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I wil be loading larger and not sideways photos soon.... *stress*
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Hello everyone
so i have begun building my full size astromech droid! I know that this project is going to take a long time but I feel it will be worth it in the end. My droid will be built from styrene and 3d printed parts. The dome is actually a security mirror but requires a 2" riser made from a floral craft ring and styrene cover. 
I wil be loading larger and not sideways photos soon.... *stress*
By robot56
— Last update
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I have found acquiring a dome to be the hardest and most expensive part.
Obtaining a dome is by far the single hardest part. An astromech's dome is actually an ellipctical/egg cross section and makes it impossible to go out and buy something accurate (unless its made in a club members parts run). I told myself however that I am going to do this astromech my own way and if there were small differences like the dome being a raised hemisphere that it wouldnt be the end of the world. i nabbed the dome for free from work because they were going to throw it away... its a hemisphere unfortunately but the price sure makes up for it lol in time when there is a run of domes available i will pick up a couple.
There is actually a gathering at the end of september for all of the astromech builders in southern California. My hope is to get the dome automated and rotating around with camera tracking and sounds by that time. Im sure some of them have never seen Ez-robot! many are just completely remote controlled and are essentially a giant rc car... There are plans for mine to be fully autonomous but that wont be for a while
The dome is all painted up
The appropriate dome for these droids are actually ellipses (more egg shaped) where mine is a hemisphere... Domes are hard to come by though so this was my next best option.
This is the light that transitions from blue to red in the front of the droid. The LED's were originally clear but I did not like how you could see the individual LED's behind the fogged cover. I used a krylon matte finish paint and fogged the led's until i got the desired effect i was looking for
Also here is a video of 2 out of the 4 logic displays that will be mounted in the dome of my droid
I had a little bit of time today and decided to mount the PSI light bezel and the 3rd logic display
PSI's are all mounted and am now finishing up the last Logic display. next on the list is motorizing the dome and attaching it to the frame
I have completed and taped up the shoulders as well as mount the rockler to the frame Still need to figure out a good way to mount the main dome to the riser though... I would like to be able to take it apart so I cannot simply glue it in place as I originally planned to do!
R7 is looking quite comfortable in the corner of my room as I am now working on finishing up the legs and ankles. soon he'll be sort of standing lol
Aaron
The legs are bolted into place but do not have the skins glued down yet
I cant decide if my next robot build will be an R2 or Robby the Robot. After watching your build I'm getting excited about doing an R2.
They look amazing.. better than I could have done by hand! I still need to cut out all the panels so that the skins have depth but I was too excited and tied them up to the frame so that way R7 didnt feel so naked haha
It's starting to look like an Astromech
@Zap Brannigan My skins were cut by A&A on astromech.net
i still need to finish cutting all the way through the skins to give the panels more depth though
Aaron
My legs are finally all glued and sanded together! luckily thanks to a couple of local builders I was able to pick up some of the larger detail pieces (horseshoes and booster covers). The white detail parts are 3d printed from my home printer so they still need to be primed and sanded for paint.. so next is finishing the detail pieces for new paint and mounting them to the leg frame
Aaron
good news! skin layers are glued together and now waiting on delrin square stock to mount them to the frame!
I have registered my droid for Star Wars Celebration in mid-April so I really need to get working lol 75 build days left
I printed out some brackets to attach the dome to the riser.
I am using velcro between the dome and riser plate so that I will be able to separate the two if need be.
I also drilled holes and cut out the mounting plate for the dome motor.
For the motor I will be using a servo powered gearbox from servo city.
I ordered some 0.5 inch delrin square stock and will be using it as the speaker and skin mounts on the frame. For the skins I got some high grade velcro and will be using it to mount the main portion of the skins to the frame. At the skin seams however I will need to screw the skins to the frame to ensure the seams dont move around.
I was also able to sand and paint the booster covers black. I need to finish up one of the legs and I will be able to then paint and finish up all the leg details
Over the weekend I was fortunate enough to go to the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, Ca for their engineer's week. A few of the R2-Builders were there with their droids. The group did a presentation about the club and answered questions about how they are made. I cannot wait to get me V4 wired up and start impressing people with the functionality of ez-robot
His quality of cnc parts are amazing! I was afraid at first too but as long as everything is straight and flush with the outer rings the frame glues together perfectly.
in my experience so far with the styrene frame: I am not gluing the skins to the frame so my frame has quite a bit of flex to it. To reduce flex I am screwing in the delrin square stock to both mount the skins and stiffen the frame up. If you're gluing the skins to the frame though you will not have any problem with flex lol
I bought the frame and the skirt. The frame is high quality, but the assembly instructions are sketchy so it makes me nervous. The "glue" actually welds the parts together so once it's done, it's done. No second chances.
