I’ve come to the conclusion that external dome bump switches are a bad idea, for events at least.

I like the convenience of being able to quickly turn off the dome lights to save the battery, but kids quickly work out what they do and are constantly playing with them. They can’t do much damage but i’s very annoying, and I’m leaning toward replacing them with an internal switch even though it’ll be a pain to get at. I’m not sure if I’d leave the dead switches in place or replace them with simple bumps.

If you’re about to go down this route I’d personally recommend against having external switches of any kind.

The weekend before Halloween Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos threw a two day Halloween bash, and of course I had to take R2 along for a spin.

They had a lot of children activities and of course encouraged everyone to show up in costume.

R2 was a big hit with children young and old and I had a blast running him around. For part of the afternoon I hid myself up on a balcony overlooking the main atrium and most of the children and adults alike though that he was autonomous. I a little trouble from some over excited children, but security stepped in to keep everyone in check.

The cutes thing of the day was probably the little “pepe la peu” guy running around, he was fearless and kept on sprinting toward R2. His mother though that R2 was autonomous and was worried the robot would run her child over 🙂

I probably hadn’t been to Hiller since the Pod Racer Exhibit back in 2001 and my first trooping event, but I’m hoping to go back soon.

A big thank you to the museum staff for making me feel so welcome, and to Jeff the museum Director for taking and sharing photos that are so hard to take when running R2.

[More photos]