Animated James Webb Telescope With NTP LED 7 Segment Clock

In this Instructable I will show you how I built this James Webb Animated Telescope clock, I have watched the Webb Telescope project over time up to it deploying in space and was inspired to make something using the Webb Telescope theme.

Rather than just have something static I wanted to give the Telescope movement, with the mirror boom deploying and the side mirrors moving into place at intervals as it does with the real Telescope.

It turned out to be a far harder build than I had Imagined and with a workshop fire to contend with as well during this time due to a faulty Lipo battery, be careful with these batteries they can be dangerous and always charge in the correct charging bag, this saved the day really, anyway I digress.

I will be using 2 Microprocessors for this build.

For the Servo movements I will be using an Arduino Nano with Servo Shield, I will use the library VarSpeedServo to slow the Servos down to a more realistic speed for the Animation

For the clock I will be using a Wemos Mini D1 on NTP Time so no messing having to adjust daylight hours etc.

I will power up the Wemos D1 from the Servo Shield 5V and Gnd Pins

Should be an interesting build.

Supplies

Wooden Hexagon 6 sided shapes x 50 (Amazon)

Silver foil adhesive backed (Screwfix UK) Roll

12mm Dowel

Wood Glue

Hot Glue

CA Glue

LED 7 Segment TM1667 Display with Backpack

Arduino Wemos D1 for the NTP Time

Arduino Nano and Servo Shield for the Telescope Servo Animations

MG996 Servo for the boom.

MG90s Servos for the mirror wings.

Sheet of 3mm Plywood

Blackboard Paint

Small Paint brushes

Step 1: The Mirror Build

To start this Project I purchased a small sheet of 3mm Plywood, along with the hexagonal wooden shapes and the adhesive backed gold foil, and yes I had originally intended to build the sunshield using gold foil for extra bling, but decided against it, it was just because it was there.

The hexagonal 6 sided wooden shapes were so cheap it made sense to buy these and not make my own.

I covered the hexagonal shapes with the Gold foil and trimmed to suit, when I had the 18 pieces complete I placed them on top of a pre-cut sheet of the plywood, laying the shapes out I marked around them to give me an outline of the Webb mirror, and then using a piece of white chalk 20mm long I marked an offset of around 20mm this offset will be painted black as the mirror surround is on the actual Telescope, first impressions are, this is bigger than I had imagined in my head, but should look cool.

I marked the center hexagon shape and cut this out with a Jigsaw, I will design and 3D print the piece for the middle of the mirror which is like a collector of the images.

The next job was to secure the Hexagons to the plywood, I did this with a strong wood glue, which to be honest didn't work very well, so I revisited it with the old faithful hot glue, I eventually got everything evened up and glued to together, I then very carefully painted the perimeter using Black Blackboard paint, the gold foil marks very easily so care was needed when touching in the edges.

I could now think on how I would hinge the outer folding mirrors, I want this to be part of the animation as well as the folding out boom arm.

For the folding mirrors, with the mirror on a flat surface I taped up from the front on the joint with masking tape to hold both sides in place, then flipped it over and used silver Gaffer tape for the hinge, this seems to work well apart from its Silvery/gray but black is available, snag is when the hinge opens you can see the grey tape, I used a small paint brush and painted both inner parts with the blackboard paint black.

The Servo's will be added in a later step.

With this part complete I can now move onto the foil Sun shield part of the project.

Step 2: Constructing the Sun Shield

This part of the build will be Static, I will use a piece of the plywood off cut I had used earlier and cut this to a shape which roughly resembled the Telescope sun shield, there will be a hole in the center for the Axis supporting the upright for the mirrors.

I cut the shape out on the band saw, I purely guessed the dimensions, just going on what looked like the proportions on the real thing.

I lightly ran over the shield with my sander, then used the hoover to clean it as any particles really show up on the foil film.

This will be covered with the roll of Silver foil tape, this proved to be trickier than I had imagined.

The shield will be set at an angle as on the real thing, there will be a hole in the centre of the shield for the 12mm dowel axis which attaches it to the main mirrors.