I used weldon 4 ( thinner than water and an applicator bottle) to "tack weld" the frame together initially. you can usually break the weld if you really need to fix or change something. Once I was happy with the fit and finish I then used weldon 16 (ticker like syrup and comes in its own application tube) to finish and really weld all the joints together. weldon 16 also dries a lot slower so you have the ability to move things around before it sets up
I'm super jealous of your build so far. After seeing yours with ez-b I really want to get some wiring into my droid and at least get the dome lit up and spinning on it's own
How did you control the dome movement? Is there any position feedback or is it just a continuos motor like what most of the builders use?
That way i can run the wires through the hollow shaft and then just use a 9 or 24 pin serial port connector to use a single plug when powering my dome from the ezb.
I started working on how I would mount some of the electronics and made a board that slots into the frame and will allow me to take out most of the electronics with one board. the ezb will be mount on top of the board so that i can get to the servo pins easier. all of the audio parts will be mounted underneath since they will be less used.
Just wondering why your using a Sparkfun MP3 trigger when the EZB streams voice files right from your laptop so nicely?
I used the mp3 trigger because the droid will most likely be controlled 100% of the time from a tablet instead of a laptop. I just wanted to ensure that the droid will always have audio. I wasn't entirely sure how the sound would work from a tablet so i got the mp3 trigger to be safe. It may be entirely overkill though haha
Aaron
It has been a lot of work so far... With school and work finding the time to work on it can be really difficult but it will all pay off in the end. Have you been over to astromech.net ? its a worldwide club that builds astromech droids
Aaron
Its a proud day for me lol
Aaron
Beautiful build man. \m/
Nice. I was curios how fast the dome would move with the servo and gearbox setup. Can you document with pictures how you set all that up? I don't think I have seen a dome movement setup done like this and I am definitely interested in how you did it.
this is the servo gearbox mounted with the 4 mounts that I printed. I used 1/2 inch delrin square stock to space out the mounts and to bolt down the servo gearbox. bellow you can see how the gearbox is floating between the frame rails and is easily removed.
I used a piece of plastic to key in the main spur gear and the outer bearing.
Finally the 2 inch riser is placed onto the outer bearing and the dome is velcro'd to the top of the riser
Yesterday I went to Orvac electronics and got a 12 volt battery and a power distribution board with a built in fuse box incase the worst happens...
I mounted the power distribution board into the frame and connected the amp and the V4 to the 12 volt power source. I was super pleased with how it looks and the fuses are easily changed from the top. I need to lower the amp though so that I can easily adjust the sound..
The problem I'm having though is when I power both the ezb and amp from the same power board, the servo moving the head no longer rotates and makes a strange buzzing noise. To try and diagnose the issue I separated the amp and ezb so that way they were powered by their own independent battery. When I did this the servo worked perfectly. I then reconnected the ezb back to the power distribution board, without the amp, and the servo would still not rotate correctly. Therefore I have isolated the issue to the power board/fuse box. *confused*
this is a picture of inside the power distribution board:
I think that there may be a ground issue within the power board that i bought? Any suggestions would be great..
Thanks guys
Aaron
By the way, did you figure out your possible grounding issue?
Very cool!
Yes I did figure out the problem.. the voltage regulator sold in the ez-robot store, as a servo extension, is only rated at 1 amp. I ended up getting another voltage regulator so that I could power the servo and ezb separately. After powering the two individually the servo motor ended up working normally
thank you @mcsdaver
Everything is really coming along nicely. I like everything that you have done.
One thing I have noticed, and please don't take this as a criticism, but there is a bit of drift with the dome movement when it is stopping. Is this something that you are just going to live with or are you working on more precise starts and stops?
Also, with that gearbox you are using for the dome, what gear ratios did you go with?
For the first audio clip I need to find a file that isnt cut off but all in all for being completely randomized sound and movement i think he looks decent?
r2d2
Looks amazing!
I will definitely be taking photos and videos at celebration of people reacting to the droid.
@nomad18.08 I have been playing with this website all day thank you!
