Star Wars Reads Day - October 11th 2014

Lots of folks waiting for the Museum of Flight to open for Star Wars reads day, October 11th 2014.  R2 is supposed to deliver the death star plans to seminars starting at 10:00am

R2 with friends from the 501st and Rebel Legion.  Just above their heads notice the nose gear doors of an SR-71 - a very nice backdrop!

Big crowds all day long.  The Museum hosted a very nice event.

 

 

R2 Hosted the awards ceremony in the main theater for the first annual Star Wars kids writing contest.  R2 is posing with one of the winners after the awards.

ECCC Day 3

Sunday was our NW Builders group panel at 11:00am.  We all met and then ran the droids en masse down to the room were the panel was going to be held.  A line of 6 R2 units running through the convention center created quite a stir (actually it was chaos) and they finally cleared a path to a loading elevator for the final trek.

The panel room was well set up by ECCC and had a nice audio and video board all ready to go.  We placed three R2's on each side.

The panel was packed, standing room only and unfortunately many people could not attend because we flat ran out of room.  Next year we hope for a larger space.  In the shot below you can see how full it was.  Also notice the computer screen in the bottom showing what was on the big screen up front.  Thanks to R2 buider Carol for running the show for us!

I also managed to get shots of all the R2's and their builders.  Left to right are Bob (me), Rob, Vincent, Cole, Todd & Chris.

ECCC Day 1

Friday morning Cole Horton and I arrived early to get things set up.  Before the show opened \a local TV station came by to shoot and evening magazine TV promo with Ray Park (Darth Maul).

We shot the promo with my R2 in the promo and Cole's red R2 providing the sound effects.  Ray was super nice and stayed for a few pic's with our droids.  The show is off to a great start!

Shorty after this and well before the show opened oCle & I took our R2's to the main floor.

Unfortunately just after I took this piture the crowd grew so large we had to return to out booth area because we were starting to clog the whole area!

Just after the show opened R2 & I went to visit Billy Dee Willaims and get an autograph.

I had finished the inside of my main rear door just for this and "Lando" was my first one of what I hope will be many!  Day one was a blast!!!  At the end of the day we had 4 beautiful Droids.  Left to right are Bob, Cole, Chris & Todd (at least their droids).

Museum of Flight

Every year I have the great pleasue of visiting the Seattle Museum of Flight on Presidents Day weekend.  Artoo and I get to hang out with the NW Scale Modelers who do a HUGE model show n the museum plus we get to do a stage presentation that is very popular!  This year Artoo and I got to do a photo shoot with the Museums Astronaut that is appearing in all the new commercials.

Shown above are the two of us inside the Space Shuttle Trainer.  This was the actual trainer used to train all shuttle astronaut's.  We are in the cargo bay - had to ride a special elevator to get in.  Really had fun with him and the museum photgrapher!

 

This view is looking forward to the cargo bay / crew compartment tunnel.  No chance of R2 getting in there!

 

 

Thanks again to the Museum of Flight!

American Library Association Convention

Interesting the things that come up for Artoo and I to do!  This one popped in at the last second from fellow builder Cole Horton.  A publisher needed R2 to appear in a stage presentation at the Seattle Convention Center- what a hoot this was!

The picture above was during the presentation with Tom Angleberger who wrote "The Strange Case of Origami Yoda".  Now I had never heard of this book, but if your about 10 years old I guess it is a huge best seller.

Tom was a great guy, loved working with Artoo and we had a blast onstage entertaining Librarians from all across the country.  He has a new book coming out soon, "Art2-D2's Guide to Folding & Doodling"

All in all we had a lot of fun seeing how Librarians fell for R2, getting our pictures taken and just plain messing about.  The Seattle Conventon Center staff & all the people from ALA were just great to work with.  We hope to return!

Left to right, Tom Angleberger, Artoo-Deetoo, Bob Jacobsen

Pacific NW R2 Builders Day

On October 27th several of the Northwest R2 Builders had an informal get together at Galaxy Hobby in Lynnwood.  Pictured above are (from left to right) Todd, Chris & Bob with their R2's

Another R2 builder Carol checking out Todd's R2 that is getting ready for motors and electronics.

Three R2's looking good.  Great thing about these events are sharing ideas and seeing better ways to do things.  I got a great idea from Todd's R2 that will help me with my arms (more later).  Also an excellent motivator to keep building or improving your droid!!

Star Wars Kinect Launch Party

R2 and I spent 4 days at Bellevue Square mall in the Microsoft store promoting the Star Wars Kinect launch.  What a wonderful time!  The store team was great to work with and the customers had a blast.  People just stopped dead in their tracks when they saw R2 and with the store staff talking with R2 and telling him where to go and what to do the effect was perfect!

R2 inspects the new xbox special edition.  Hmmmmm The paint job looks familiar...

R2 in the front of the Microsoft store.  This is a seriously beautiful place and R2 really liked the nice smooth and clean floors!

R2 inspecting the inventory. 

Thanks to the Microsoft Store and all the team members for having us!

