I spent last Sunday afternoon at the MakeSF Meetup with Artoo, this month it was held at the TechShop in Menlo Park in the heart of Silicon Valley. It’s a relatively new group and a spin-off of the Make Faire.
From the MakeSF website:
Our Mission
Meet with local people to discuss and show-and-tell new technology.
The goals are to:
Meet other local Makers
Share ideas, skills, and local resources
Create collaborations between engineers, makers, craft folks, artists, etc.
Get projects ready for Maker Faire, Burning Man or other nearby events
Get opinions or advice on project execution
There were around 20 people in attendance, but only one person had brought something to share, so I was encourage to do an improtute presentation on building and Artoo.
The TechShop also gave us a tour of the impressive facility.
Last Thursday Steve and I where at a the Mini Maker Faire at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. There were probably close to 30 makers in attendance, ranging from robots and electronics projects to Steampunk musicians.
It was the last night of the show and the party was packed. We got to mingle with some cool people and show off Artoo and a bunch of parts and explain what goes into making your very own droid.
I’m in the computer industry so it was strange to be there as an outsider providing entertainment for the evening. It did allow me to make some obscure jokes about Intel chips that nobody would normally get.
This guy was upset because I didn’t have my transmitter in a bag to hide it from onlookers 🙂
We did a couple of interviews and TV spots, including this one with Wil Harris from ChannelFlip. I’ve been listening to him for years on Twit and it was fun to finally meet him.
Big thanks to the Make team for inviting us to this event – they really do know how to organize a great show.
I’ve had a busy couple of weeks getting Artoo ready for Clone Wars and attending 3 screening events. Started off with the pre-screening in San Francisco on Monday which was great, followed by the midnight opening on Thursday at the local Theater in San Bruno, then an all day event with the Rebel Legion and 501st down in San Jose for Saturday.
Thursday night was fun, but very quiet with not many people turning out for the midnight showing. Maybe 40 or 50 people tops. I guess the days of blockbusters are long gone 🙂
I did get to see the movie again, and enjoyed it just as much the second time around. The lip syncing still bugged the hell of of me though.
Saturday was a little busier, but not by much. The Rebel Legion were there in force and throughout the day one or two 501st members popped in and out.
The Rebel Legion did a great job organizing a raffle for each performance giving away t-shirts, figures and other prices to those in attendance.
To me, it’s clearly 3 TV episodes bolted together.
Considering it’s TV roots and budget the animation wasn’t bad – but not in the same league as Wall-E or even the much older Toy Story.
Somewhat weak plot – why they had to pick a Hutt story for the movie is beyond me.
The lip sync issue drove me nut.
Inconsistent style for the characters, e.g. Obi-Wan is blocky and jerky where as Asajj Ventress is almost life-like with smooth flowing animation.
What’s with the Ziro the Hutt speaking English?
Hated the new nicknames banded around, from “Stinky” to “Artoo-ee”. I guess little kids will love it.
Having said all that, I enjoyed it, really looking forward to the weekly TV show. Overall rating a B-.
Couple of technical highlights from the weekend:
When I switched to the Futaba, I replaced the original 600 mHa NiCad battery pack with a 2,100 mHa NiMH. Runtime went from just a few hours to over 11 hours. More than enough for a days outing.
Periscope worked great with a few minor problems.
With so many servos in the dome (8 at the last count), the little 7805 5VDC regulator IC on the power distribution board wasn’t up for the job (it can only deliver 1A at most). It would quickly overheat and shutdown stopping all servos in their tracks, so I had to quickly make a new beefed up power supply on Friday night.
The new CTEC keycoder worked out great. I can’t see how I used Artoo without it.
Posted by Chris on August 21st, 2008 in Events|Comments Off on Clone Wars Weekend
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.
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.
