The LED's Strike Back

Feeling confident in my abilities having completed the Front Logic Displays I decided it was time to complete the Rear Logic Displays having recieved the brighter LED's in the mail.

Along with the brighter bulbs Paul included a toggle switch with the upgrade kit. The purpose of the toggle switch was that in the past when you connected the 9 volt battery to the Pololu regulator if you tried to "jump" a wire to connect a board the Ardunio chip would short out. The toggle switch allows for you to leave the battery connected and just flip the switch on and off like your light switch.

I started by cutting into the 9 volt lead wire and soldering on the toggle switch. Easy enough. This build is going to be a breeze......

Feeling confident, if not just plain cocky, I began placing the LED's into their correct slots. Just like the FLD's there is a lighting schematic I used to be sure that I installed the correct color bulb into the correct slot.

As you can see from the schematic the RLD is comprised of a combination of Red, Yellow and Green LED bulbs.

Just Like the FLD's I started by breaking out my Helping Hands from Radio Shack and securing the RLD board. I flipped my newly installed toggle switch to the "on" position and stared installing all of the Red LED's. I like to install them with the power on as it allows me to be sure that I am installing the right color as well as to make certain that I am not installing the bulbs backwards. If installed backwards the bulb will stay in the lit position and will not be able to flicker "on" and "off" as they are programmed by the Ardunio to do.

After having all of the Red LED's installed in the right slots I placed the CNC cut bezel included in the kit over the bulbs to hold them tight in place and used blue painters tape to hold it in place. I then flipped the board over and began to trim down the terminal leads from the bulbs so I could solder them in place.

I will apologize now as this is where the pictures stopped and the frustration began. I soldered all of the leads and then repeated all of the steps with the Yellow and Green LED's. Each time sticking out my chest and telling myself how easy this is. Then I turned them all on to see my finished product.

At first it was not too bad. Only 5-6 lights were not working. I powered down and trimmed the leads shorter as if the leads for the LED bulbs contact one another it causes a short and the bulbs touching will not light. After trimming down the leads even shorter and finding where leads were in fact touching and fixing that I powered back up even cockier now that I troubleshot the problem so I am therefore multi talented in the field of soldering electronics. Now even more bulbs were not working. Hence the title of this blog.... The LED's Strike Back.

At this point I feel smaller than Mini-Me. I am cussing and frustrated. When you are in this state it is best to take a break and collect your thoughts. Me, I went back to tinkering with it. Two more attempts and even more lights not working I gave up. After speaking to someone with more soldering experience I went back and checked my solder points. In several places the solder was touching in multiple areas. When this happens it is the same as leads touching one another and results in a short. Now having a clue I de-soldered those areas with de-solder braid and a de-solder pump then re-did them. All but a few bulbs did not work. I decided that I could live with that.

Onto the PSI's (Process State Indicators). **Disclaimer**: This is where I cheated. The PCB boards I recieved were not correct for the LED's. Paul, who made the kit, told me to send it back. I packed up everything so he could test the boards and he was kind enough to just assemble the two PSI's for me. He even fixed the few lights on the RLD that were not working.

In the end the dome lights are done and they all work perfect. My faith in my soldering skills is another story.







Let There Be Light........I Hope

*Disclaimer* I am an idiot when it comes to circuit boards and such so for anyone about to read on please forgive me if I call or spell something incorrectly.

Dome lights. I have been dreading this part of the build. I have no background when it comes to wiring and circuit boards. I never hooked up a car stereo. Actually, I did, once. Just not correctly. It resulted in a very nice electrical fire while driving down the road. Needless to say I was not anxious to start this portion of the build.

The dome lights make up all of the lights in R2's head. There are two Process State Indicators (PSI's) and the front and rear Logic Displays (FLD & RLD). As I am also a slow typer I will be referring to them moving forward as they are abbreviated.

