This has got to be one of the cutes R2 photos I’ve seen.

Not sure if this an open secret, but while talking with Mike’s wife Amy last night at dinner, she said that she’s been keeping a blog documenting Mike’s various R2 Events and appearances. This was news to me, and it maybe to you too. Check it out

Senna’s R2D2 Event Blog

I was fortunate to be invite to return to Rancho Obi-Wan as part of the R2 Builders Group – Big thank you to Kevin and Michael for pulling this together 🙂

This was my second trip to Steve’s, and a lot has changed since my first visit in 2004.

We also had dinner with Don Bies that night, and I brought R2 along just in case. He was quite the hit at the restaurant. Don even got in on the act and decided to take him for a spin.

Here’s a few photos from the visit to Steve’s and there’s more in the gallery.

R2 Builders Group Shot

Steve with the George Lucas bag pupped used on the Celebration 4 opening ceremony ‘live satellite’ video

New Cantina Band Setup added since my last visit

Actual Robot Chicken Emperor Figure

I’m pretty sure this is the barn used in the R2 Beneath the Dome DVD. It’s located in the property adjacent to Ranch Obi-Wan.

Leading up to C4 I did a lot of building and I didn’t have time to record things here. I’m hoping in the next few weeks to play catch up and post pictures along with decisions and mistakes that were made. Stay tuned.

Here’s a list of photo albums from various builders at C4 – Updated 7/12/07

Chris James
Oliver Steeples
Victor Franco
Tim Goldenburg
Jeff Barnes
PixelFiend
William Miyamoto
Andy Schwartz
Jerry Greene
Jesper Laursen
ATM/ShackMan
Ray Sanders
Vincent Sanchez

Official SW Blog R2 Builders Flickr Pool
SW Action News Flickr C4 Pool (not an R2 Builders gallery but lots of great droid photos)

Video –

Official SW Blog – Astromechs in Action
Droid Races (Spike TV)
Droid Races
Droid Parade (Phil Wise)
Droid Parade 2 (Darth Will)
Chip Luck on CBS
Droid Races Crash
My Lost C4 Interview

I’m back from C4 and R2 performed really well.

I was able to finish the basic structure, the dome, the electronics and he was fully RC’d and running around most all of the days at the con. As you can see I also fixed the dome and got most of the blue painting done. Battery life was excellent and the Roboteq AX3500 speed controller / NPC-2212 combo worked out great. I was in both races and the little guy far exceeded my expectations of what I thought I’d be able to do at C4.

This is me driving back to the hotel on the last evening ready for transport back to the Bay Area – Yes I drove him home 1/2 mile to the hotel without incident.

I still need to sort through my photos and upload them and post a full write-up, but wanted to post something other than having my dented dome as the top post in the blog 🙂

I also intend on going back and catch up with blog posts on all the building I did before I left.

Big milestone today. I received my last major part, an aluminum skirt from a fellow builder who offered to help me out for C4 – Thanks Allen 🙂

I still have a long way to go, and I’m sure there will be more countless trips to the hardware store to buy bits and I’ll most likely be upgrading some components along the way.

A few weeks ago I ordered some 3000mcd LEDs from ebay for the holo projectors. I thought I was getting regular round LEDs but what showed up was these.

At first I thought I’d have to go buy a round set, but then I had the idea that I could simply solder them in a 2×2 square and hot glue them to a piece of plastic for easy mounting.

I then mounted them at a 90 degree angle on the rear cap of the holo projector, so as not to face directly forward and cause hot spots.

All I had to do then was screw it into the holo projector