Phoenix Comicon Day 1

I didn't take too many photos as not too much happens the first day but here's what I took.

 This was R5's first major con so it was fun to see how people react to the droid.

The local Star Wars people in AZ set up a photo booth were you could take pics with different characters.

 This is Tiny's mouse droid he's making. Trust me it cost a fortune.

Here is Tiny's display off all the different items that might pop out of R2-D2. I believe 3 of them are scratch built. Very impressive, the shocker arm actually works!

Working on R2-AZ' s Brains!

Today I finished up what I could on my custom R2-AZ droid and put in brand new batteries and wired up his brains. This is just temporary until I get a few more parts to finish him.

Its not too often you see a JAG plate painted black!

I really didn't have much time to put this together. Too many other things came first. Anyway, I'm working on his brains. Basically what I did is add 2 of Dan's power distribution boards so the LEDs are added. Then I hacked 3 UV blacklights and wired them up to the power board. That's pretty much it. I'll add more stuff like EL wire later and LED lights and probably ditch the black lights.

 After testing it its clear this system is a failure. 1 of the 3 UV lights isn't coming on, crap. No wait! The back story is that sector of the brain worked fine until it got in a crossfire during the Clone Wars and was hit and burnt out by a blaster. Ya, that's the ticket!

I doubt I can fix that light because I super glued it shut, probably break it opening it to debug would totally wreck it. Oh well. You can't really see the lights very well. When I put the tinted dome on that cancels out what little light these blacklights put out anyway. Nice try I guess.

Now he's ready for Phoenix Comicon 2011. I'd say not bad considering I stated this droid just over 3 months ago. This droid will be something fun to keep upgrading through out the year. I'll probably add a gyroscope and put it in the center to of the brain. What do readers suggest I put in that dome?

Painting Inner Skins

Huh?

Your reading this thinking, painting your inner skins that must be a typo. Nope, I have the outside of my black droids skin painted and now I'm painting the inside too! If your a droid builder you're now shaking your head asking why, for the love god why?

Because my dome is tinted and you can see inside of the droid. This is what you would see next week at the Comicon.

So mister evil droid that's all bad ass is just made out of thin aluminum and JB weld, that's what you see!. That just kinda of blows the fantasy of the droid and I wanted to make it seem like this droid with built on an assembly line inside the Death Star.

The inside of most black droids, or most in general look something like this without electronics.

I have 3-4 black spray paint cans with only a tenth of the paint left in them. This is a good time to use that up and paint the inside so this droid never lets its guard down. From inside and out it seems to be made by the Empire.

Now with the skins on, the legs on and all the details minus the head. My droid is solid black except for the coin returns on the inside. I like the improvement, it didn't cost me anything. I got rid of the bottom of a few black spray paint cans.

Here I just washed the dome in the pool to get rid of electrostatic debris that were sticking inside and outside the tinted dome. I'm also testing the black radar eye with sticky tape.

Now this droid is on 2 wheels so you can just barely push him around if you are careful. I just bought today 2 new 12 volt 18 amp batteries for him. They fit right into the battery area. I also bought a set of octoports and a pittman motor drive with a wheel to turn the dome. I also put in an order of ankle details and got in on a steel feet run. I plan to put the steel feet on R5-D4 and later paint its feet it has now black and put them on this droid.

Another update I haven't mentioned is I added a wood Large Data Port (LPD) for the black droid and installed it. I've also been working on the MGA waterset gripper claw for the past few days for R5 and might have an update on that soon.

Electronics Update - Voltage Feedback

Now that my R5 is done its time to go back and optimize things that I've figured how to make the droid more efficient, such as my voltage meter. The way I have it configured now its hooked up to Dan's power distribution board. So when I turn the droid on the voltage is also turned on. After having the droid for a while its clear there is no need to have this running all the time when the droid is turned on. Ya, its looks cool when the back door is off, but it eats electricity so I'll try to save some of that. I decided to hook that voltage meter directly to the battery. 

I'll need to install a on/off switch so its only on when I want it to be. To install the switch I'll have to find some very limited room and becareful not to wreck any finished paints, or drill through any electronics.

So I very carefully drilled a series of small holes in the area where I'm going to install the switch. Then I slowly filed the area down a little bit at a time until the switch fits in tightly.

Here it is all wired up. These are pretty easy to wire up, even for a notice like me.

