Bonnie Burton shot this video of my Artoo at WonderCon this morning. Enjoy.

Link to the original youtube video.

Here’s some photos and video from our first real day at WonderCon.

More photos here.

Related:

• WonderCon 2009
• Loaded and Ready for WonderCon
• More WonderCon 2008 Videos
• WonderCon 2008 Photo
• R2 Meets The Doctor
• Meet R2 Builders at WonderCon

WonderCon started today, and we’ll be there with our droids on Saturday and Sunday. Our panel is on Sunday at 1:30pm.

I’ve been busy the last few nights fixing some thing as well as streamlining how I’ll be carry my gear in. I was got caught short last year and had trouble hauling out my stuff at the end of the day. Unloading and loading has always been a pain at the Moscone and I wanted to be more self sufficient this year. Fingers crossed it’ll go smooth tomorrow.

Here’s the pack I rigged up some bungees on Artoo so he can carry a heavy pack with an extra set of batteries (2 x 18AH), tools, charger etc. The pack also rests on the battery boxes for extra support.

Related:

• WonderCon 2009
• Loaded and Ready for WonderCon
• More WonderCon 2008 Videos
• WonderCon 2008 Photo
• R2 Meets The Doctor
• Meet R2 Builders at WonderCon

Here’s some photos and video from this months gathering in Northern California.

From left to right: Gerard, Steve, Ryan, Chris, Marc, Grant and Matt.

Matt and Gerard

Ryan looking at my droid with the half finished Drinks Tray and Periscope

Matt’s droid on his custom cart showing off his new NPC drive system.

Droid Races

Marc explaining his new 2-3-2 setup

Matt’s dome

If you need Battery Boxes or Horseshoes ask Matt 🙂

I have more photos here in my gallery, and Mark Chu-Lin has a great set of photos on flickr here.

Big thanks to Mark for allowing me to some of his photos and video clips.

And an extra big thanks to Matt for organizing and hosting.

R2 makes a brief appearance half way thru.

[video link]

Related:

• BarBot 2010
• RoboGames 2009
• RoboGames 2008 Report

I made a start on my ROTJ drinks tray, it’s based on the A&A plastic kit.

I still need to add some detail, finish filling/sanding and apply the final gold paint, but it’s almost done. There was a lot of Bondo work to hide the layer lines on the glued parts.

We used it on Matt’s R2 at the BarBot event the other night. We had problems with glasses flying off while driving around, so I’ll may need to find some small glasses to bring along next time that will fit in the recesses.

I also made a start on a drinks dispenser, I was being overly ambitious trying to get something done for the event, but got a lot of the detail sketched out on how I’ll build it.

Plan right now is to use a sucker cup thing to hold it on the dome, instead of opening the top hatch, which would be hard for me to re-work and open on the current dome. I may make a fake hatch to attach somehow.

Another problem with the drinks dispenser is that on a 3 legged droid the whole dome tips back the assembly, compared to on the original that was on a 2 legged vertical R2. So some adjusting will be needed to get the setup to work w/o leaning too much into the drinks tray.

Related:

BarBot 2010 – DNA Lounge SF

Matt and I took his droid to BarBot 2010 at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco last night.

BarBot is a celebration of cocktail culture and man-machine interface. Get a drink from an actual robot. Chat up a snarky electronic bartender. Listen to some graceful tunes being played by robotic music makers. And, after downing your sixth martini, you can finally admit that it’s the geeks who shall inherit the earth.

The event is hosted by Dave Calkins and Simone Davalos, fellow R2 Builders and the organizers of RoboGames.

Here’s Matt with his R2 serving some drinks

Here’s some of the bar tending Robots, both big and small, and made from all sorts of creative things like Lego and even triple action breast pumps.

This one one of the more fun interactive bots where you had to arm wrestle for your drink

More photos here

Or on Youtube

See Also:

• California Museum : R2D2