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Thank you poster (Chris - ARTOO-DETOO.NET)

Chris James — Thu, 17 May 2012 04:03:52 +0100

Johnathan hand delivered a huge thank you “poster” signed by the children from the Vacaville Concert we participated in last week. It was a big surprise and much appreciated. I had a blast and the event.

Vacaville Concert

Build day and helping friends.. with a little gaming (Darth Moose's Astromech Build)

DarthMoose74 — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:28:00 +0100

Denny has one of those Star Trek chess boards but it was missing a few removable boards on it. So today we took the time to make a whole set of new ones. Here is an original with the four new ones we are making.
Once the new pieces were made we could not resist playing a game.
The battle is getting heated!
Next I got everything layed out for Denny's SG-1 GDO. Soon the buttons will be recessed in the resin.
Also I was helping Eric with his new Steampunk project, wiring up some LEDs and a hidden power source.
We have light!!!!!!
With so many people doing projects over here again it was time to bust out storage space for everyone.
I got a little wiring done myself on the Tardis.
Later that night we played some Star Wars battleships. 500 points, faction pure.It came down to two fighters battling it out. The last round Eric rolled a 19 and I rolled a 3. Dam!
End of another fun build day, time to clean up for the next one!

Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend! (Chris - ARTOO-DETOO.NET)

Chris James — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:55:02 +0100

We’ll be at Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend, May 19th and 20th, and Education Day on Thursday May 17th.

Sketch for the cover of the coming Beginners Introduction by Steve aka MaysterChief (Norwegian R2)

Lasse Norlemann Mathiesen — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:10:00 +0100

Johnathan?s First Drive (Chris - ARTOO-DETOO.NET)

Chris James — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:50:06 +0100

Over the weekend I helped Johnathan wire up his JEDI Control system in his droid ready for Maker Faire this coming weekend. You can’t tell because of his beard, but he has a huge grin on his face.

Vacaville Concert (Chris - ARTOO-DETOO.NET)

Chris James — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:05:46 +0100

Fellow builder Johnathan invite Artoo and I to participate in a concert he was organizing with local schools in Vacaville. He’d been planning it for quite some time, and had composed some new songs for the children to sing. One of them was Star Wars’ish themed, so he thought it would fun to have Artoo and a few stormtroopers to participate during the performance.

When I arrived at the theater, Johnathan and his 3 year old son were busy with one last rehearsal

There were hundreds of kids in two choirs backstage, and I was asked to sneak Artoo in without causing too much of a disturbance, so I quickly ushered him in under a blanket and hid him in a side room.

Once we’d gone through our rehearsal, I hung out with 501st until it was our turn to go on stage

After the interval the troopers suited up and we hung out just off stage with the other performers waiting their turn. Of course people wanted to take photos

Little Johnathan, overcame his fear of the troopers and before long he wouldn’t leave them alone.

When it was our turn, the stormtroopers made their way to the front of the theater to enter and walk thru the audience “menacingly”, as the children sung a Star Wars themed song. Are then enter the stage as the stormtrooper were seen away by padawan jedi instructed by Yoda.

Alas, with operating Artoo and being behind stage it was pretty much impossible to get photos of Artoo and the troopers on stage, but I’m hoping someone captured some good shots.

After the little Johnathan was done conducting he came straight over and started talking with the troopers again – going so far as talking one of them out his helmet.

Gallery

My projects bring all the girls to the garage. ? ? (Darth Moose's Astromech Build)

DarthMoose74 — Sun, 13 May 2012 19:03:00 +0100

Dam right they can build! And look good doing it as well.Geek girls are hot, smart, and know their way around a workshop.
Who says only boys can build? We are an equal opportunity kind of group. :)

Maker Faire 2011 ? belated post (Chris - ARTOO-DETOO.NET)

Chris James — Sat, 12 May 2012 05:09:48 +0100

Here’s a selection of photos from last years Maker Faire.I got sick right after the event and forgot I hadn’t upload my photos.

Only 7 more days till Maker Faire 2012 !!

We had an awesome turn out last year, with over ten builders in attendance at some point over the weekend. Don Bies and Grant Imahara joined us for a group photo.