@Dave Schulpius the movement tracking works fairly well but i am still playing with the sensitivity and object size as sometimes he can get lost in all the movements on the screen. he tracks faces perfectly though and have scared my girlfriend walking into my room several times lol
Is there someone knowledgable about the ARC mobile version that can help me out or clarify something for me:
I have built a mobile app for my robot and it all seems pretty straight forward. I am able to get the connection/LED control/camera/and random sound buttons to work flawlessly. I run into trouble though when i "cc" a script from the script manager. The script will never be activated. Does the mobile version support the script manager? Do i need to physically type the code into the assigned button?
Also I am having trouble saving servo variables to the slider.. has anyone else run into this problem?
Thank you any help/knowledge would be great
Aaron
Yes you need to type the script into the assigned button.
I made a button called "Salute" and typed in the commands below.
Now when the button is pressed my robot will salute, say "Yes Sir" and then go back into home position. I also setup a voice command using the same script so I can say "Salute" and he will do it.
The buttons works very well to make your robot move and talk from a mobile device.
cc("Auto Position",AutoPositionAction,"Salute")
SayEZB("Yes Sir")
Sleep(2100)
cc("Auto Position",AutoPositionAction,"Home")
Salute and Home are actions I programmed using the AutoPosition window.
The smiles were added by the forum software and should be right brackets.
Instead I am using the EZ-Script window and activating it with:
cc("ez-script", scriptstart)
the sounds within the scripts work just fine but now I am having a problem where the servo in the head will not rotate during the script. even just a script to center the head will not work on the mobile app.
The buttons, servos, sounds, lights and other functions all work perfectly when I run the mobile app from my computer within ARC... *confused*
Any thoughts on how I can get the servo to move within the mobile app?
I decided against the mobile app and bought a Winbook tablet for $70 on amazon that runs a full windows 8 and was able to run the normal ex-builder
Who's in your first picture?
So two questions:
One I heard chatter that EFX made an announcement there that they were releasing a full scale RC R2?
And next how was the Ez B received from the Astromech "purists" builders?
The two year wait has far surpassed my expectations
1) Yes EFX did make an announcement of the full scale R2D2. It is also remote controlled. They however wouldnt fill us in on the price so Im sure it is a small fortune...
2) At first I sort of got the feeling from the purists like "of that's cute" haha but once JJ walked through before the show started and there were many fans giving my droid attention they saw how cool it was and started to be a lot more curious. A few of them by the end of the day had the website up on their phones! I think once they saw it in action it was well received
I ended up winning an hydro aluminum dome from the club and will now be able to make the dome completely automated! to make life easier the dome will receive its own EZB
I also got some really good ideas from other builders on how they are mounting their electronics. I bought a 12X18" cutting board from walmart for $5 and was able to make a slider electronics tray that will house all of the components.
Currently I am printing channel backing and hinge mounts for the long front and rear doors of the droid. my printer is fairly small so I needed to split it up into 3 different segments. So far thought the parts seem to be fitting nicely
this friday R7 and I are going to my local church's vacation bible school to take part in their star wars themed event. I wish he was more complete but they were happy to have him as he is. I will be sure to post photos of the dome wiring and R7 at the event!
Hey, I want some Princess Lays chips and Jabba the Hutt dog! *blush*
Seriously though, you have done some great work so far. R7 is looking great. After reading through your thread a couple of times now, your work and the details you have shared so far are inspiring me more and more to start work on my own droid.
Nice to see you back with some updates, and keep up the great work.
The servo city gearbox was a life saver for getting my dome to have both motion and position feedback. On my downtime I am designing a new frame that will use these to allow the droid to transition from 2 to 3 leg mode
@Steve G
Thank you for the kind words! Its tough to find the time with both school and work but it surely pays off when I can bring him to events like this past weekend. it only makes me want to work on the droid more lol
@Zap Brannigan
They are the teeces 3.2 logics powered by an arduino. After making my own and coding them through ARC it just made more sense to let the arduino handle the blinky lights and free up some ports and computing power for more important tasks on the v4... *eek*
Well, you've gone and done it. Looking at your showcase was not only inspiring me to build my own droid, I am indeed inspired, as I have just dug out some old plans I had for an R/C build I never got around to building, and purchased some materials. Work starts this week. I'm going to follow your idea of doing a buid diary which I will start tomorrow.