Once again the great group of builders at astromech.net came through. A run of dome light kits were offered and I jumped on board. Having recieved the kit I was a little nervous as it included the circuit boards, LED bulbs, sockets, pin headers, microchips, cables and etc needed to build the PSI's and Logic Displays. I purchased a soldering iron and a "Helping Hand" from Radio Shack. My brother in law walked me through the basics of soldering and after watching the tutorial for the kit a dozen times I felt ready to get started. I began by taking the circuit board for the RLD and soldering on the sockets. I would put them where they needed to go and then use blue painters tape to hold it in place so I could turn it over and solder the leads. The picture below is of the RLD with the sockets soldered in place. As soldering involves a very hot soldering iron I did this portion of the build without the boys as I did not want to risk them getting injured.



The above picture shows the RLD circuit board turned over so that my solder points are visible.

The next step was to take pin headers (in this case a double row of 5-pin headers) and solder them to the board to allow a place for the cables to attach. Likewise I soldered the small green screw terminal to the board. As you can see in the picture below the pin headers have to be cut to the pin count that you need.

The idea behind all of this is that once built, not only will the lights work but they will flash in a random pattern to simulate R2 having thought processes. In order to do this an Ardunio mini processor was installed. I began by soldering the socket that would hold the Ardunio chip and then installed the chip as pictured below. I also soldered on the three transistors.

The next step was power. I used a Pololu 5volt regulator. Basically the Pololu takes a 9volt batery charge and converts it down to 5 volts which is all that will be needed to power the lights. I started by soldering another 2-screw terminal to the 9volt end of the Pololu and a double row of 4-pin pin headers to the 5volt end. 

Next I attached a 9volt battery terminal lead (purchased from Radio Shack) to the 2-screw terminal.

The next step was to use a 2-pin cable and connect the Pololu regulator to the RLD board and connect a 9volt battery and see if the light on the Ardunio came on. It didn't. I cussed and yelled and found that the problem was the lead on the positive end of the 9volt terminal wire had been cut off when I tightened the screw terminal so after stripping the wire and re-connecting it the light came on.

The next step at this point should have been to install the LED bulbs for the RLD however, an upgrade kit with brighter bulbs became available as several builders thought the RLD's could have been brighter so I am still waiting for those to arrive. Instead, I began assembling the FLD's. Below is a FLD board prior to any work.

Once again I started by soldering the sockets to the boards.

Using the tape to hold each component in place I soldered on the socket followed by a double row 5-pin pin header and then the transistors. R2 has two FLD's so I had to do this to two boards.

With the help of my "Helping Hands" from Radio Shack I was able to get all of the main components soldered.

(FLD with Pin Headsers and Sockets Soldered)

Now came the scary part....the LED's.

For every little hole you see in the above picture an LED bulb has to be installed. This seems like no big deal until you try to solder all of the leads and have little to no area to work with. The solution...install every other bulb, trim the soldered lead, then go back and do the next set. The lights are blue and white LED's and I used the following pattern that I found on the astromech site for bulb placement.

Did I mention the bulbs are small?

Luckily for me my brother in law stopped by to see how I was doing and leant a hand. Once they were done I used the custom bezels included in the kit and attached them to the aluminum logic displays I showed in a previous post to have the following:

And now the finished product.........

I still have the RLD LED's to install which will be a combination of Green, Yellow and Red LED's and the two PSI's. As soon as I recieve the upgrade kit I will get back to soldering. Stay tuned...more dome lighting to come. Oh yeah, I managed to burn the crap outta myself with the soldering iron.

Grilling & Sanding. A Sunday Must.

I awoke Sunday to a beautiful day outside. Slightly overcast with a high in the mid 70's. We have family in town and had already planned for me to cook a brisket. For anyone out there unfamiliar with cooking a brisket in Texas you use a grill/smoker. An oven cooked brisket is a sin. Average rule of thumb is the brisket needs to cook for at least one hour per pound so an 8lb. brisket needs a minimum of 8 hours.

