Well I’m back working on R2. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything on him and I’ve still got a long list of big to-do’s. Sadly, instead of working on the small things I’ve been avoiding everything.

Inspired by reading Victors success with the Mist/Fire Extinguisher effect this week I decided I’d give it a go this weekend, hoping it would kick start me going back to work on more difficult things like the skins.

The mist is created by an inverted can of compress air normally used to dust PC’s and office equipment. When it’s inverted rather than spray air, a watery/icy mist comes out.

I decided to put the air cannister and output in the dome instead of the body. I really liked the idea of popping open a dome hatch/side panel and having something come out, and I thought this would be perfect.

I’d already bought a cheap solenoid which was part of a trunk release kit I found on eBay. I had looked locally, but eBay seemed to be cheaper. Wiring it in was a snap and it’s only a few wires. It’s triggered with a spare channel on my RF remote.

I cut a 1 1/2″ acrylic strip and bent it into an L shape. I bolted it to the Dome Mounting Ring and then used clamps to hold the cannister and solenoid to it.

I drilled a small hole in the trigger of the air cannister and connected it to the solenoid with a bend paper clip.

Here’s a rough diagram of how it’s wired

Space in the dome is tight and I’m sure I’ll need to move things around or lower/angle the cannister more to accommodate the periscope lift mech.

Here a short movie clip of the first test with the dome off

Then with the dome on

I still need to add a hinge to the hatch and power it with a servo. I did tinker a bit with the Robart hinges but decided to leave this for tomorrow.

While at RoboGames in San Franciso the other week I snagged myself a new t-shirts from the guys at Servo Magazine.

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.

Slow month, but here’s a summary anyway

• Dome Bumps / Switches
• C4 Photo and Video Round-up
• Couple of shots from C4
• Back from C4 – R2 Lives!

My dome has a self contained power system, and I wanted to use the dome bumps as switches. Rather than re-invest the wheel I decided to copy what Victor had already done as it looked like a great solution.

The switches are from Radio Shack, Part #275-693. The original surrounds on the switches are square’ish and need rounding.

Here’s the switches before and after sanding. I carefully spun them against a bench sander to remove the corners.

Here they are all painted and ready to install

There is a catch to painting them. You basically have to do it twice because once you flip the switch it exposes an area that the paint can’t reach on the first pass.

Next up I had to drill out the inner and outer dome for the switches, but the drill bit I had wasn’t quite big enough so I had to fill down the last bit to get a good fit.

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.