Hello Everyone,
We just joined your community and love it - two of us are sharing the account - a seven year old boy and his Mom near Buffalo, New York. After attending a maker faire, Carl (the boy) asked if we could build a lifesize R2D2 that would move, spin his head, "talk", recognize him as in "hi Carl", follow him around and follow voice commands ("Stop R2").
I (Carol - mom) have been doing tons of research and am teaching Carl soldering by working on simple electronics projects. I joined astromech.com and began gathering all the information I could over the last four weeks.
I ran across EZ robot about a week ago and thought it looked like a great choice for our project! WE began looking at several of the projects on this site and are amazed! That's it for now - we will continue our research and early work and keep you posted on our R2 build.
The blank dome (R2's head) is on it's way and we are saving our money. Carol and Carl
Asked
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Chris
Alan
P.S. R2 D2 is a great project. A few guys on here are making some extremely cool R2D2's...
Robotics is a male dominated industry. I love to see women get involved with robotics. This is a very important dynamic as women do some things far better than men and this industry needs more women in it. The makeup of your mind is needed in this hobby/industry. Thank you for joining this community.
I also love seeing young people join the community. The potential that young people have to make huge impacts on this hobby/industry is untapped in my opinion. Their minds are very quick and sharp and not bound by the same limits that ours are. They are growing up in a very exciting time and what they will see accomplished and will be able to accomplish in this field is far beyond what we can imagine. Great job as a parent to help your child achieve their potential in this field.
We are here to help. If/when you get stumped on an issue, there are many people here willing to help. Thank you for choosing EZ-Robot and this community. I believe that you will be impressed with the technology and the ease of programming the robot to do amazing things. We all learn something new all the time from each other here. I look forward to watching your project and learning with you as you go.
Cheers, Dave
I started an r2 a few years ago. Ive been meaning to finish it - however it's not from scratch like yours. I cheated and used an old toy to modify with ezrobot parts. Soon as I can find some new desk space, I'll finish it !
@DJ Sures
I think modifying toys to make them what they should have been in the first place is a great idea. I followed with great interest your videos on modifying a Wall-E with EZ parts. I plan on doing the same at some point in the near future. Mostly, in the robots I plan on working with, I'm going for "cute." I like cute. Azumanga Dioh is my favorite anime series. My inspirations are mainly the robots Robi and Nao. There are several videos on Youtube of each. I plan to bring as much of the cute factor to JD as I can. As well as lively banter and lots of interaction. I wanted a Nao but don't have a spare $8,000 USD for it. Even the Robi is about $1100 or so and takes forever to assemble because you have to get it (by subscription) in parts over a period of 70 weeks! Not all that sturdy or expandable either. But it still makes a great role model for what I am planning. Now, if I can just duplicate the cute little anime character voice it has, but with speech synthesis.
I take it that phalanx of JDs in the picture are destined to be display models in the Brookstone stores?
You will find the folks here at EZ-Robot are great to work with and you'll find a lot of R2 information at astromech.net
Aaron
Aaron - your message to us on Astromech and particularly your build log increased our understanding of EZrobot and reinforced the impulse to try it out for our R2 build.
We joined Astromech the day we got home from the Maker faire and EZ robot last week. we have also joined the Buffalo Lab - a local makers group with a workspace and tools that hosts potlucks on Wednesdays and a circuitry "lesson" once a month (arduino) and also one on 3-d printing. www.buffalolab.org
We are enrolled in a basic circuitry course on Coursera and have been eagerly watching the EZ tutorials here. https://www.coursera.org/course/tinkering
We have completed two basic soldering courses and have some mini robots on the way from Makershed. http://www.makershed.com/
We can devote alot of time right now because it's summer break! (I am a college professor in theater/film scenic design)
We are tracking our dome up the coast from Florida and it should be here soon! I am taking into consideration all the paint options for the dome and considering what a 7 year old might accomplish successfully - currently I may have the possibility of having "stickers" made and cut into the blue shapes on R2's dome which isn't a purist solution but may be right for us for now - there is the option of removal in the future so I'm going to do a test and see.
Well, I could go on and on but I'll stop here. Happy building everybody! Carol and Carl
the joy of accomplishment - a circuit board that lights up and makes sound!
this was at buffalo lab - they later used lettuce and onions to do the same thing!
@Sean, Way to go in being an inspiration man!