure was to make sure excess tugging on the power cabled would not damage the wiimote cabling. Unfortunately the power cable connectors just fell out all the time, so I decided to do away with these pretty quickly.</p>
<p>Mistake #2: The power and A buttons has become swapped. This was the inevitable result of my marker pen writings being rubbed off the connectors and my assuming which was which. D&#8217;oh.</p>
<p>Mistake #3: A similar occurrence with the nunchuck cables, which I had labeled UVW. This changed to XYZ as U looks a hell of a lot like V when faded, and W is hard to write on a 2mm square.</p>
<p><strong>Mistake #4</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/051_lower_removed.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>For whatever reason, the MP5 would not power on when the gearbox was connected. A quick test of plugging in the connectors but not having the gearbox inside the gun seemed to point to an electrical short of some kind between the gearbox frame and the WiiMote.<br />
Rather than cut down the gearbox any further I hitched upon a quicker solution:</p>
<p><strong>Tape that bitch up</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/052_lower_taped.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Electrical tape is awesome.</p>
<p><strong>Finished Product</strong><br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/053_preview_foregrip.jpg" border="0" alt="" /><br />
Are you sitting comfortably?</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/054_preview_ghostsquad.jpg" border="0" alt="" /><br />
Then I&#8217;ll begin.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/055_mp5a5.jpg" border="0" alt="" /><br />
Attaching a red dot sight to the MP5A5 gave me a shocking advantage in Ghost Squad, and utilising the reconfiguration option I was able to make the gun 90% accurate, with the reticule straying perhaps half an inch on a 40&#8243; TV.</p>
<p>A problem I found during the configuration of the camera was the sensor bar location &#8211; the pointer only seemed remotely accurate while the sensor bar was located below the TV, and when set to being above the TV it was off in the stars somewhere. Perhaps this was merely my setup.</p>
<p>The gun itself is fairly heavy still, even with so much of the innards removed. I can get through one session of Ghost Squad and I have to have a rest, but then I am fairly weedy.</p>
<p><strong>Build Time :</strong> 23rd January 2008 to 18th February 2008.</p>
<p><strong>Cost :</strong> £79.50</p>
<div style="white-space:pre;font-family:courier;">
<strong>Item    | # of | Price</strong><br />
9v battery clip+lead  | 5 | 0.71<br />
Tapped Nylon spacer M3x8mm | 1*50 | 6.00<br />
Switch: SPDT miniatrue black | 9 | 13.41<br />
Switch: SPNO red  | 4  | 3.32<br />
Aluminium collar, 3mm bore | 1 | 2.73<br />
subminature lever microswitch | 2 | 2.18<br />
BZP steel cap screw, M3x20mm | 1*100 | 9.21<br />
Steel spring, 22.1L 3.2d | 1*10 | 7.10<br />
Switch: SPDT microswitch | 2 | 5.90<br />
2xAA Battery Cell Holder | 1 | 0.26<br />
Brown PVC solid wire 1/0.8mm | 1*100 | 7.66<br />
Bell Wire (Black)  | 2*10m | 3.38<br />
Light-Duty wire (green) 10/0.1 | 1*25m | 3.80<br />
Heat shrink sleeving 1.5mm | 1*5m | 4.79<br />
2&#215;50 connector header  | 1 | 3.44<br />
1&#215;2 connector receptacle | 30 | 5.61</div>
<p><strong>Final thoughts</strong></p>
<p>I can no longer play games with the curtains open.<br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/057_outside.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>I have no prior experience in this kind of thing, so completing this build with so few hiccups was a surprise.</p>
<p>I went through 4 dremel reinforced cutting disks. One shattered after biting into the side of a cut. Eye protection, people.</p>
<p>My fingertips feel slightly smoother than they used to.</p>
<p>And finally&#8230;<br />
<img src="http://www.shiftrunstop.com/vince/WiiMP5/056_shootyourtv.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p></span></p>
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