First Project in 2022: Lighting the not Lego Blade Runner Spinner MOC C5177

Hi alt brick fans, hope you are all doing well!  

I've got another project on the table, this time it's lighting this not Lego Blade Runner Spinner MOC C5177.   The lighting I'll be using was generously provided by Lightailing.com.

The Blade Runner Spinner has always been a favourite model of mine, it just looks very futuristic.  The building block set featured is C5177 which you can get off Aliexpress. It's a copy of the Rebrickable version by designer MOMatteo79.

Here are some images of the spinner I found on the internet.  Whenever you see it, the lights are always on, so for my model, I wanted to recreate that effect.

I already have the model of the spinner already, but I didn't want to tear it apart in case my lighting project didn't work out as planned.  I also wanted to keep one around to use as a reference.  

So I bought another one from >Aliexpress .  It comes with seven bags of parts and an instruction manual.

Here's some sample pages from the manual.

These are all the parts for the Blade Runner spinner moc.  I figured it would be an easier task of integrating the lighting as I built the model from scratch, rather than taking apart the old model.

Lightailing.com has lighting kits for almost every Lego set on the market, but they didn't have one for this moc set.  When I inquired about what parts I would need to light the spinner, Lightailing was really helpful and they promptly researched it and came up with everything I would need.  

Here's what Lightailing sent me:  LED lights in various colours, white, blue, red and yellow, expansion boards and connecting cables, two types of power supplies (battery and USB plugs) and a multi-function board that makes the lights blink on and off.  With all these accessories, it would be up to me to figure out how to put everything together and make it work the way I wanted.

Two packs of 15cm white LED lights (3 lights per pack).

Three packs of 15cm blue LED lights (3 lights per pack).

Three packs of 15cm red LED lights (3 pieces per pack).

Two packs of 15cm yellow LED lights (3 pieces per pack).

One pack of 6 port expansion boards (3 pieces per pack).

One pack of 8 port expansion boards (3 pieces per pack).

Two packs of 5cm connecting cables (3 pieces per pack).

Two packs of 15 cm connecting cables (3 pieces per pack).

Two packs of USB cables (1 piece per pack).

One AAA battery pack and one multi-function board.

The multi-function board is approx 1 inch square and has one input port (power) and two output ports (for alternating the blinking lights).  The black knob is used to control blinking speed and the black lever controls the blink rate.

This was the first test of the led lighting which I attached to the underside of the spinner.

I fed the wires up into the passenger compartment and ran them out the rear of the spinner.

Next step was adding side marker lights and the center head lights.  So there are a total of 6 LED lights at the front of the vehicle. At this point I began to realize that I might need to create a cavity in the trunk of the spinner for all the wiring and expansion boards.

Testing out the flashing rear side marker lights.

Attached a couple more lights underneath, so there are a total of 6 flashing LED lights here.

Here's a close up of the roof lights.  The yellow lights are non blinking, but the center white light and the red and blue lights are blinking.  Seven lights in total on the roof.

Let's see if we can jam all this stuff into the trunk! I have one expansion board for the non blinking front lights, two expansion board for the alternating blinking lights, and one expansion board for the remainder of the non blinking lights in the rear, plus all the connecting cables.

Tried to tidy up all the wiring.  Here's a video I posted on Youtube.

 

Another Youtube video I made.

All of the LED lighting used was from the brand BriksMax, which you can get at Lightailing.com.  Unlike some other branded kits where they have a USB plug on every light, the Lightailing ones plug into an expansion board, which makes it really easy to chain lights together like I did in this model.  I found the LED lights, cables and expansion boards very easy to use and they were very high quality.  

For my spinner, I have a choice of power supply options, I can either use the the USB connector which you can plug into an optional USB hub, or you can use the battery pack if you don't have a USB power source nearby.  Please leave your comments or questions below!   Bye for now!

Carter Baldwin's Blade Runner 2049 Spinner (with mods)

 

Hey brick fans!  Welcome back to Bricks and Figs, my blog dedicated to showing you my latest custom (MOC) creations and minifigures.   Don't forget to visit my other blog It's Not Lego to see the latest alternative Lego sets that I've added to my growing brick collection.

I'm a huge fan of the Blade Runner movie franchise, so I was really happy to see someone make a model of Officer K's spinner from the Blade Runner 2049 movie.

The instructions to create this Lego replica belong to Carter Baldwin and can be found here: https://bricksonthedollar.wordpress.com/spinner.

As you can tell from the pictures, I used a mish-mash of different Lego compatible bricks in my collection.  Who knew there were so many variations of dark gray bricks?  

Anyways, I followed Carter Baldwin's instructions and this is pretty much how it looked after completion.  I found the rear end of the model to be very fragile and it would pretty much collapse when I tried to pick it up.  Don't get me wrong, it looks great, but I move my models around a lot for picture taking and whatnot, so I don't want pieces falling off whenever I handle it.

I went through a number of rebuild iterations, and finally the latest version of my alt Lego spinner can withstand a lot of handling. 

My changes on the rear of model deviate from Carter Baldwins and the movie version of the Blade Runner 2049 spinner.  I switched to a smaller rear wheel to give me the room I needed to make the upward slope.  The movie version of the spinner has the rear lights below the black vents.  I added the red marker lights on the rear quarter panel but the movie version doesn't have them.

Carter Baldwin's door mechanism works really well, so I retained that design element.  If I had to make more changes, it would be to sub out the 1x1 trans blue piece with trans black colour.  The leading L brick, I would change from trans black to dark gray.  For some reason this picture makes the front end quite stubby looking.

Wonder if I should try elongating it by a bit?

Here's the view from the front.

Here's the side view.  The smooth triangle piece toward the underside is a from a Megablocks set if I recall correctly.  Not sure if Lego makes this piece.

Here's the spinner next to the Sembo Wandering Earth Troop Carrier for scale comparison.   The Sembo dark gray bricks are super dark compared to the regular dark gray bricks.  The spinner looks like it's made from light gray bricks instead.

Releasing the drone.

Two spinners are better than one.

Just a couple more shots before we go.

What do you think of this spinner version?  Let me know in the comments below.
Thanks for looking and see you in my next blog post, Bye!