Back December of 2009, I ordered 1 set of JAG Steel Feet for R6. Well they have finally arrived!
Left is all three feet plus hardware, and right is the inside of the feet.
I need to quickly decide what I'm going to do. I either need to paint them real soon or spray oil on them and store them. The reason is bare steel will oxidize and rust if I don't paint them soon. If I can't do that quickly, then coating them with something like WD-40 and wrapping in plastic will protect them from oxidization until I'm ready to paint. In the least I can put primer on them.
C5 is now that much closer. These are the approved logos the R2 Builders Club will be using for their T-Shirts and Banners at the convention. Notice the Hoth scheme has the life form scanner and the Degobah scheme has the periscope.
Last week I accomplished four things. First, I installed the hardware needed to mount the center ankle and drilled the mounting holes through the center ankle. The ankle will be held between two L shaped steel rails by two 5/16ths bolts. But I goofed a little when setting the rails. they are 1/4" to wide on each side. I will have to make a couple of 1/4" spacers to fit between the rails and the center ankle.
Second, I routed the spot where the speakers will mount. I left a 1/8" lip all the way around the hole to rest the speaker on. I then soldered new wire onto the speakers.
Third, I cut out the replacement shoulder flange cover.
Now for the big one. I finally decided to mount my electronic hardware to the PCB tray I made and start wiring then together.
At this point everything except the power and speed controllers are wired together. Actually, the only other thing on the board is the sound and R/C circuits. Since the sound hardware was ready, I started studying how to program the Arduino. Amazingly I was able to figure it out in only 3 days using examples and tips from other droid builders and the Arduino community. So now in the end, when I push a single button on my PS2 controller, R6 will play a random sound. Of course I made a video.
Currently there are only 10 different R2 sounds stored, but I have many more I can add. Just need to select the ones I want to use and convert them to MP3's.
More progress to come. Feet should be arriving any time.
I believe the footage is from Celebration 4 and maybe Celebration Japan.. Sadly, the droids from the R2 Builders Club only got two or three quick glances.
Here is a riser card for the Arduino microprocessor. This makes is easy to connect wires to it.
Here we have a cheap desktop speaker set. After testing it on my computer to ensure good quality sound, I disassembled it. This will plug into the VMusic2 module. The advantage of using these kind of speakers is already having the amplifier and speakers matched and working. Just plug & play. I'll be connecting new speaker wire from the speakers to the amp. The speakers will be mounted onto each shoulder support. I'm going to drill a hole through them for the speakers to fit into as outlined. Will use a router for this.
It's important to note that I also chose these speakers because they came with an plug in AC to DC (no, not the band) power adapter, which means I can plug the amp into a DC power source (i.e. battery) with no problems. However, the amp requires no more or less than 7.5V and the battery I'll be using is a 12V. To solve this, I'm going to make a voltage regulator. This will convert the 12V into 7.5V by bleeding the extra 4.5V out as heat. Parts are on order.
After spending a couple of days admiring my droid, I noticed the right shoulder was a bit lower than the left. I looked closer and figured out why. First, the right side is the 1" pipe. Even though the hole for it (1-1/2") is centered with the other side, the hole is a little bigger than the pipe. So the pipe is resting on the bottom of the hole and thus is sitting a bit lower than the left side. Then I thought what would happen when I get the feet on...the right shoulder would then be a bit higher than the left. So now I have to fix this. It never ends.
The solution is to have the 1-1/4" pipe extend through both shoulder supports. Don't know why I didn't think to do that before. But this requires replacing both pipes (the larger one so it's long enough and the smaller one so the drilled holes are aligned). After Replacing both pipes, I cut the 1-1/4" to 16" long (was 14" before) and the new 1" pipe I kept at 14" long. Then I re-drilled the 3/8" alignment holes but this time I used a hard metal drill bit, making the job much faster and with less smoke, hehe. Now the shoulders sit level with one another.
While I was at it, I decided to try making the silver rings that go on the shoulder flanges. This is the silver part between the legs and body. I bought a 2' x 4' panel of aluminum sheet metal and using tin snips I cut out two 1-1/4" x 19-3/4" strips. I wrapped these around the flanges and trimmed to fit end to end. Then I used small scrap pieces and J.B. Weld to bridge each end.
End result came out pretty good, except for one side. There is a small gap on one of them so I'll have to remake that one. Other wise it looks great.
Starting to look like a real droid isn't it? Only took me 2 years of research and 3 years of off/on work. The steel feet I ordered should be arriving soon. Can't wait to try those on. I think next I'll tackle mounting the center ankle to the body. Stay tuned for that adventure.
