Feet Arrive

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.

'Till next time,

John

Official Celebration 5 R2 Builders Logo

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.

Only 4 months to go.....

John

Eek! It Talked!

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.

John

Celebration 5 Heats Up

Starwars.com recently posted a promo video for the Celebration 5 convention.

http://www.starwars.com/video/view/000986.html

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.

Anyways, enjoy.

Lend me your ears

Nearly finished with the hardware for the audio.

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.

John

More Shoulder Rework

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.

John

Legs and Body are One

Finally. Finally, R6-C9 has his legs on. This is the droid I've been waiting for.


According to the general club blueprints, the shoulders are a half-inch from the body. Since the body is 18", the total pipe length should be 19" (18 + half-inch on each side). To secure the pipes at this length I drilled two 3/8" holes straight through the pipes and placed a 3/8" X 2" hex bolt into each hole.


Be careful when doing this. The drill bit and the pipes get very warm to the touch. You may see a little white smoke. If the drill bit gets too hot it will deform and become useless. So take it slow. Use a drill press so the hole is straight.

Gonna take a little break from the shop (not as long as last time hopefully).

I just received some parts for the audio playback for R6. In an earlier post I said I was going to use the CFIII for the audio. Well that'll be over $200. So instead I'm going to use a little device called the VMusic2. This is a device that plays MP3 or WMA audio files, and is read off of a USB flash drive. However, it needs a microcontroller added to work. For this, I've chosen the Adruino. Specifically the Arduino Duemilanove. Click here to read about it at the R2 Builder's forum. Basicly, the Arduino is a brain for controlling just about anything. Of course you have to program it to get it to do anything. This will be quite the learning curve for me. I don't know hardly anything about programming. Should be fun to see how this works out. Others have done this so I should be able to as well. How I'll have it setup is when I push a button on my remote, it'll trigger the Arduino to tell the VMusic2 to play a random sound. That's it. I may setup a 2nd button to select different sound directories on the flash drive, for example one directory will be sad sounds, another happy, another for music, etc..
On the right is the Arduino, left is the VMusic2. Each is the size of a cell phone.


Laterz,

John

Shoulder Transplant

Well I remade the shoulder supports today. But I forgot to bring the skins with me so I couldn't mark them for drilling again. Will do that tomorrow I guess. In the least I was able to finish the PCB tray today.

Program note: Today I'm going to try another way of inserting pictures into the blog. Originally I was using Blogger's image insert but it was time consuming and was hard to edit. Yesterday I just pasted the HTML thumbnail code from Photobucket. Today I'm going to try using the regular HTML image code so the pictures are a little bigger.

Here is one of the new shoulder supports with a 1/4" deep by 1/2" wide pocket for the "shoe."


After fitting the shoulder supports into the body, I installed the "support shoe" and then slid in the PCB tray.


Here's a video of how it works.


So tomorrow I'll bring the skins and get the holes drilled for the legs. I think I'll have the correct drill bit size this time, 1-1/2" hole for the 1" pipe and 1-3/4" hole for the 1-1/4" pipe.

John

One step forward, two steps back

I've been preoccupied this past month with other concerns so I didn't have any time to continue work, except to brainstorm what I want to do next and how. But today I had nothing but time so here we go.

A programming note: I am trying a different method for inserting my pictures into each post, thus why the images are smaller. I'm going the route of thumbnails instead of a large picture so just click on the picture to see the full size version.

First thing I did was figure out how to mark the holes for the shoulder flange pipes to go through on the body. I came up with a genius idea. First I clamped the skins onto the body exactly how I will mount them (there's another puzzle to solve later). Next I placed the body on it's side and then inserted the shoulder flanges onto the side of the shoulder supports. Now here's where I should get a medal or something. The six holes in the flange (for mounting to the legs), I used those to mark six points on the support, then using a small ruler I drew a line from one mark to the other creating a six point star. The middle of that star is where I center the drill bit. I'm so clever I amaze myself, LOL.


Now comes the sad part. I drilled the holes (1-1/4" and 1"), but then I discovered something I had overlooked....the inside diameter of the pipes are 1" and 1-1/4" but they are like 1/8" thick, thus they didn't fit at all. This means I must remake the shoulder supports again. For every part you make, half you shall remake.


Due to banging my head against the wall a few dozen times, I didn't remake them today. Instead, I tackled making the PCB tray.

The PCB tray, as I call it, will be a simple board of MDF I will use to mount most of the electronic components to. This will help with troubleshooting and keeping everything tidy and organized inside the body. But when setting this tray up you will want to make it easily accessible to install/replace/repair/troubleshoot any of the parts. I may have mentioned earlier that I was going to have a door on the back of my droid. While others have done this, I just can't bring myself to cut the skins in a way they weren't already made to be cut. So the way I will do this is by making the tray slide up out of the body. This method is actually quite simple.
The tray will be in the back of the body just in front of the head drive motor. After deciding how wide to make the tray (11-7/8" X 12-3/4" X 1/4" for those taking notes) I marked on the top disc where to cut a 1/4" slot on each side to fit and hold the tray.


Next I used one of my extra vertical body ribs to make a "support shoe" so to speak for the tray to sit on when inside the body. It is 1-1/4" X 12-1/8" X 1/2". The grove running down its length is 1/4" wide and 1/4" deep. This piece will be mounted near the bottom of the shoulder supports (once I have remade those).


Using a 1/4" router bit, I cut the groove into the "shoe" and cut the slots into the top body disc.


Once I have the new shoulder support pieces I can test the tray's fit.

So tomorrow I will return to the shop and remake the shoulder supports. I need to figure out how big to make the holes now to fit the pipes through. Something to ponder while at the hardware store in the tools sections.

John.

More Glue Please

Today I slowly glued on more pieces of the body frame. As of now all but the top, bottom, and shoulder supports are glued. I'll glue in the shoulder supports once I have a plan for drilling the shoulder pipe holes. I want to be extra careful with this because the holes need to be centered just right so the body is balanced and so the skins fit around the shoulders correctly.

John.