The new switch is installed and everything powered off.

Now in the on position. This should save me a little bit of battery power by not having it hooked up all the time. Plus its actually reading directly from the battery getting the real battery condition, not a regulated voltage.

R5-D4 Finished!

Yesterday I finished R5-D4 at Tom's house. Basic construction of this droid is done and he's ready to go out and interact with people.

There are a few tweaks on parts or gaps here and there. Then later I have loads of work getting the servos for the doors and pie panels to work.

Scott, the maker of JEDI control helped Tom and I tweek some issue with the droid driving in a circle. It turned out the 'center' of the VEX wasn't sending out the code the JEDI expected. So the fix to get the droid to sit still was to just update the startup.txt with the center the VEX was reading out 1520 was adjusted to 1480 that VEX was reading off the transmitter feedback. That fixed it!

Every now and then I notice the droid 'jumps' forward or backward about 5 inches. Or some random sound is triggered. Sometimes my custom jukebox starts playing like the droid is possessed and alive and acts by itself. One time I cussed it out and the R5 responded back with some chirp. I don't know how that bug happened but it was freaking funny. My theory is lose of signal from the VEX? Because I don't always have my antenna sticking out very far when doing tests. When it does that it seems more like the droid is 'alive'. Its cool and kinda of scary if a 200 pound droid starts deciding where and when it drives around.

One day I hope to 2-3-2 this droid, but until then lots of fun ahead.

I also did some work on R2-Q5. Now my next goal is to finish the black dome on R2-Q5. The dome on him now is my tinted dome. I don't think I'm going to do much with this dome until 2012.

I recently fixed some of the skin gaps, counter sunk some holes on the skin and then repainted the skins. I also painted my aluminum utility arms copper. Some where in there is my frankstein leg I fixed that was cracked. I think it weights around 50-60 pounds without batteries. This droid won't have any servos. Just drive around, make some sounds,  dome rotation with lights.

This is the back of R2-Q5. No back door at all. Its a pain in the ass to relive again. Its nice to have a back door when you really need one and its all over with. No fun for me anyway doing that section of droid building.

 The odd couple. Sometime this year I need to do some serious work on my R2-D2 dome. I'm waiting for a few part runs so I have some HPs and a radar eye to begin working on the dome.

This is pretty much what I'll be bringing to the 2011 Phoenix Comicon. Next year both droids will be drive and R5 should have many servos in it by then.

Also I want to thank David for swapping out frequencies with me on the VEX transmitter. I'm on a 65 now instead of 89 in the R5-D4 droid. What that means is my droid is not on the default channel that you get from VEX transmitters on ebay

R2-AZ Dome Arrives

Today I got my tinted dome in the mail I'm experimenting for a droid I call R2-AZ. Its an 18 inch dome that's a couple of inches shorter than a 300 MM dome.

So its time for a test fit.

I 

I have 3 blacklights inside it so I can later paint or light up some of them for the 'brains' or PSI lights.

Most people who do a clear dome have the clear part where you see the white above. The opposite way which I have seen yet is above. Where your panels are clear so you can see inside but the main dome area is painted some color. Hmm. I never thought of this method before. If I had another outer styrene dome I could cut the inner tinted dome in half and make the height perfect.

My black droid will have several different domes that I can swap out to make the droid change day to day.

So far I like what I see. I like the idea of transparent panels since it seems nobody's done it yet.The entire time I wanted to do the white section as transparent and paint the panels some color that the blacklight enhances. But this seems pretty cool now that I look at it.

 I would probably paint this white section black. But before I did, I'd photoshop it black to get an idea of what that would look like before I do it.

 

 I might need to wait until the next styrene run to finish this dome but its looking cool from the get go.

Droid Transport System

I finally got my droid transport system figured out. Last week I put the droid on the truck I bought but wasn't able to lift him into the pickup. Its like trying to load a washer/dryer by yourself. Back breaking work to say the least. So I bought this ramp and as you can see I have the 100 pd droid loaded into the truck. Now I can take him to events!

Its about the size of a washer/dryer and just as heavy. From this point I need to center the droid, and then use a bunch of straps to keep him from flipping over during transportation. I'll also throw some moving blankets over him cause sometimes you get hit with rocks on the freeway. I need some practice loading and unloading the droid and driving him around. I don't want my first experience to be the morning of PCC and learning things at the last minute.