Been a while...

As the title says, it's been a while since I posted anything. Plain and simple, Artoo has been out of comission since oh, maybe 2 days before ChattaCon (For those of you not here in the South, that means roughly Jan 20th...).

Whilst re-wiring Artoo to run at 24V instead of 12V, I accidentally reversed the polarity of my drive motor batteries. I know, it was a bonehead dumba$$ mistake, but you get so used to things that you stop paying as much attention as you ought to be, considering what you're working on.

Luckily I had the forethought to research all the components, and had moved my Syren10 Dome motor speed controller to the front (voice and lights) fusebox, since it doesn't run at 24V (best I can tell from their website) so the only damage was to my SaberTooth 2x25, which went 'pffft' and didn't work anymore.

Even though it took me pretty much 2 months and 3 speed controllers to get a working piece of hardware, I still can't say enough about how great the customer service and tech support is at Dimension Engineering. The first one I ordered was damaged in shipping, and the second one had issues. 'Third time is the charm' isn't it?

Anyway, today I got the replacement speed controller and Artoo is now running at 24V. Well, no smoke came out and the wheels turn in the directions they are supposed to. This being Alabama and all, I had him up on bricks so I could test drive without him knocking things over or running into furniture.

Now onto improving the home-made phono headphone jack slip ring! Next post, hopefully not 4 or 5 months down the road :)