R2 has become so popular at the faire, that they now provide their own droids for people to take photos with

As always lots of children at the faire, some more adventurous than others

Artoo loves to see Star Wars tee’s

Mark demonstrated his awesome 2-3-2 droid

And Artoo always appreciate the hard work from the Make team who put on the faire

Johnathan, our droid security guard, was there again

And there was a ton of Android/Arduino robot mashups

This young girl stopped by to say thank you to Artoo for being there, she gave him a personalized note

The family later emailed to tell me Artoo inspired them to make their own droids

Gallery

Related:

R2-D2 visits Kids' Corner Learning Facility (Paul's R2 Blog)

Paul — Sat, 12 May 2012 02:53:00 +0100

Kids' Corner R2-D2 Visit! (Paul's R2 Blog)

Paul — Sat, 12 May 2012 01:19:00 +0100

We haven't been to Kids' Corner since August 2010 and my friend Lori Krupke, who is the director there, asked us if we could come over again. Of course we could! We had a fantastic time last time!

All this week, it has rained, rained and rained, so I had some concerns about getting R2-D2 loaded up. I have to drive up on my front lawn to load R2 thru the front door. With all that rain, I was hoping the ground wasn't too soft...or I'd have a pretty unique lawn ornament!

The weather turned out to be perfect, very sunny and it was a cinch to get R2 loaded up!

The staff, parents who were there and kids were fantastic. I never tire of seeing the reactions from the toddlers to R2!

Here's the link to the gallery of pictures HERE

Paul teaches a future R2 Builder a few things...

Paul & R2-D2 Dine with the Smileys (Paul's R2 Blog)

Paul — Wed, 09 May 2012 03:09:00 +0100

Last Thursday (May 3rd), R2-D2 and I were guests at Sarah Smiley's home.

Sarah's husband, Dustin, is away on a 13 month deployment with the United States Navy. She decided that she and her three kids were going to invite a guest to join them for supper each week. To date she has had Senator Susan Collins, the kids' school teachers, community leaders and now...and Astromech Droid! (You can read about Sarah Smiley here: https://www.facebook.com/sarah.is.smiley )

Sarah and her boys, Ford, 11, Owen, 9 and Lindell, 5 had asked for us to be a guest and were initially planned for May 4th...May the "force/fourth" be with you Day. However, Sarah was graduating from the University of Maine on that day! So, we were moved up a day.

If you read Sarah's wonderful column, you will see that her guests get to enjoy supper with the family and usually pass the evening doing something together. With R2-D2, I wanted to do something really unique and special for the family. I knew the kids were huge Star Wars fans and I also knew it must be hard for Dustin to be away when Sarah is graduating.

While tinkering with R2's projector, I pondered having a special message play from R2. I shrugged it off at first. How in the world am I, a complete stranger, going to contact Dustin and not sound nuts? "Hi there, You don't know me but I want to make a hologram of you." However the fact I had the Princess Leia one working so well in the new projector kept coming to mind.

I knew it was a long shot but I really wanted to try. I knew I couldn't approach any of Sarah's friends on Facebook, I didn't want the secret to get out, especially if it failed. Since I knew Senator Collins had been their first guest, she and her staff would understand how special this would be. I emailed, faxed and spoke to a staffer, who I am sure thought I was nuts. "Did you say an R2-D2?" "Yes. Please don't call Homeland Security".

24 hours later, I got a call back from one of the Senator's staffers. She loved the idea and would see if she could pass along my email address and request. With Dustin away in the MidEast and the time ticking down, I really didn't hold much hope.

Dustin contacted me two days later and told me he thought it was a very cool idea. He said he would work on getting a video to me and did so.

My extremely graphically talented co-worker, Kiernan McMorrow, offered to help me out and convert the video from a bright, sunny, noisy outdoor shot to a hologram!

We had the video done and ready to go 24 hours prior to dinner! All I had to do was sort out how to project the video and have the audio be heard clearly. Since R2 would be facing a wall, I brought external computer speakers that could plug into the projector's audio output port.

