South Korean LEGO Certified Professional Wani Kim, with the help of Olive Seon, has created an incredible replica of the Death Star Trench Run scene from Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.

The LEGO diorama—which measures 2,680mm (8.79 feet) long, 1,370 mm (4.49 feet) deep, and stands 1,100 mm (3.60 feet) tall— features defensive turrets, along with Luke’s X-Wing, the wreckage of another Rebel ship, and Vader and two TIE Fighters in pursuit.

The build required 80,000 LEGO bricks to complete and even includes a cutaway of the back, revealing the insides of this astronomical object. If that wasn’t enough, an Arduino was used to coordinate flashing effects to further enhance this iconic recreation. 

Additional images of this impressive project, plus some of Kim’s other work, can be found on his Instagram page.

Building a Persistence of Vision globe is pretty awesome, but overlaying a Death Star pattern on the display takes it to the next level of geekery. Like us, [Jason] has wanted to build one of these for a long time. His success pushes us one step closer to taking the plunge and we hope it will inspire you to give it a shot too.

As he mentions in the beginning of his write up, the mechanical bits of these displays are really where the problems lie. Specifically, you need to find a way to transfer power to the spinning display. In this case use went with some DC motor brushes. These are replacement parts through which he drilled a hole to accept the metal axles on top and bottom. We hadn’t seen this technique before, but since motor brush replacements are easy to find and only cost a few bucks we’d say it’s a great idea.

The 24 blue LEDs that make up the display are all on one side of the PCB. They’re driven by an ATmega328 running the Arduino bootloader. [Jason] uses an FTDI adapter to program the chip. Don’t miss the video embedded after the break.

Continue reading DARPA's crowdsourced UAV competition heats up, takes off (video)

DARPA's crowdsourced UAV competition heats up, takes off (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.