I knew I would therefore be outside for the majority of the day so out came R2 and all of the different grits of sandpaper that we still had left to use.

As always, we started with the lowest grit. Last time we used the 5 sheets of 240 so this time we started with 400. Once again we used wet/dry paper and dipped it in moms mop bucket. Below is the dome having used up all 5 sheets of 400 grit.

As you can see it is still pretty rough. We next broke out the 600 grit. 600 still has a little coarseness to it but nothing like the 240 and 400 and after we burned through all of the sheets I was starting to get a little concerned that I should have left the dome as is and never started sanding it.

Moving along it was on to the 800 grit. At this point the coarseness is almost nonexistent. We continued to dip the paper in water and work the dome over and over taking the occasional break to rinse the dome off for a clean start. Below is the dome after the 800 grit.

Do you notice much of a change? I still was not seeing it.

We started fresh with 1000 grit. At this point the 1000 grit is more of a finishing sand paper used generally on automotive applications. We were very liberal (not a term often used to describe my household) with the water and sanded till the paper fell apart.

We finally finished out with the 2000 grit. More of wetting the paper and working the dome. The 2000 grit was the highest grit sandpaper I was able to find and it was as smooth as a regular piece of paper to start with. We sanded until we were convinced that there was nothing more to sand and then took the dome inside and set it in the bath tub where we cleaned it with moms dish sponge (nevr thought that would fly) and a little dab of dish soap. We then set it in the sun to dry. Behold....the sanded dome.

We still have alot to do. The next step is to sit the outside dome (pictured above) over the inside dome and trace out the pie panels, holoprojector holes and doors so I can begin cutting them out. Luckily I recieved a Dremel 4000 last May for my birthday so it will be getting put to the test soon. After cutting out the interior dome pieces we will install the hinges for the doors and any mounts for the hp's as well as the logic displays and then I think (emphasis on think) we will be ready to bond the two domes together. After all of that is done we will polish the dome with Mothers Aluminum Polish and should get that mirrored shine that the boys wanted. 

More to come. Almost forgot....the brisket was good



How Will All This Work?????

That's a great question and even I am not sure of all of that yet. We are taking one section of Artoo at a time starting with the head aka the dome. The 3 main parts of an R2D2 build are the dome, body and legs. After that you have lights, sounds and so forth and so on. As I said in our original post the dome is where we chose to start as you can take one look at it (and people have) and immediately recognize it as Artoo.

All of that being said I thought I would post a dome design another builder did to illustrate how the dome will be laid out. Once again this is a design that another builder, Sirg70 to be exact, was kind enough to share with all of the builders so that we could better manage where pie panels housed gadgets such as the periscope. To see the constructed periscope feel free to check the previous post.

As you can see by the key in the top left of the picture, the green parts are Jag hinges that will sit inside the dome allowing the individual pie panels to be controlled by servos to open and close via a remote. You can also see where the logic displays, dome bumps and holoprojectors I have posted previously will mount which will also be servo driven. We are still waiting for a builder/fabricator to do a run of aluminum radar eyes as well as the life form scanner. Once we have those items we will have all of the major components for the dome. The lightsaber that ejects from R2 on the sail barge in Episode 6: Return of the Jedi is supposed to be coming out by one of Jags runs this winter along with mechanical riser sets that can be used to raise and lower the periscope and lifeform scanner through the dome.

Once again I would like to thank Sirg70 for the great illustration of the dome and remind anyone interested in building an R2 or other astromech droid to visit the astromech site for information. While you can purchase items through runs they still require assembly. This is not something where you buy an item and "snap" it into place and the build can take years to complete.

More to come in the near future.

Who needs Yahtzee? Family Fun Night Is Building A Periscope

Over the weekend we recieved a nice suprise. The aluminum periscope Artoo uses in Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back arrived in the mail. This is a really cool piece and Mike Wheeler did an incredible job with the detail on it. The kit consisted of the following components:

The parts consist of the periscope itself, three lenses, black plastic O-rings, the aluminum riser base, the different shaft assemblies and finally all of the hardware (screws).