On the day of the event, I arrived right on time and unloaded R2-D2. The kids quickly greeted me at the van and helped me unload. Due to the layout of the sidewalk, steps and porch, R2 had quite a trek to climb! I'd get R2 over one hurdle, move the aluminum ramp, then over the next. By time R2 made it inside, I was sweating really good...quite the cardio workout!

As was pre-planned, WABI-TV (CBS) was there interviewing Sarah about her weekly ritual. She had no idea that I had worked with them a week in advance. We wanted to catch their reaction to the hologram from Dustin.

Once R2 was settled inside and everything was powered on, I answered all the their questions and demonstrated all the sounds and lights R2 has. I told them that R2 can do the Princess Leia hologram message and they immediately wanted to see that. Once Princess Leia's clip had finished, the boys were all open-mouthed and asking if I had more videos to play. I hinted that I had something they would probably like a lot....

News Link 1: http://www.krqe.com/dpps/news/strange/video-soldier-uses-r2-d2-to-surprise-family-ob12-jgr_4160533

News Link 2: http://www.wlfi.com/dpps/news/strange/video-soldier-uses-r2-d2-to-surprise-family-ob12-jgr_4160533

(The video streaming from WABI doesn't seem to work for some viewers)

Sarah was video recording the boys as they were watching the holograms. Her reaction to the hologram is fantastic...

I'll continue about our visit tomorrow...however if you would like to see the beautiful pictures professional photographer Andrea Hand took, here is the link...

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.304909679585125.70316.265042913571802&type=1

More R5 Dome Work (Victor's R2 Blog)

Victor Franco — Mon, 07 May 2012 02:10:00 +0100

Today I returned to Mike's house to continue work on the R5 dome, while Mike and Michael McMaster continued their WALL?E work.

Yesterday, I left off having routed the lower portion of the inside of the dome base ring to allow room for the Rockler bearing. Today I raised the router bit to allow for full vertical clearance of the bearing into the dome (and then some).

As was the case yesterday, this was an iterative exercise, where I reused the peg stop positions to route out a little more material at a time. The peg positions were chosen on a best-guess basis, with no real measurements taken.

The first stair step is from yesterday's work, with the router bit set to a lower position. The second stair step is from the first pass of the router from today's work, with the bit set at the higher position.

After six passes with the router bit raised to its new, higher position, the entire Rockler bearing fit into the dome vertically, with room to spare.

As luck would have it though, there is a problem. Normally the screws that slide through the dome ring fit just fine on an R2 dome. However, on this R5 dome, the screws don'e have a good dome ring to fit through.

What to do?? Building a dome ring won't be of much help, as half of the screw would poke down into the neck area, and possibly poke through the outer surface of the dome.

Mike came up with the idea of securing the screws to the dome itself, and have them point down, rather than have the the screws pointing up from the Rockler bearing. I think I've seen this idea used before, and I'll have to use it here.

So, how to secure the screws to the dome? Mike suggested attaching segments of steel bar to the dome with screws and glue, and have the #10 screws that will point down be attached to the segments of steel bar. Here is a preview of a loose-fit of what I'm talking about.

Time for another episode of "Cutting Lots of Steel with a Hacksaw," my least favorite form of entertainment.

First, I cut six segments of steel bar stock to a semi-arbitrary length. Mainly we're looking for a decent amount of surface area for when it will be bonded and screwed onto the dome.

I traced the arc of the bearing onto the steel segment, so I'd know where I needed to do more trimming.

Without these extra cuts, the steel segments would bump into the inside perimeter of the dome, thereby forcing the inside edge of the bar into the dome drive wheel, and we don't want that.

Some barely visible sparks on the grinder help clean things up. That looks like Michael McMaster's reflection in the glass, with the camera.

With 18 total cuts of steel out of the way, it was time to start drilling holes for the #10 dome screws.

Followed by countersinking.

Next, I drilled two more holes on each of the steel segments and countersunk them on the opposite side of the center hole, for the screws that will be used to help secure the segments to the dome. The plan is to use #10 1/2" wood screws, and glue.

And that's all I had time for today. Here are the six steel segments, loose-fitted.