Seattle Christian School

Seattle Christian school has a very new robotics program underway and we had the oportunity to go down for an assembly with the entire grade school to help promote it. 

 I had an operator so I got to interact with R2 as we talked about science, robotics and how I built R2

After the entire grade school was dismissed we got to meet with some of the robotics students for a more close up look at R2, was a very bright group of kids with great questions.

You have to love a principal who carries a lightsaber!!

Kinect All Access Video

The Microsoft Kinect All Access Episode 2 with my R2 is up on You Tube.

 

You can find it Here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ4wypo3vUU

R2-D2 Guest Hosts XBox Live Kinect All Access

Wow, R2 and I had a great time as R2 was the guest host of XBox live Kinect All Access.  We traveled to Microsoft Studios for the filming.  Arriving early because of touchy weather (it was snowing) R2 hung out in the building lobby for a few hours greeting many wonderful Microsoft folks.  It was a great time and lots of fun.  We then got down to work on filming.

Kate Yeager Kinect All Access Host

Nic Fillingham Kinect All Access Host

Kate & Nic were very nice to R2 and we all had a lot of fun working in front of the camera.  R2 behaved himself very well and is definately not camera shy!!

Scott Elnes - Producer & Writer

R2 with C3PO at PAX Prime 2011

This was a chance of a lifetime as R2 got to finally work with his counterpart C3PO at PAX Prime 2011.  Microsoft wanted R2 and C3PO to help promote Star Wars for Kinect that comes out in 2012.  PAX is the premier game convention in the country with about 60,000 attendees.  Before actually going to the convention we traveled to Microsoft to meet with some of the game developers and their families.

Meeting Developers and their families

Lots of children came to greet us - FUN!!

After spending time at Microsoft we then went to PAX at the Seattle Convention Center.  C3PO and R2 were total rock stars!!  Everywhere we went people went crazy and 3 security guards traveled with us. 

Photo op with  fans

Taking a break on the skybridge with C3PO

There was action everywhere!!  We even took a minute to try out Dance Central!! Check us out on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FieM-3Tdhxo

R2-D2 & Bob

And here is how it all comes together!!  Lots of little final details are done and now R2 is running and looking good.  I have many features I will be adding as I go including the utility arms, periscope, launching lightsaber, gripper arm etc. but for now its just nice to be looking finished and running well.

Utility Arms

Another job in the seemingling edless stream of "small" things to do to get R2 looking good are the utility arms.  I plan on having these operational (at a later date) but for now will be happy just to get them painted and hung.  I had some aluminum arms I got a long time ago so I drilled and tapped a hole in the backside for a threaded stud then mounted a model airplave cantrol arm to it.  This will give me a place to attach my servo linkage.

This shot is of the full arms with "fingers" attached.

 

Coin Returns

One of the projects I needed to do to get R2 looking good was to make the coin returns.  I took some scraps left over from all the panels I punched out of the skins and made 3 pieces with the correct dimensions.  I then took a "nibbler" tool I got at Harbor freight and punched out the square hole.  I was worried but the nibbler worked great!

Below are the 3 panels - one with the hole cutout.  I just cleaned up the hole with a file.

I got some very thinn sheet aluminum at the hobby store and cut out the back parts using a pair of scissors.  I bent these to shape and glued them together with good old JB Weld.

Here is the installed parts after wet sanding and then finishing with a scotchbrite pad.

Holoprojectors

Spent most of the day soldering in the wiring for the Holoprojectors and then cleaning up some of the wiring on my electrical panels.  While not the final version of the wiring I have planned, it looks better for the time being and will be more durable as I go forward.

This is the inside of the main electrcal panel in the open position.  I tied the wiring down by drilling two small holes side by side into the ABS then loopng a small black cable tie around them,  It almost disapears into the panel and is easy to remove and re-tie if I add additional wiring.

This view shows the main panel in the closed position.  I still need to come up with a good method to secure the rear door...

The completed dome with all the lights on.  In the future I plan to add more features and hopefully a video projector in the front Holoprojector but for now this looks pretty darn good.

R2 Speaks

Along with getting the Holoprojectors and a few other detail parts finished up one of the other main projects was to get the sound working.  I found a nice small motorcycle amp on eBay and mounted it to a plastic panel on the inside left leg.  I bought a few cheap speakers and tried them but the sound was horrible.  On a hunch I dug around in my garage and found some old stereo speakers that I took apart.  These yeilded two PERFECT speakers that fit perfectly and sound fantastic.  I copied a few extra sound files off my Star Wars music CDs onto a thumb drive and wow!!

This shows the speakers installed on a plate that will be directly begind the front grills.

Also I finished up the Holoprojectors and installed them with a bit of JB Weld.  I still have to hook up the wiring but they look nice and the Dome now has a finished look.

This is an overall shot of what R2 looks like so far without the skins.  In order to get him to a ready to show state I need to wire up the Holoprojectors, add the Power Couplers and manufacture and install the coin returns.  Although the wiring works it's temporary so I need to do a bunch of wiring work soon.