electronics

the small things

As I’m approaching a place where all this will culminate in painting the droid, I’ve been tweaking a few things here and there I have not been happy with.

I have actually been quite busy with a knee surgery (I’m fine, thanks for asking), but I’ve managed to continue working on the droid!

I spent two days going over the dome with some small fixes, rewiring the electronics, rehinging the door, and most importantly, moving the front PSI’s since they were a bit crooked, and also repositioning the rear PSI about 1 mm in order to make if fit proper!

Now the front panel sits a lot straighter. And no, that’s not weathering, but I will sure keep that in mind for hen I do weather my droid!

Back panel around the RLD is now positioned correctly.. The RLD was too much to the side, making this panel “hit the wall” of the dome, something I wasn’t too happy with.

Come to think of it, I probably made my droid *less* screen accurate by fixing the panels..

Then, I dremeled out the front PSI holder to twice the size for the PSI board:

To properly insulate the PSI when inserting it into the housing, I decided to make a shim out of 1mm styrene.

It all fits great into the front PSI holder…

What do you know, it even works!

This was then screwed into place inside the dome.

I removed all the blue panels for sanding and painting, so the dome now looks a lot less complete than just a few days before.

When rewiring the droid inside, I also found a better placement for the slip ring connector board. Small improvements, one at a time!

I’m also in the process of going over the body, gleing anything that looks like it could use an extra dab of glue, trying to seal up any tiny holes I find.

While waiting for some glue to set, I also mounted all the parts I had home fo the charging bay insert.

Tomorrow, I’m going to work on dome alignment. I have noticed I have some gaps around the edge when my dome is mounted. First step is to lower the dome about 1 mm by removing a few bolts and replacing them with thinner washers instead. Then I will need to make some shims out of 1mm styrene and “pad” the top of the frame in some places to make the skin nice and snug all around.

I’ve done a few other small things here and there, nothing really big, but a few things off my R2-2DO list crossed off!

Oh.. I also cleaned my small office/workshop, which was met by a big FINALLY from my fiancée…

By |2016-12-06T00:01:16+01:00September 29th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on the small things
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Re:Wired

In this process of doing things that is not really taking the build forward, but rather redoing things I wasn’t too happy with, I’ve spent the past two days making an overhaul on the electronics system!

The old electronics board had gone through three changes, and the flat styrene board looked like a well seasoned Swiss cheese, and it was a tad too small since everything seemed to be sitting on top of each other! The Dude will not abide!

This had to change!

In addition to that, I also hade a veritable spider’s web inside the droid with cables running back and forth, and not really bound together properly. This, too, had to change.

This is the old electronics board. A bit cramped, but not too bad. That’s because not all cables are attached! The incoming power and USB cable was sticking out at the bottom, and there was 8 different cables that needed to be attached at different places. This, I did not like!

Also, the cable for the Slip Ring had to be basically folder all over itself to not get tangled up. This clearly had to be moved somewhere, especially if I am planning to get a dome ring for my periscope and life form scanner!

This is the new electronics board, with more room for extensions, one common plug for everything (apart form the USB connector). I’ve got main power, both drive wheels and dome coming in on that connector on the left! I’ve also moved some things around, like giving enough space for the slip ring connector!

So much for the electronics board, but what about inside the body?

Well, I didn’t really take any “before” pictures, but perhaps this can give you an idea of what it was like. Many cables, back and forth, and all of them individual. Also note that most of these cables had to be able to connect to different places on the old electronics board!

This is a mess of power cables, foot drive cables and dome drive cables. Nothing really marked, how good is that?

This is the new look of the interior wiring, prior to me installing the board. There are still a few individual cables, but they will be tied down when I’m finalizing the cable mounts after the paint job is done. This is just hanging there and not fastened 100%.

With the electronics board in place, and the big connector plugged in…

…it looks like this! Clean and not too messy!

Another angle… remember it is all plugged in. No more cables going back and forth. If I need to unplug my electronics board, I only need to undo that plug and also remove the USB cable (not attached in this photo), and it’s a simple matter of opening the velcro fasteners and there we go!

Best part: I can not attack anything the wrong way anymore!

… and look at that! It even works!

Tomorrow I hope to have beaten this flu! I’ve got work to do… and a network thing… and Thursday I’m getting knee surgery!

I’m looking forward to getting a lot done on the small parts while being partially immobile!

 

By |2016-12-06T00:01:17+01:00September 25th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Re:Wired
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Test driving in the street

This may well be one of the biggest updates….

So, I did quite a few things and decided to take R2 on a quick test drive into the street….

Well… first things first… Let me tell you about the stuff I had to do to get him there….

