10-9-10, RMH Fire Truck Pull, Pensacola

So, against my better judgement, I took R2 over to Pensacola for the Ronald McDonald House Fire Truck Pull.

Right from the start, R2 was having problems just in the parking lot, running into the littlest bits of gravel, trying to tip over, grinding to a halt, and that was all within the first 10'. I took it slow and managed to stay fairly stationary for most of the rest of the troop. Can you tell I'm 501st by the way I call it a troop and not an "event" or an "appearance"? Lol...anyway, here's some pics.

The required group pic, with the fire truck in the background:



Trying to keep R2 in the shade...lemme tell you, his dome gets HOT in the sunshine:


Finally more shade:


Random team getting ready to pull:


An arrest is made:


And, finally, the things I've come to expect, the "damage shots"...




Imagine that...the center foot is busted AGAIN...man I can't wait to get my JAG steel feet...
And as for the body dent, no one is really sure what happened. R2 went runaway downhill about a dozen feet and slammed into the gate next to where I was standing. I can't say for sure, but I most likely bumped the stick while trying to take a picture. That or a strong breeze got him started. He hit hard enough that it stood him up and changed the angle of his legs, actually damaging his styrene battery boxes. I tried taking pics of that damage, but you can't see it. Good thing I'm on the list for Ethan's ALU battery boxes too...

Oh well, that's part of it I guess. I could keep him pristine by keeping him in the house, but what's the fun in that?

The rest of the pics are here:
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BEST Robotics kick-off day event!

R2's first local event! I've taken him to DCon and WSMI, but never done a local event.

I was invited to bring R2 out to the Jubilee Area BEST Robotics "Field Premier" today at Davidson HS (where I went to high school, and hadn't been back since I graduated). I invited Red and Matt to come "assist" in armor.

We were a big hit. The skit started out with Matt and Red walking out with 2 of the commentators, talking a little bit about what they were supposed to be doing. The crowd cheered for them, and they had a couple more lines, then R2 came out and the crowd of high school and middle school students went wild! R2 and the commentators had some dialog about the field, and then the field was revealed and explained to the competitors.

Afterwards, we took pics for about an hour, then we adjourned to Longhorn for lunch, provided by the BEST staff!

Here's pics:

The characters with the BEST staff:


With the "commentators", discussing the skit:


During the skit:


Revealing the "field":


A shot of the crowd:


Pics with the teams after:


R2 went over to visit a special needs kid while the pics continued:


And what would an event be, without some of "Red's Hi-Jinks":



She was getting some air on that little mini-tramp!

Thanks to Red and Matt for coming along on this event, and special thanks to AshAmidala for taking pictures for us today!

On a side note, you can see a little damage in one of the pics to R2's right foot this time. The skirt on the rear of the foot was almost loose, so I went ahead and took it off rahter than have it fall off during the event.

And more paint...prep that is

Some of you have seen where the primer has let go on my left booster cover, allowing the beautiful blue paint to flake off. Can't have that. No sirree Bob.

Here's what I'm trying. I've stripped the paint off the flat surfaces where the paint was already coming off. I've taped off the areas, and gotten out the little jar of Master Mask and done those areas that weren't conducive to tape. Sanded too...







Gonna let the Master Mask dry overnight and start some primer tomorrow.

Dome power switch

Also, something shiny to go with the new battery in R2's head:



When R2's head is facing forward, that toggle switch will always be in the back. It's how I'll turn on the JEDI light system in the dome.



The switch sticks down from above the dome base plate, with a little more than 1/4" of clearance from the top ring of the frame, and it's far enough in towards the center that it won't interfere with the dome drive wheel.

I've seen folks with the switch on the outside of the dome, and just didn't want kids finding it. This way even I have to look for it a little :)

Little stuff - paint on the undercarriage

So, at WSMI one of the other builders asked me why my bottom plate was black. I said...I dunno. It just is.
Guess I had to do something about it...Artoo had to jump up on the "droid lift" for this one.





A little primer and some white later, problem solved:





The bottom ring of the frame, now that's a different story. It'll be staying black, unless something REALLY bad happens that requires the frame to come back out.

More posts coming directly!

Dome battery

As promised (2 weeks ago), here's pics of the newly installed dome battery setup.

All of the parts are recycled, or are extra stuff that was lying around. The straps, which I found at work, just happened to be the absolute perfect length to hold the battery in place. The plates are leftover A&A scrap from the frame/legs build (I kept all the scrap, for things just like this). The screws and nuts were extras, again from the frame build. You'll probably hate this part...the batteries (as are all my batteries) are from work as well. They have been pulled out of UPSs that failed and were destined for recycling. I grabbed 3 of them, charged them, and the first one I tried ran the lights for 36 hours, until I decided to turn them off. Artoo's drive system ran for 8 hours at the WSMI exhibit at the USSRC on 2 of those recycled batteries.

Anyway, back to the build!

Because the slots in the JAG dome plate are further apart than the width of the battery, I had to make a plate to bolt to the JAG plate, which the straps run underneath, like so:



Underneath, the small plates that the larger piece bolts to has the screw heads countersunk, and is far enough in towards the center so as not to interfere with the dome drive wheel:


(I know it's off center in this picture, that's been corrected.)

Here's a couple of shots of it installed on Artoo:





The battery is a 12v 4.5ah (or 5ah, depending on which on is installed) that velcros securely like so:





I pretty much eyeball the battery when I velcro it in place to "center" it. Since it's a smaller battery, being slightly off center shouldn't cause too much wobble when I spin the dome.

Here's what I pulled out:



It's already worn down on the contact spots, and no longer spins freely. It's kind of "grindy"... if that makes sense to you.

Anyway, last pics are of something I came up with to keep the slack in the power wires from dropping under the JAG plate and getting snatched out when the dome turns, which happened before.





I used that "gator" velcro, the kind with hooks on both sides to attach an ID badge holder to the top of the dome. It pulls the wire just enough to keep it up out of the way when things are turning, but not enough to disconnect the power wires. It's amazing the stupid ideas that turn out to work pretty well sometimes :)

Anyway, that's all for now. Not sure when the next update will be, since I don't have anything pressing to work on at currently...

Upgrades and such

So, now that I've posted event pics, time to talk about the things I'm working on.

The phono plug slip ring never REALLY worked well. No matter what I tried, eventually the male side of the plug would wind up binding in the female half, which would twist the wires inside the male half of the plug until they shorted. I had small fuses on either side of the slip ring to protect the JEDI display components, but it was really annoying to replace the fuses every time it shorted, and to worry about not being able to replace the display components.

I took pics of the things I tried, but since they didn't work, there's no point posting them really.

What I'm going to do is remove the slip ring and place a new 12V 5ah battery on the JAG plate that's on my rockler. I'll use this battery to power the display systems in the dome, leaving the voice and the dome motor connected as they currently are.

In the next day or two I'll actually get this done and will try to remember to post a pic or two.