Update #1 - electronics

I'll do this a step or two at a time, to keep it simple :)

First upgrade was to the sound system. If you recall, I was using a pair of USB powered laptop speakers running on 5v.
At DCon I quickly realized that would NOT be sufficient for any larger venue. So I hit the 'Bay and picked up a pair of speakers and an amplifier.

Here's removing the old setup:


And the new speakers:


these are directly behind the front vents, and can be seen from down low, but they are shiny, so they kind of fit...

My new amplifier:


and the re-arranged layout on the "vox" board:


and the board in place:


I think the total cost of that upgrade was about $35...the speakers and the amp were pretty inexpensive.
I'd also recommend if you get that type amp, you make sure the power lead is included. Mine was, but it was the only auction that specified the cord was included.

Next up, I decided to get away from the old 72Mhz telescoping antenna that my Futaba had.
I checked out several links from Astromech.net and decided to go with the:

Spektrum DX6i and the BR6200 from the Robot Marketplace. Once I figured out which channel to reverse, I'm running like a champ again!

That's good for now...I'll post about rebuilding the ankle later, since it's much more picture intensive.

Blog updates!

Updates are coming...be patient! Here in the next day or two I'll have some stuff to post.

The work is done, it's just the posting that takes some time...

Quick update about upgrades

Well, since getting home from DragonCon, I haven't started tearing R2 down yet, just kind of leaving him in the corner as eye candy at the moment.

I have been planning upgrades and getting started with ordering.

The first upgrades are to the sound system. At the Con, if we weren't in the room or in an elevator, you couldn't hear R2. At all. So I've ordered an amplifier, and a pair of speakers. those weren't the speaker's I'd intended to buy, the set I wanted was $5 more, but I wasn't paying enough attention and ordered these. That's just under $30, which should make him PLENTY loud enough :).

The other upgrades are waiting on JAG to get around to doing runs of the parts I want. I need steel feet - all 3, feet side details, an ALU center ankle and some ALU battery boxes, which Ethan is supposed to be looking at running sometime this month. With just those parts alone, i'm probably looking at increasing the $$ in my droid by as much as 33%...

anyway, that's all for now. Still planning my new center ankle holder, but can't actually do anything until I take him apart to get measurements.

And the bad news from DCon...

Friday morning, while moving Artoo from the Marriott to the Hyatt, I found this in the street:





Yup, that's right. A pothole. Just a small one, but devastating all the same. I was pushing Artoo across the street, and the casters in the center foot hit the pothole and stuck. Since I was pushing, Artoo stood up on the center foot, and the left side of the support for the ankle collapsed. The footshell shattered into pieces, and there's a big chunk of the oak inner foot missing.

Artoo ALMOST did a nosedive, and it was all I could do to keep him from sliding on his face down the street. People were running from all directions to help, but I managed to keep him upright.

Here's some shots of the damage to the supports:









One day this week I'll begin "tearing" Artoo back down to the frame. Naturally I'm not looking forward to that, as I'm sure you can imagine.

I'll have to get lots of measurements to build a new strong and sturdy ankle and supports out of hardwood.

I also found that Artoo does NOT like running on hotel carpet at 12v. After I check some specs on the speed controller and the dome motor, I'm going to do a rewire on the drive system to 24v.

Also, I'm going to have to pull the laptop speakers out of the frame, and get a car stereo speaker and an amplifier. Artoo was audible in the room and in the elevators, but out in the general areas of the con, he might as well have been whispering.

And of course, I'll be watching for the JAG runs of new metal feet, and possibly an alu center ankle. So, just when I thought I was done, now I've got all sorts of things to do.

DragonCon '09!

How do you choose from the 100s of pics...











That's some of the best...here's a link to the rest of the pics:

Click here!

Ankles locked, footshell doors on, and shoulder hubs in

So like the title says, did some of the last remaining tasks to get Artoo ready for DCon!

Started off by pencilling in the outlines of the ankles to decide where to drill, then drilled an 11/64" hole, and then screwed some 10-32 2" bolts into the holes.







Also managed to get the doors on, which isn't exactly as easy as it might sound. The right footshell was slightly out of square or something, and the motor mount was in the way ever so slightly. I had to grind a trench across the back of the door to get it to fit. Don't have pics of the trench, but I do have pics of the doors in place:





Also saved the shoulder hubs for last of all, because once they are in place, they are a supreme pain to get back out. But I went on faith and put them in anyway..

Assembled pics!

Here's pics of the 99.95% complete droid now sitting in my living room!











TADAA!

As you can see, all that's left is putting in the shoulder hubs, pinning the ankles so the feet won't move, and putting the doors to the footshells on!

braided hoses and KHFs all connected!