R2 has been on a massive overhaul lately, and I’ve started doing things from painting to change the wheels around, and rethinking the speakers and coming up with a good solution for that, and now also changing the position of the battery, which in turn led me to finally redo the entire electronics board, and actually add a fuse box into my little friend!

This is the new electronics board, which in this version (it has changed slightly) has the Dan Stuettgen Power Distribution board bottom left, going to the fusebox, up right, sending power up to the dome and into the RC receiver and finally the Sabretooth and Syren 10 used for drive and dome control.

The entire electronics board is suspended with velcro, so it actually has a really good vibration dampener, something that I really like!

The battery has been moved from the front of my droid body to the back of the droid body. Low point of gravity and all.

This is how much space I have between the board and the battery..

The battery is secured with Velcro underneath, and also a strip of velcro making sure it doesn’t vibrate out of place, tying it to the frame in the back. I like Velcro.

From the top, the droid doesn’t look as cluttered anymore..

Now, of course there were some snags with this. First off I realized that the slip ring connector board was too close to my slip ring holder, so I had to move it around a bit. Actually you can see the new position in the pic above, compared with the first picture of the board.

Second.. well … we’ll get to that later! =) All in good time!

Paint job has continued. Even though I have ordered a metal set, I made a quick paint job on my resin set of power couplers. I know. I forgot the ring in the front, and no, it’s not very nicely painted. Come on, people. Give me a break. This is a rush job to impress the family on Midsummer! I will get proper paints and proper metal pieces as well, but I wanted them to at least have sort of the correct paint job! =)

I have quite painfully realized that my hands are not as steady as they used to be last time I brought out them citadel paints. 15 years ago when I was painting eyes on war hammer figures about an inch tall…

I have also realized that there are many auto paint shops that can not only break the color to the exact nuance I want, but also put it in an aerosol can for me!

Lately, I’ve been out looking at cars to find a color that I like that may or may not be my R2 blue.

Since the silver can was out anyway, I painted my resin Center Vents. They are pretty beat up, and I can’t wait to get a nice, clean aluminum set from BobC. Again. Midsummer. Temporary. Impress family…

Anyway, this is the speaker/center vent holder with the blue front. Works quite well. It would work a lot better with a pair of metal center vents screwed into the holder!

By the way… the speakers are now held in place with .. you guessed it …. Velcro!

I like the package feeling I get from the unit with the vents and the speakers. Small, self contained… works …

Another great way of fastening things on my droid is magnets. I picked up a few bags of rather small magnets and made a holder for my LDP, and superglued two magnets to the back of it. It sits really sturdy in place and is going nowhere!

Locking mechanism above…. and LDP in place below:

The utility arms are not mounted properly either. I still lack the tubes and screws needed so for now, they are only sitting inside the arm holders with … Well … it starts with a “V” …

I really like the dark color of them utility arms and LDP, though. It is the SAME color as the rest of the blue stuff… but I think I didn’t rattle the can enough, since the stuff I sprayed first came out much darker than the stuff towards the end of the can…

One thing that is NOT fastened with Velcro, however are the copper hose braids. I have still no foot stripes so I have not drilled out the holes in the feet yet that these should connect to, but decided to fix them up anyway.

The hose braids was ordered by Sigge and shipped to me. Thank you Captain Sigge!

I found a good clear rubber hose that I cut to length and placed inside the copper braids. My next move was to use the old “plug and screw” technique in order to lock the braids inside the hose.

Since they will be screwed into place, I only secured ONE end, the other end will be inserted into the battery box and gently pulled out until it is quite secure.

Finally, it was time to assemble my droid again. He has not been fully assembled since winter, and it was about time!

When putting on his center leg, the box I had him propped up against slid away from under him, and he almost face planted. As it happens, the edge of the box really smashed up one of the center vents even more. so I had to do a quick fix with some superglue and silver paint to cover up the worst.

Again, getting proper metal ones, so this is ok for the moment… really.

Once he was on three wheels, it was time to test drive him around a bit.

Or so I thought.

Turns it was time to troubleshoot electronics a bit.

The Sabretooth started blinking as if the battery was depleted, but that’s a pretty big battery and I think I had it more than half full. I charged for 40 minutes and tried again. Same error.

Turns out that the Power Distribution Board is not made for sending through the power to the motor controller, so I had to put that in parallel from the battery. A snip here, a cable there, and problem was fixed.

Another thing I realized was that I need to move his front wheel slightly more to the front, and I need to work on securing the center ankle, as it was not as stable as I’d hoped. I may need to come up with another solution for the foot.

Anyway, all assembled, still needing pocket and side vents, here is my droid in its current state:

Still, lots to do, but at least I know he works, and apart from painting and weathering and fixing an ankle and some vents and stuff, he is starting to be quite… assembled! =)

By |2016-12-06T00:01:29+01:00June 19th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Test driving in the street
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