Rear Logic Soldering

I have begun soldering my own Rear Logics primarily to keep costs down, but its pretty hectic trying to emulate the 8 circuits on a project board.

Here is a pic of the first 5 rows soldered in place.













Here is a pic of whats going on on the reverse side.













The crossing and soldering of these wires to create the circuits has become a nightmare. Every row I complete leaves a greater mass of wires that end up covering leads where other wires need to be soldered.

When I started I was under no illusion about how difficult this could be, but I'm concerned that I will get done or half way done only to find that there was something else/better that I should have been doing. I really don't want to get to the end to find out that they don't work.

If anyone out there has any advice on how to do this better please let me know. I'm very interested in lessons learned by someone else who has been down this road.

*EDIT* Since the posting of this entry several people have given me help on sorting this mess out. I have since removed the wiring and started over. More to come in future posts. */EDIT*

Rear Logics

Now that WonderCon is behind us, its time to set new goals and press forward with new things.

Previously all the goals were set based giving XS basic functionality. Now I'm back to figuring out what I can accomplish that will show the most change with the least amount of money.

I decided to start by wiring my own logics using Leon's layouts on project boards, but not without a few snags.

I started by trying to match a project board up to my logis to see if everything would fit. After looking a this pic on Chris James blog: Rear Logic Electronics it was apparent to me that the board had to be twisted 45deg to fit. So I gave it a shot and my board came up 6mm too wide, leaving 2 LED's off of each row.

Maybe someone out there can help me out with this, but I don't know if the problem is with the hole spacing on my board or if the rear logic surround needs to be filed out 6mm. Do project boards come with different hole spacing? I sure don't want to file down Dave Shaw's fine work on the surrounds. Actually if it comes to that, then I'll just go with rows of 4x25 rather than being screen accurate.

WonderCon 2009

WonderCon this year was a blast! Friday afternoon Chris and I went to get our pro badges for the team and looked around the hall a bit. After we had seen everything we wanted to, we headed over to the 501st/Rebel Legion Dinner.

The dinner was well attended with people from LFL, especially staff of the Clone Wars series. Mary Franklin and Steve Sansweet were among the crew as well as Dave Filoni, Matt Wood and Daniel Logan.

On Saturday we showed up at 8:00 so that we could get the droids unloaded but were turned away at the curb. Chris and I unloaded across the street while Tiny (from AZ) and Gerard went to the parking garage and drove their droids over.

The morning went well entertaining the crowds. We were asked a few times to move further from the entrance because the flow of traffic stopped when they saw our droids.

Our Droid Building Basics panel with Don Bies was at 12:30 and went far better than I had imagined. The room was packed and a lot of people turned away because they couldn't even see in. The whole session was lively and had some great questions as well as some humor to keep us from geeking out too completely.














Bonnie Burton from StarWars Blog and Terri Hodges were around on Friday and Saturday enjoying the con and taking pictures. We spent some time talking and they gave the droids some love.














Of course XS was a hit with kids and adults alike, but I especially love pics like this one below.



Throughout the day there were quite a few interviews for the droids. The pic below was a crew from a Canadian TV station, but we were also featured on G4 TV and had numerous write ups, in the SF Chronicle, 1up.com and KPBS. There are even a few MySpace and YouTube Videos.

KBPS.org Article
Quick Quote in the Chronicle
1up.com Blog
MySpace Video
Edit: Official Star Wars Blog



Of course the day wouldn't have been the same without my Padawan (shown in the interview pic) and my Jawa who worked hard the week before the con to get their costumes together.

They added some nice atmosphere to the droids and with the help of XS won the LFL costume award at the masquerade.




On a technical note, XS did a 14 hour day on the Optima Battery without a recharge. He took two 20 min breaks to recharge the Zune which gave us an initial 7 hrs and I replaced the RC battery when it started complaining loudly at the 12 hour mark.

Special thanks for a great day go out to Chris James, Tiny, Gerard and Don Bies.

Now get ready for Maker Faire SF!

More Pics can be found on my FLickr Page as well as Chris James' and the Star Wars Blog's.

Last Test Drive

Today R2-XS was tested by taking a trip to 4th Grade Science Class. The kids loved him and he performed extremely well on the door jams and carpet in the school entry.

Afterward Chris and I did some last minute tuning. Chris took this video before he was loaded into the van for WonderCon.



Hopefully the next post will be about how awesome he performed at the convention.

Until then, I have work to do on my friend's Jawa costume, so that he can accompany us on Saturday.

Caster Cleaning

My other item for today's work was to degrease and clean the bearings in my casters and grease them up again. After the first day out they had been dragging and sticking.

I soaked the casters in an inch of Simple Green. After 20 min the tub had a layer of silt and chunks in the bottom. After drying everything off I put fresh grease back in and figured I was done.

Once I had everything assembled again I noticed that things didn't go back exactly the way they came out. My rear caster was now rubbing the sides in two spots. I had to take everything out again and deepen the cuts in the foot shell before calling the job done.

Thankfully XS is now turning smooth.

Optima Battery Mounting

Today I set out to mount the Optima Blue Top battery in XS. My current wiring is designed to use 2 batteries, one for the electronics and the other for the foot motors. The primary reason was that the AX3500 Speed Controller cuts the foot motors if the battery drops below 10V causing the droid to jitter across the floor. By having its own battery it never knows when the primary battery is low so things stay smooth.

Of course all of that changes when you go to one large battery. The Optima should give me 8hrs or so of drive time without getting the jitters. Either way there is no room to put another battery.

So my goal was to make my system able to handle both my 18ah batteries and the Optima with the least amount of work if switching on the fly.

First thing I did was remove the plugs I had installed on my other batteries and wired screwed them together with the post from the big battery. I also wrapped the joint in electrical tape to prevent any potential disasters.













Next I removed my battery harness and strapped the Optima in with cargo straps. I put the hooks around the spacers holding the skirt on and criss-crossed them over the battery.













Once that was done I was able to put the post connections back on and plug both systems into the battery at the same time. With that done XS was running smooth. The battery slowed him down a little but not too bad.













As for making it an easy transition to the other batteries, I think I failed. If I start a day with the Optima in place, I can transition to the other batteries, but it would take about 10 minutes of screwing in the battery harness and putting the terminal plugs back.

Recycled Bits

I thought it would be fun to catalog all of the random items that I have "recycled" from other places to create cheap or quick solutions for R2. Below is the current list of odd items.

Clear plastic, Washington Apples carton from CostCo, painted up becomes a nicely shaped Radar Eye. Unfortunately, if poked too hard its done for.













Milk jug cut and layered to make PSI lenses. Mike Velcheck's PSI's are so bright that I have 2 layers of milk jug hot glued together for one lense, and a third layer further up in the PVC tube.













I needed a quick, temporary fix for my lack of Logic LED's. These are a temporary WIP, made from Light Saber packaging. I have blue for the front.













My Zune dock need to connect to the amp via its Audio/Video cable, so I desoldered this one from a cable box.













The USB port, Headphone Jack and Speakers below were taken from an old PC, along with a number of connectors for various uses.









































Last but not least, I needed something to keep the slip ring wires from falling into the dome drive motor. A quick scan of the garage revealed a slip 'n slide that my daughter had recently destroyed. I took the liberty of relieving it of this tube, which has done the job well.