Thanks again for sharing your excellent work (and for helping make my wallet a little lighter, lol).
Steve.
hahaha you're so welcome!
@Zap Brannigan
every since celebration astromech.net has been super crowded and parts are even harder to come by. I think my build thread is already on the third page since posting about the dome... It can definitely be difficult to find information on there nowadays. I got my teeces lights made for me by marsprops.com. they also have a facebook page. He is a builder on the east coast and is club approved. after pricing out how much it would be to order the PCB's and lights myself it was silly to not have him make them for me. I think they were $250 shipped. I thought it seemed like a lot until i added up how much it would be to do them myself *stress*
R2-D2's dome is actually an elliptical (egg-shaped) cross section rather than a hemisphere. I tried to make a riser for the hemisphere to get the dome height similar but it never looked quite right to me.
Now on astromech.net you can actually order an uncut styrene dome that is the proper cross section for under $100.00! If i were to start over again I would have used the styrene dome before anything else.
dome link
Aaron
I wanted to put a couple of questions to you if you don't mind.
First off, what is the thickness of the styrene skin you are using?
And second, what are your plans for the flaps on the main body, mainly shaping the ones that will open and close to the contours of the body? I ask because I'm trying to think of a way to have the flaps that will open and close curved to go with the body shape on my build, but can't think of a way to do it except for using a heat gun and melting them in to shape.
The skins he used, and the ones I purchased, are laser cut styrene skins that are to "club spec". They also have plans for laying out and hand cutting your own skins but I deciced on the pre-cut route. The R2 Builders Club has done a lot of research and come up with a standard specification for all "Astromech" parts. The skins are included in this. There is a inner skin and an outer skin and a lot of math was done so that all the skin openings line up when the outer is put over the inner. This is all based on a standard diameter frame. With yours being "non standard" in diameter, any of the skin plans that you may find will be a bit off.
I don't remember the exact thickness if the skins but it is pretty thin. I'll try and look it up later since my work has decided they need to block access to astromech.net from here. To answer your question about the doors, in order for them to hold their shape, I believe most folks have to make some sort of thin metal frame that is bent at the correct diameter. This also allows you a place to mount hinges for the doors to open and close. The hinges themselves are a special hidden type.
When I embarked on my own R2D2 build, I had no idea how technical it would get and how hard it would be to accumulate the parts. And, my goodness at the number of parts....
Thanks for the reply and for the useful info. I read about the club spec skins from different different sources and the skin thinness seems to vary. I'd already planned do do my own, but want to dial in what thickness is best before I purchase some high impact styrene sheets.
The thin metal frame makes sense for the flaps so thanks for the tip.
Yeah there a lot to think about doing this kind of build, but I'm up for the challenge. I just hope it comes out at least half as good as @robot56's build.
P.S.
Its gets kind of confusing with the R2-L and R2-R as there are a few differences in specs when you start looking around Astromech just a heads up
You definitely want to watch out for the CS:L and CS:R variations. My droid is base off the CS:L measurements
My original plan was to cut my own skins. Make sure to have lots and lots of sharp blade replacements and an 18" long metal ruler for guiding long cuts! There is a guy on astromech who will lazer cut the styrene skins for around $100-120 dollars. After getting halfway through my hand cut skins I decided to opt out and buy some that were cut perfectly straight.
Your droid is looking great! At the rate you're building yours will be done long before mine *eyeroll*
I haven't put them on yet because secretly between you and everyone in this forum I will most likely (time permitting) be making my own lightweight 232 frame ising aluminum skins
Styrene skins really need to be glued or bonded to the frame to keep the door curvatures tight to the body. thats why mine bow out... I wanted to try and have them be removable but so far am not pleased with how they turned out. For now though they will have to do... *stress*
Thanks for getting back to me. Yes I've decided to try my own skins, so with the info @Zap gave me, I've got some 1mm sheet on the way (although it won't be fitted for a while). Your little secret sounds great. That is something I would love to see.
Same as yourself, I kinda want to make an opening maintenance panel on the back so that's going to take some thought. Anyway, thanks your kind words and for the feedback. It's much appreciated.
I will be posting a few pictures later on of my center foot assembly. I finally have it all together but just need to finish skinning the leg and foot
The way I have seen it done on wood frames is an entire separate wood frame for the door/hatch.
Look at this thread: http://www.ez-robot.com/Community/Forum/Thread?threadId=7051
There's a picture in there that kind of shows it. Like a frame within a frame.