So apparently, 18" is NOT the length of the braided hoses, it's 12" according to Master Senna.

Here's how I secured the KHFs into the feet:



And I did the same sort of thing in the battery boxes, which are starting to fall apart.



And here they both are all put together:

Dome bumps and "footwork" and Slip Ring repair

Since I un-wisely cut out the dome bump holes on my inner dome, it took me a little figuring to decide how to handle it.

I used some scrap styrene and some other scrap A&A pieces to come up with a way to get them in there.

Here's the styrene already glued in place, with the squares cut for the carriage bolts:



And a shot from inside the dome where you can see the spacers I made to get around the square parts:



And a shot from outside with the bumps installed:



Next up is the resin KHFs, since I don't believe my ALU ones will arrive before it's time to head out to DCon next week.
Apparently when Keith originally cast them, he wrapped masking tape around the threads so as not to destroy the molds during removal. This means that the part where the thread would normally be is a little thicker than it should be. Here was my solution. I drilled a hole through each of them:



Then ran a bolt through the hole and tightened it down and put it in the drill press:



I tried 2 methods then:





Of the 2, the sandpaper seemed to work a little better, but it loaded up awfully fast. The file was just too big a pain to keep from loading up.

Here's a nice shiny silver shot of them:



I also dremeled the ends off of the braided hoses and painted them. Somehow I managed to get the "Rich Caramel" color instead of the "Aged Brass" Rustoleum Metallic. I'm not sure that's the one I picked when I was comparing them, but it's what made it home. It's not exactly what I wanted, but I think it'll do. Color like this isn't easy to show in a picture, but here goes:



Still working on a plan to mount them securely, right now I'm thinking about some cotter pins, but we'll see when I get to that part this afternoon or tomorrow.

And here's a shot of the keyholes I cut in the battery boxes to hold them on better. I started by drilling the top of the keyhole, then another hole the same size 1/4" lower. I then used a big bit in the bottom hole to make the hole bigger.



Naturally that pic is of the good set of keyholes. I didn't come up with the working method for making them until AFTER the first hole. I say hole, because that's what it turned in to. I didn't make the 2nd hole with a pilot then a bigger bit, and it walked right into the top hole and made an all around mess of it. Luckily the other keyhole and the magnets seem to be holding it fairly well.

Guess I'll keep my eye out for some ALU battery boxes to go with the steel feet I'm keeping my eyes open for.

Yesterday between coats of paint I also did some troubleshooting on my slip ring. I replaced the closed frame jack with an open one so I could see the contacts. I then found out what the problem was. Apparently the tip pf the plug is just pressed on to a pin, which has the contact rings at the other end of it. Somehow, the tip started to loosen and that allowed the pin to move, thus causing the short in the power to the dome. I took the plug the rest of the way apart for a better understanding of how it works:



While I was at RS I also picked up an "inline automotive blade fuse holder" and incorporated that into the wiring just inside the dome, between the slip ring and the DC/DC converter, just in case. I only had a selection of low amp fuses on hand, so I used the biggest, a 7.5 amp fuse. I need to ask about that too, how many amps should I be fusing for on the JEDI display system.

Last night I ran the JEDI lights for 12 hours (overnight basically) and they were still kicking when I woke up this AM...I think thats a good sign. I also played with the sound a little, maybe 20-30 min, adding to the load on the single 7.2AH battery during the same time. Not gonna have to worry about them dying out on me I guess.

Blue ring, dome panels and radar eye

Here's a couple of shots of the "finished" blue ring:





Been a lot of discussion about the gaps above and below the ring in the past couple of days, as apparently I'm not the only one to have this issue, far from it in fact.
I'm of the mind that I did the best I could with what I had, and the gaps don't bother me so much. Only another builder would notice, and then only if they were looking at the gaps or for them.

I also got the rest of the dome panels in place:









You can tell that the 2 silver panels look very different when compared to the dome, but I think that just adds character. Which is another way of saying I'm not taking them off and sanding them. They will never match exactly, and I like the way they look now.

This afternoon I took off the tape holding the panels and decided this was worthy of some outdoor sunshine pics :)







After those pretty pictures, I was inspired to finish it up, so I hot glued the black lens to the back of the radar eye. Oddly enough I didn't have to make a groove for the lens to sit in like I keep hearing so many other builders did, although it probably wouldn't have hurt to have done so.

I also read that when you think you have it in the right place, it's WAY too high up, and the whole thing usually needs to go down 1/2". So I started with that in mind, and it does feel like it's too low to me, but here's the pics:





As soon as the silicon holding the front logic surrounds cures completely, I'm going to get everything wired up in the dome. Should be able to get to that tomorrow...