The boys and I started by assembling the riser shafts and inserting the rubber insert pieces and O-rings.

Having assembled the riser shaft pieces we then began attaching them to the periscope.

The periscope itself has tapped holes that are countersunk to run a screw through in order to attach the riser shafts as seen in the picture below:

We took our time attaching each riser piece by piece so that we could keep it straight. The boys would take turns tightening the screw while the other held the riser shaft in place.

We continued this process with all three of the riser shafts until we had them all securely attached to the periscope.



Finally we had only the base left to attach. The boys had the hang of it by then so they knocked it out with very little effort. The base is also pre-drilled and countersuck to allow easy attachment of the riser shafts. The center hole allows for us to run a wire through the base and into the periscope so we can add the lights in the periscope at a later date.

After only 15 minutes we had the periscope assembled.

This is an up close picture of it fully assembled.

The base will allow us to insert a pipe so that once installed in the dome and with the assistance of a riser mechanism we will be able to raise and lower it through the top of the dome. We will also have the ability to rotate it up to 360 degrees once it has cleared the dome. One of the pie panels from the top of Artoo's head that is currently in the sanding stage will be JB Welded to the top of the periscope and as mentioned before we will eventually wire up lights as well inside the periscope itself. We will also need to prime and paint it to make it screen accurate.

Now time to get back to sanding. We still have 4-5 differnt gritts of sandpaper to use on the dome and we also recieved all of our LED bulbs, bezels, circuit boards etc. so will be starting to solder the circuit boards for all of the main dome lights in the coming weeks as well. Between scouts and T-ball time is much more limited but we will continue to post our progress as we go.



Star Wars meets Karate Kid...Sand On Sand Off

We had a major event happen in Houston.....RAIN!!!!!

I had almost forgotten what it was and while we only recieved 2 inches which by far does not get us out of the drought we recieved something else nice. Are you ready for this? 65 degree Saturday afternoon.

My son and I headed for Tball practice and as soon as we stepped outside he said "Dad, it's not hot so can we sand Artoo?" Talk about making the ole man proud. After practice we headed home and began getting everything ready. Sanding is a long process as it requires using several diferent gritts to get to your finished look. The aluminum dome in and of itself is a thing of beauty and depending on how you want your R2 to look will determine how much sanding you want to do. Some people like it as is with the subtle spin lines. I put it to a vote with the boys and they wanted the high polished look that you would see in the movies such as the award ceremony after the battle of Yavin in episode 4.

A trip a few months back to an auto store scored me the different gritts pictured here:

I purchased a total of 6 different gritts. The lower the # the coarser it is so we have a pack of 10 sheets each of 220,400,600,800,1000 and 2000 gritt sand paper. They are all wet/dry sheets.

We began by setting down a towel in the drive so the domes would sit on something to offer them protection and we filled up a mop bucket with water to dip the sand paper in. I also had the hose close by as after a while you need to spray the dome down to clean it.

My oldest boy worked on the inside dome and I sanded on the outter dome.

After a while even mom got involved

Once mom joined the party my youngest was all in and it became a family sanding party.

At least that is until the neighbor's boys came out with their lightsabers and then I was abandoned as my boys ran inside to get their lightsabers and while the moms talked and the boys dueled a grown man set in the driveway all alone sanding an R2 dome.

After a total of about two hours and all of the 220 gritt gone I rinsed the inner and outer domes off and wiped them down and set them in the sun to see how they looked.

I am torn at the moment as a part of me wanted to jump in the truck and go get another pack of 220 to keep sanding. The other side of me knows that this is the roughest that it will look as the sand paper I used was very coarse and to move next to the 400 gritt. By the time I get to the 2000 gritt it should be smooth. Guess I'll sleep on it for now but I am hoping tomorrow will be another nice day for sanding.