Here’s a couple of photos from the Clone Wars pre-release screening in San Francisco on Monday.

It was a pretty low key event compared to some SW charity premiers we’ve been to in the passed, but we all had a lot of fun hanging out.

I didn’t get many photos as security was tight and we had to hand in our phones and camera.

More photos in the gallery.

Just got back from the TRU Midnight Madness - and was it madness. Over 100 people were in line when I arrived at 11pm. People had been camping out since noon today.

Unfortunately, I didn’t plan ahead so I was on my own. - Alas all my buddy’s in the RL/501st are down in Comic Con this weekend, but I had a blast anyway and everyone loved Artoo.

My embarrassing moment from tonite was when someone in the line heckled “2-3-2, do 2-3-2, I bet it doesn’t do 2-3-2″. I came back with “Well, where’s your droid?”, and he answered “It’s at home, I’m the guy who bought Jerry Green’s R9!”. Too funny.

At 11:50 they were still assembling the display and people in line were getting mad, especially as there were only going to be 60 of the special General Grievous.

This is Bobby who bought Jerry’s R9.

More photos here

I was able to snag the new artoo as well as some new figures with the “1st Day of Issue” sticker that may help pay for the gas tonite via ebay

I’m really not sure where to start with my RoboGames coverage - the weekend was jammed packed full of interesting people and cool things - like talking with the machinist who worked on the NPC motors many of us use in our droids, to hanging out with the Orb Swarm folks or Grant Imahara from Mythbusters, or getting some inside info from the engineer who maintains the machines that spin our aluminum domes. Artoo even got in on some battle bot action in the arena and lived to tell the tail.

The event is held at Fort Mason in San Francisco each year and attracts thousands of people from all over the world. I was in attendance all 3 days with support from my friend Richard, and Gerard was there on Saturday with his R2.

The games themselves cover everything from the traditional battle bot arena tournaments, to robot soccer and sumo fighting. There are also special categories for art and bar tending robots. Maybe next year I’ll enter Artoo into the latter. In total there were 70 different competitive categories.

Artoo was a big crowd pleaser as usual, and many photos were taken with his admiring fans. My favorite was this one I found on Flickr by inkyhack.

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I had a kick ass day at RoboGames. There’s way too many things to post about, but thought I’d throw up some photos.

The highlight has got to be getting in the arena with some of the battle bots.

R2 managed to flip this guy over using his own weapon against him

There were also a lot of cool art robots there, like this one serving beer

More photos in the gallery.

The good news is the new 3″ casters are working out great.

Big thanks to Dave and Simone for being great hosts to the group.

I’ve been busy getting Artoo ready for RoboGames this weekend, and needed to buy some bits and pieces at the local Ace Hardware store in Pacifica.

I thought I’d finally take Artoo over for a visit. Dave the owner is a big Star Wars fan, and I’ve gotten to know a lot of the staff really well. They’ve always been super polite and put up with my crazy questions and ramblings when I’m trying to MacGyver something.

I also figured this would also be a good test of the new wheel/caster setup before I head out for a long weekend at RoboGames.

To my surprise the new casters were much better on the van’s loading ramp, and made easy work of the asphalt parking lot. He had a spot of bother with the big door jam going into the store, he almost made it over but not quite. On the way out I approached it at and angle, and after a bit of wiggling of the joystick made it out without me having to lift the front foot. I really don’t think the omni’s would have made it either, so right now I’m more than happy on how the wheel casters performed.

The visit turned into a bit of a mini event with lots of customers interested in knowing more about my creation - and I proudly told them how much Ace product was in him.

We patrolled the aisles searching of spare parts

When stumbled upon Lee at the hardware section - there’s probably 100’s of screws in Artoo from these bins. I also have to thank Lee for special ordering me some of the ‘mythical’ 3 inch casters.

On the way out we bumped into Dave, the store owner. We hung out for a while and talked about his love of Star Wars and how I envied all the resources he had at his disposal to build Astromechs - maybe he’s got the bug? I’m not sure

The 5th annual RoboGames, the world’s largest open robot competition, takes place this weekend, Friday, June 13th through Sunday, June 15th at Fort Mason Festival Pavilion in San Francisco.

The R2Builders Club will be in attendance on Saturday, this will be our second year at this very fun event.

Here’s a collection of video of us at Maker Faire

Skip forward to the 2 minute mark for the interview

We had another successful event at the San Jose Museum of Art this last Tuesday. A few days earlier I’d read on Laughing Squid that there was going to be a party for the current exhibit “Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon“. Given that Artoo is such an icon I had to do my duty and take him along.

The only real issues we had at the event was the two city blocks of cobbled stones Artoo had to endure to get there, and having to sit in the droid mobile all day suffering temperatures in excess of 100 degrees - which cause some problems with parts expanding - resulting in dome drive problems, but I’m not sure if it was the heat or the cobble stones that did it. He definitely needs a tune up at this point.

Big thanks to Chinh, Steve and his family for support that night.

As usual more photos in the gallery, but here’s a sample.

As usual Artoo was a big hit with the kids, old and young

He was also able to take in some of the art

They were a little worried he was going to knock over the 21 foot styrene robot

He even met up with a Treadwell Droid

And did some light reading