I have to tell @Jayutmb that the Omni wheels are a god send haha they are far superior to the casters! I will have a video of it moving around soon but I can tell you that it does way better over bumps and during turning. I am also surprised that the 3d printed mounts have held up so far. I really expected them to break quickly
R2LA was this last Saturday. It is a chance for the local builders to get together and share notes and look at the new parts that people are making. It was a really hot day but a ton of fun! I was also interviewed briefly on tested.com for my astromech
One of the local builders also took a video of some of the droids. You can see my droid and ez-robot periodically throughout the video:
There's a great selection of Astromechs in you photos, but I have to say that your lil droid really does stand out from the crowd. Thanks for posting the photos.
(Second time I've posted this reply, as the website went down when I hit "Reply" the last time, lol).
I'm building my on (it is not as beautiful as yours) but can you give me a hint ?
what did you use to control wheels ?.. i'm using Scooter motors, but still don't know how to connect them to ARC...
Thanks!
Do your motors have encoders?
To control the motors, there are various options. The Simple servo mode would probably be fine if there are no encoders. These are very simple to use.
My droid is styrene and is lightweight compared to a lot of them.
http://astrogreeblies.com has many sabertooths and gives a good indication of which one you will need based on your droids weight
my DIP switch settings are:
1-4 OFF
5-6 ON
Code:
the lighting is terrible but I was really excited to see it move on its own. I will be making another video out in the daylight tomorrow. And aluminum skins are finally on their way from across the pond!
Aaron
It is with 4 vex Omni-wheels in the front foot and a main drive wheel and ball caster in each rear leg. the belt setup was a lot easier since the belt spur gear and wheel are one molded piece of plastic.
I haven't had time yet to fix the belt tension so I slowed down the turning speed in the code. still slips a lot though. Midterms kill robot building lol So the grinding/clicking noise is the belt slipping on the drive gear teeth... but at least in this video you can better see the front omni-wheels and rear drive feet.
Aaron
Don't worry about questions!
The omniwheels are not driven. I originally made it to use the traditional caster setup but after watching how unstable some of the droids were during turning around at star wars celebration I decided to go with something else. With the omniwheel you are getting a HUGE footprint for the weight of the droid to rest on (not just 2 little wheels) and when the droid rotates the smaller outer casters spin so that the wheels never have to physically turn. There are a couple guys on astromech using this type of a setup now. I hope it becomes standard because the droids are much more stable and not so terrifying to drive with the omniwheels lol
I wanted to use omniwheels in the rear legs too instead of the small ball casters but ran out of room trying to get everything to fit. The main drive wheels are way too big
Keep up the good work.
Vex Pro Link:
mcmaster carr link:
what I used:
from vex robotics:
4x 4" omniwheel 217-2584
4x 3/8" flanged bearing 217-2732
1x 1/4" acetal spacer with 3/8" hex 217-3260
from Mcmaster Carr:
4x flanged sleeve bushing 6338k414
1x 3.5" long 3/8" steel bolt 92240A950
3/8" nylon lock nut
The school uses a website called coding.org and is a great way for kids to start learning code. The principal asked if i would be willing to bring my robot and do 2 thirty minute presentations to k-6th grade.
All went well and the kids really enjoyed seeing the robot in action
Aaron
Aaron
Alan
my senior design project is a robot that follows a person so I will implement that once my senior project is completed
Aaron
Aaron
Seriously though, Congrats on your achievement. It is a huge one in your life.
I've had several interviews already. One at Motiv Space Systems and just recently with Textron Specialty Vehicles. Luckily though I have been working in industry for 3 years so the transition shouldn't be so bad! haha
Alan
Love your last video. Can't believe I missed it. Very smooth rotation and nice speed ramping. I almost fell off the chair when he farted, er, I mean vented.
This project is not ez-robot powered yet but once I get control of how all the dynamics of the drive system and balancing work i will be making a phone app and installing a ezb.
I have been working on this for about 3 months and it weighs 32 pounds
happy building
Aaron
Looking amazing already!
Had a blast at the Long Beach Comic Con. Everyone loved the droids and many of the other builders in the club are starting to realize the potential of ez-robot for their droids!
I also was part of a panel on sunday talking about robotics and how to get involved! ez-robot came up many times in my discussion
Our annual R2 Builders Club Meeting in Southern California
Thank you.