Return of the Garrison!

This weekend, the National Space Center held a convention to celebrate the 30 year anniversary of Return of the Jedi!

Unfortunately, there was only 2 working droids that were able to attend this year.  But fingers crossed that timings work out better next year!

A big draw for the crowds (besides us of course ;) ) was the reunion of Ewoks!!  The actors, Brian Wheeler, Alan Bennett, Sarah Bennett, Katy Purvis, Kiran Shah, Danny Blackner and Peter Burroughs were all there, as well as the man whose reputation is bigger than an Exogorths stomach, Warwick Davis!

This is the second time I've met Warwick, and I can honestly say, I've gone from being a fan of his work to a fan of him.  He is one of the hardest working and dedicated people I've ever met, and so down to earth and willing to talk to fans.  He accosted us for about half an hour after the show just to ask us about out droids!  He was a big fan of them!  I thought he was going to ask us for autographs ;) But he was happy enough with us allowing him to take a few photos with them.  So we of course got some too ;)

The UK R2 builders were asked to give a talk, and we were happy to oblige!

We kept it to who we are, what an astromech is and the basics of building one and where to find out more information, but we we got a lot of good feedback for it and hope to be asked again!

I was lucky enough to bump into Peter Brebner again  (happy birthday dude!).  He's a costumer in the UK with a great Threepio costume, so we were able to set up some photo ops for everyone that went down a treat :)  Again, we couldn't resist a nice photo with our droids and us too ;)

We would like to give out a big THANK YOU! to all of the UK Garrison - you guys are all great and have a wonderful community.  Also to Malika at the NSC for organising the event and make us so welcome, and to all of the actors that we met during the weekend.  It was great to meet you all, drink with a few of you, and share your stories.  

We can't wait for next time! 

This dome is now armed and fully operational!

R2-B4! :D

Nice little video showing off what he can now do with his dome panels.  Subscribe for more updates ;)

http://youtu.be/vGVKMmGJXck

Have just realised I only control sets of servos in this video, either via scripts or all top, or all bottom.  I also have control over each individual panel too :)

So here's a few pics!

I'm using an Arduino Uno and an Adafruit to control these with

[URL="https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5B8A65frsBgZDJaSlFYSW1CR0U&usp=sharing"]the BHD code[/URL].

The servos are cheap ones from ebay - Tower Pro SG90 :)


The servos are being powered through the slip ring.  The Adafruit has 2 power supplies that need to be used.  One for the controller, and one to power the servos themselves.  I'm powering the controller from the Uno +5v and ground pins, and the servos (via the Adafruits screw terminals) from the main battery, through the slip ring, into a pololu 5v converter.  Lots of wires :D

Arduino Uno on the right (which I'm sure you're all familiar with by now), controls the 3 HP LED's, and the dome servos.

On the left we have the Adafruit.  This is controlled by the UNO via I2C.  The first 3 servo spots on the Adafruit are for the HP's which I don;t have controlled yet (only one movable resin one at the moment).  I'm using the BHD code, so instead of altering it all around, I just set it up like this.

Like an idiot, I managed to drill the holes the the lower door hinges over size, so I had to alter the clevises to take an M3 bolt.  Don't do this :)  It's a headache.  In this picture you can still see the pen mark where I aligned the hinges where I wanted them.

The large rear door is quite heavy, even in styrene!  I found it was best to use a point closer to the servo itself to attach the servo rod to.  In hindsight, I should have done the same for all of the hinges.  Larger range of travel on the servo, plus more power!

I'll update the blog properly as soon as I can :) Just wanted to share this now it's all running!

Quick dome update, plus my secret...

Hello again everyone!

Not a huge amount of progress at the moment, so just a quick update

I've been adding hinges and servos to the lower doors on the dome :) No servos in yet, but should be soon.

I did make a video for you all though :p

I promised I'd give you an update on the secret thing in R2 I had planned for CE2.  Unfortunately CE2 was very loud so I didn't get to show it off very much :(  So here you go!

I'll get this track uploaded for you all to use :D

Did you hear that?

Nope, me either.

Mein MP3 shielden ist gestorben.  (Practicing for CE2 here)

Rough translation, my MP3 shield has done a Death Star on me.  Blown up before the big event.

I have several thoughts as to what could have caused this

1.  I'm powering the Arduino through the barrel connection on 12v.  The arduino should be able to run fine like this, but perhaps there is more current being output into the shield than there should be.

2. The Ground Loop Isolator I'm using is a hunk of junk.  The connections on the PCB inside were touching the casing (which is conductive) so it was essentially doing nothing but adding a bit of weight to R2.

3. I'm rubbish.

4. I'm brilliant, but my wiring is rubbish.


1 and 2 sound like I know what I'm talking about, which leads me to believe it's likely reason 3 or 4.

But either way, I've ordered a new MP3 Shield, a decent GLI and a 5V battery pack :)

So now I plan to run all the arduinos off of 5V's.  This should be a safer current (even though they have built in regulators) and be more power efficient.  It's also adding another layer of safety.  These batteries should out last the drive battery.  Similar to RC cars having a separate battery for the receiver so that they don't lose control.  (Cheers again Brad for the heads up on this :) )

I'm a little nervous about re-wiring so close to CE2!  I've got a week to screw it up and then try and fix it.  It's going to be tighter than Uncle Owens pocket money allowance!