There are many things that model builders and SBC tinkerers have in common; they love to build tiny things, they've always got a project backlog, and they know the pain of dropping a teeny-tiny part that gets lost the second it hits the carpet. Someone has found a way to combine the two passions, using a Raspberry Pi to enhance their Gundam models with cool, programmable LED light patterns.

Gundams and Raspberry Pis combine with the Cyberdeck

You can check out this cool project on Rob's page via Hackster. Rob was a little tired of his Gundam models not looking as cool as they do in the anime, and strapping on LEDs that permanently stayed on wasn't selling it for him. As such, he made a Raspberry Pi project to create LED patterns to help bring his mini mechs to life.

The Cyberdeck is an impressive piece of kit. You can use it to program LED patterns, and then use the buttons to replay what you've set up. As you might expect, you have to implement the LEDs within the build, ideally while you're in the middle of making the kit; however, there isn't anything to say you could retroactively add the LEDs to your existing models.

Rob isn't done yet, though. He already has plans for a second version:

replace the potentiometer with a rotary encoder that has some buttons. This improves on the brightness and speed control and frees up the bottom row of keypad keys

add a mini screen so that user can get more feedback

improve the programming so that with the mini screen I can potentially allow better editing of the sequencing series

allow saving and loading to/from different filenames

use a PCB for the fun of doing my first

If you'd like one for yourself, Rob kindly listed all the code, 3D printed parts, and schematics he used to make the Gundam Cyberdeck. Hopefully, we'll see a lot more photos and videos of people bringing their Gundam collection to life in the coming months.