Monthly Archives: March 2012

Electronic Bloodshed!

Had a busy day today, and didn’t really get much done, droidwise.

I did go over my old electronics board, and removed the C6C controller and added the AR6210 receiver and the Syren 10 motor controller for the dome!.

For the first time, my R2 has moved his head on his own! =)

I do lack the necessary gadgets to fasten the gears to the motor axel, but I have already ordered that, so it should arrive in a few days.

I’ve also added all sorts of connections and the ability to unplug the entire electronics board, should I need to.

Old board:

New board:

It may look a bit messy, but it is actually not.

I have been thinking if I can create some sort of connection hub where I can just plug in it all.

While installing new electronics, I also put 4 switches in the detail door space. They are:

Top left – Left drive motor disconnect
Top right – Right drive motor disconnect
Bottom left – Main power
Bottom right – Audio (not connected yet)

On the back, it doesn’t quite look as smooth:

More pics on the wiring inside:

While making such a simple thing as a square styrene board (this was way before I started cutting the holes) I also managed to slip with the knife, and effectively slicing off most of the skin on one of my fingers on my left hand.

ouch.

End result?

Well, my R2 is now wireless and works like a charm! Now down to make that for shell and the battery boxes, and paint and detail and work on the dome…

By |2016-12-06T00:01:42+01:00March 8th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Electronic Bloodshed!

Slicing up the head!

After several attempts at growing my dome (actually I think I managed slightly), and getting my inner dome to fit properly, I decided to go the easy route and split my inner dome in two. Attempt three and four at growing the dome, with proper aluminum tape did not give the desired results.

After sanding the inner dome down to make it slightly less pointy and fit better, I still had a gap at the bottom of the dome, something I did not like!

A Sanded inner dome, ready to be sliced open..

So, I marked a line that would be nice and well below the upper panels, and took out my now almost destroyed dremel knockoff and cut a slit in the dome.

Once that was done, out came the blade:

It was hard work, but was easier than I thought it would be! Plenty of silicone lubricant standing by to get the blade to run as smoothly as possible. Once the cut was made, I sanded off the edges, and my R2 now had a rather odd look..

I taped the upper part of the dome to the inside of the outer dome.

I’m lucky enough this is the only large cut I need to make. The inner dome is within acceptable sizes so I do not need to actually cut a few millimeters off it at the bottom, something that would have been really tough, no doubt.

I also got around to remove the rather large remains of when the aluminum ring was welded together. This was almost a centimeter thick of weld residue on the inside of the weld. This prevented the metal ring from spin properly on the body of my R2.

I missed out on a “before” pic, but not too bad for a guy with only a dremel knockoff, eh? =)

Anyway, even though I’ve cut up R2’s head, he doesn’t mind and shows no side effects after the operation…

This really marks the first day of working with the dome. I have not yet decided if I should try and sand off the spin lines from the dome or not. I tried sanding the inner dome to a dull coat, just to get an idea what it would be like, and there are many, many hours of work, should I go down that route.

Since I’m planning on having everything removable (yes, everything) it is something that can be done further down the line, should I chose to do so.

Anyway: I mentioned that I had primed a few parts recently!

They are mostly ok, but since I’m not used to spray painting, I need to sand and paint again. That’s the idea anyway to get a smooth finish on the droid!

I did notice, however that there are some bubbles in the resin parts and some styrene joints that I need to attend to before continuing the paint job:

Those bubbles will not do! Also, I realized that I need to apply some more putty on the joins between the styrene and resin half-moons that I have on the center foot, since they have not bonded properly!

Last thing done today was making a motor mount for my Pittman motor, that will take care of the dome movement. Since this is imported from the US, first step on the agenda was to tap the mounting holes in the motor for european standards. Tapping to M5 here below:

Yes, my desk is suitable messy during this build.

I strengthened the back portion of the upper ring of my droid with 7 more millimeters of styrene, and drilled mounting holes to mount my pittman motor.

I have no idea (yet) how to actually fasten the gear to the motor, so right now it is just lying around the axle, to test the distance, and I’m sure this will provide great traction for my dome movements!

Tomorrow, I’ll see if I can mount the gear properly, and see if I can’t hook up my Syren 10 motor controller as well, to get a first test of the moving head!

Can’t wait!

By |2016-12-06T00:01:43+01:00March 7th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Slicing up the head!

New arrivals!

Today, I got a surprising call on the door.

The postman arrived with a package, and it is rare that they do deliver these days, but I was lucky!

Arriving on my door was two laser cut plastic rings, that will be used for making my dome run nice and smooth!

More on this in a later post!

In addition to this, I have also received some more stuff for the electronics inside.

Sigge came by the apartment last week, and dropped off a Syren 10 Motor controller (actually he swapped one for my second Sabretooth motor controller, that is more suitable for the drive motors, and since I already had one…)

A few days ago, I got a package with cables for my servos, and the smallest, tiniest audio module I’ve ever seen!

It’s so small and tiny that I had to take a second picture of it:

This may well be all that is needed to get my R2 to speak or play music. I have a cheap solution with two Bluetooth speakers at the moment, but I have not decided if I should use them or not, yet. This was cheap and a nice alternative. If nothing else, there is always things I can use the chip for =)

Also arrived 2 days ago, was my remote control. You have seen me control my R2 with a PS2 controller (wired) but I had issues getting it to work with a wireless controller, so I opted for a more high end controller, with some more safety features built in:

Six channels, in addition to my arduino uno, can really work on getting a lot of functionality remote controlled!

I have yet to plug this in, as I have some more body work to do before I’ll go all in on the electronics!

 

Enough of rants about gear. Let’s do some building!

By |2016-12-06T00:01:43+01:00March 7th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on New arrivals!
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