Returning to the picture I previewed earlier, the two holes on the left and right will have the #10 1/2" wood screws in them, while the center hole is home to the #10 screws that will slip through the Rockler bearing holes, with the bearing secured to the frame, but absent the usual screws that face upward.

Mike is busy getting his WALL?E ready for Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in a couple of weeks, so I'm planning to pause on this effort until he's done with that. Next steps will be to use the Rockler bearing itself as a template for where each of the six steel segments should be secured to the dome. We'll get there eventually.

R2D2 Relays Deployed Navy Dad's Message to his Sons (Paul's R2 Blog)

Paul — Sun, 06 May 2012 05:18:00 +0100

Here is Sarah Smiley recording the boys watching the "hologram" message. A few moments prior, I had played the Princess Leia message. The boys loved it and asked if I had any others. I said yes and ...well...note the reaction (gasp) and camera sway!

Here's the video message R2-D2 played...

My co-worker and friend, Kiernan McMorrow, was able to take the video I received from Dustin Smiley and convert it into a "holographic" image. He did a FANTASTIC job!

R2LA Build Day - May 2012 (Victor's R2 Blog)

Victor Franco — Sun, 06 May 2012 03:10:00 +0100

Droid #2 was head over heels for today's R2LA Build Day.

Mike Senna hosted a build day at his house, and I had two things I wanted to work on.

First, I needed to route out some material in the base of the new R5-D4 dome I recently ordered and received. Second, I wanted to work on finishing up the drivetrains for droid #2 (hence the reason he was upside down; I needed to remove the feet and partially finished drivetrains to attach the motor mounts). The R5 dome's base needs routing to allow clearance for the Rockler bearing, upon which it will spin.

At least 20 builders and a few droids were in attendance. Marc Verdiell demonstrated his impressive droid, including the 2-3-2 transition.

In the meantime, my first order of business was to work on the R5 dome. Since none of us were sure if the base of the R5 dome was hollow, or what even it was made of, I took a "core sample" with a thin drill bit.

We're still not sure exactly what the base ring is made from, but it was solid, and possibly a resin or epoxy material. The key fact it is that it is flat, wide, and needs to be trimmed down so the Rockler bearing can fit inside the dome.

William Miyamoto worked out a way to use Mike's router to trim material from the base ring. In involved drilling three holes in a sheet of 3/4" plywood - one hole for the router bit, and the other two for a couple of segments of 1/2" diameter scrap steel rods that are used as stops. (William and I actually went shopping for a trim router, but Harbor Freight was out of stock on the cheapies, and I didn't feel like spending $140.00 at OSH.)

The stops are inserted like pegs into the 3/4" plywood. To make sure they don't lean or topple over, they are backed by some scrap wood that is clamped down.

Finally, the dome is put down, with the router bit hiding underneath. Initially the router bit is toward the middle of the inside of the dome, but as I slide the dome away from me and up against the posts, the router bit starts routing out material from the base ring as I spin the dome in place. The key is to locate the two steel posts in the proper location. The array of builders films and photographs my potential disaster.

So far, so good on the first pass. The router took out a small amount of material, which is good for the first pass

With a lot more help from William, I made five more passes with the router. We moved one of the steel stops back a little farther for each pass by drilling a new hole location for it, until the circle was routed large enough for the Rockler bearing to fit inside.

However, I'm not quite done. I need to go back to Mike's again tomorrow and repeat today's steps, with the router bit raised a little higher. This will allow vertical clearance for the Rockler bearing.

It turns out that if we raised the bit high enough for vertical clearance for the Rockler bearing on the first set of passes, bottom of the router bit cleared the bottom of the R5 dome's base, leaving a lip of material at the bottom. So another set of passes needs to be done with the router bit slightly higher, now that the bottom part of the base ring has been routed out. That should go a lot more quickly.

I never did have time to work on the drivetrain. Hopefully I can get to that in the not-too-distant future.

May the 4th be with us ?.always! (Thomas's R2 Blog)

Fri, 04 May 2012 23:09:30 +0100

I gotta first say that in all honesty when I got up this morning I thought this was going to just be a regular day. But then as I get to work people everywhere kept saying “Happy 4th of May”. Then it kind of sunk in that this wasn’t going to be a regular day. [...]