Animated Cylon with LEDs at 32mm

A little while back, I entered a painting competition and – in a desperate attempt to distract from some rather dubious panel-lining and lack of detail on feet (seriously, by the time I get below the knees on a mini, I’m bored and just want it over!) I thought I’d stick an LED instead the head for a bit of “wow sparkle”.

While I thought it looked pretty cool (as did a few others) it wasn’t quite enough to satisfy @sundancer – who started to ponder “how would you go about making the moving eye of  the original Cylon Centurion from Battlestar Galactica in a 28mm mini?”

(https://www.beastsofwar.com/forums/topic/unofficial-weekender-oh-boy-my-back-hurts/page/3/#post-1554267)

My knee-jerk response was “don’t be ridiculous – if you’re not impressed at the soldering required to make an 0805 LED light up inside a 5mm sized head, nothing will impress you, even an animated LED.”

My follow-up response was along similar lines – you’d really need to have a “strip” of LEDs, and a microcontroller and animate them in a sequence; you’ll never fit more than one LED inside a miniature’s head.

But there was something nagging in the back of my head.

Much like how you can complete a sudoku by guessing at the numbers and sticking them into the grid, the satisfaction comes not in knowing the answer – but proving it.

I needed to prove it wasn’t possible.

Thirty minutes later I had some 0402 and 0603 sized LEDs on order from fleabay…..