So at this point I made a simple stand made out of Beech, this was cut into a square shape on the band saw and I routed the edges, the Sun shield is quite low so it's hardly seen, but it gives ballast to the whole thing as its ended up bigger than I had first imagined it.

I drilled the plinth at a slight angle to suit the dowel, it was a snug fit, I will glue it together later, at this point I can secure the Mirrors to the dowel as well, I aligned the mirrors by eye then secured with hot glue, then the back of the mirror component is painted black, cutting in around the edges of the plywood as well.

Step 3: Folding Out Servo Driven Boom

My vision for the clock part of this build is this, with the real thing, the Telescope starts to unfold, the Sun shield would deploy first, which is fixed in this case, then the fold out boom deploys, my idea is to to have the TM1667 Small LED display on the front end of the boom, so it deploys to reveal the time, it goes through the boom opening routine then the outer mirrors deploy 1 side at a time, if I can get the Servos to perform correctly and get the delays and speeds set, It could go through its opening routine once every couple of minutes say, better than just looking at a static object, in my opinion anyway.

I'm going to use some 12mm x 2mm flat aluminium for the boom arms, I can hide the 4 wires going to the display at the point of the boom behind and along these these.

I will design and 3D prints some joints to secure the boom into position at the bottom of the mirrors, then attach it to the horn of a MG996 Servo behind and at the top of mirrors, there will a few adjustments before getting it to deploy correctly.

The Joints are secured with 3mm Allen Bolts and locknuts.

Step 4: The Electronics

This is the step which took me the longest.

I will start by saying this is not the prettiest installation I have ever completed but I changed that many things and different set ups until I ended up with something that worked well enough to complete the InstructableI but anyway in a nutshell this is what I did.

I started off by hot gluing in place a couple of metal geared MG90s Metal geared servo's in a position where I though I would get enough Servo arm angle to open and close the mirror wings using RC plane control wire to the mirror wings., alas this wasn't the case and and after various iterations, this idea was scrapped, I couldn't get the wings to retract or close fully using this option.

I ended up with the Servo's secured adjacent to the hinged part, and extended the Servo horns a little with 2 small pieces of wood, I made steel wire guide sliders for these to hold in place, this concept worked really well with a Servo tester to control each side, the movements now need to be fine tuned within the code.

Using the Arduino Nano and Servo shield makes for easy Servo connections and 5v and Gnd connections

For the boom, I am using a bigger, MG996 Servo, these Servos have more torque and will push the boom out with ease, I designed and 3D printed some hinged adapters, 2 are positioned at the bottom of the mirror and then then go up to secondary mirror I'd guess you'd call it, This part will be designed and 3D printed and will also house the clock part of the build, the wires to the 7 segment display will be extended from the WemosD1 on the rear of the mirrors, out along the boom secured with black tape in a couple of places and terminated at the TM1667 LED 7 Segment clock.

The WemosD1 power comes from the Servo shield 5v and Gnd connections keeping things really simple.

With the electrics and code sorted its time for a test and see if everything works correctly.

Step 5: Testing AndThe Final Countdown and Conclusion

Time to test and set the delays for the servos, I would like to make the animation last around a minute as though its ticking the minutes by, but just having the animation deploying slowly will be good, I did see a working model of the telescope online, looked really good going through all the modes to being fully deployed, clearly this model has less features

The real James Webb Telescope build cost over 10 Billion dollars, I think I would get change from $20 dollars from this build but I'm not getting any Cosmos images so fair play, on what its produced so far there will be a lot more to come.

So with the clock ticking away nicely and the Telescope going through the motions its time to call time on this project, its had its moments but overall very enjoyable to build and get working correctly, my initial doubts as always with Servos is the fast jerky movements you get sometimes, using the VarSpeedServo Library eliminated this and provided smoother servo operations which is good.

The Gold Mirror and the silver heat shield pick up the light nicely giving nice effects as well which is good.

Another project bites the dust, hope you enjoyed and thanks for looking.