My first Brickstuff creation - UCS Millennium Falcon 10179
I've been wanting to add some effects to the Millennium Falcon for quite some time and just recently stumbled on Brickstuff! I already had a custom wall mount for the Falcon using this TV mount plus a custom LEGO base (replacing the lower gunner turret), a tiny bit of wood, some bolts, and several sturdy L brackets. Here's what I ended up adding for lights, though seeing the final effect, now I want to add even more once the budget permits it again!
Fortunately, the top portion of the ship is fairly modular, so you can pretty easily remove sections to run the wires and lights, and there's plenty of room inside to mount the various circuit boards. One of my goals was to do this without having to buy any extra bricks, just using the pieces the set came with, with the exception of 4 1x1 plates for mounting the 1:9 adapters, 2 1x2 plates for mounting the LEC, and maybe 4 other plates purely for wire management. I've included a wiring diagram since it took a bit of guesswork modifying the suggested plans for my budget and figuring out where to run everything.
Enjoy!
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Wow, Mark, just WOW! Amazing job with the lights, and the wall mount is breathtaking! I assume the engine lights are on the "pulse" setting? How do they look, especially in the dark? Again, just amazing. We are getting more and more questions about lighting the UCS Falcon, so having this fine example from you will definitely be something we point people to! And your wiring diagram is also super helpful-- I know those take a lot of time to make, so thank you for putting the effort into this as well!
Bravo!
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Thanks, Rob! I'm pretty sure I currently have the engines on the "jet engine" setting at a "medium" speed. It doesn't have the dial turned all the way up with the effect because it was too distracting for me, but I like having some variation to the lighting. Some of the flame-like flicker or pulse settings would probably work great, too, but I just clicked through the options a handful of times until I settled on this one. I'll try to grab another picture tonight so you can see it in the dark.
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Here's the TV mount I used, going into a single wall stud: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000ID7QNI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_gpnKEbP7EZ2GJ
I don't have any great pics or plans of the custom bracket, but I did have to take off the lower cannon, and used a combination of wood, 4 L brackets (one on each side) and bolts, and some LEGO joined to the main ship skeleton with technic pins. When angled, most of the weight ends up on two thick L brackets. It'll take at least 2 people to hang it and properly tighten everything down, especially if it's up high.
The L brackets are mounted to the scrap wood, and the wood is mounted to the TV bracket. There's probably a better way to do this, but it's just what I hacked together at the time... Don't judge 😜 This is a super old pic I have when I first created the mount almost 7 years ago. The nice part about the space between the mount and the wood is that's where I rest the battery pack, so it's easy to turn the lights on/off.