So, it’s been a while since I’ve had the screwdrivers and soldering iron out for fun, so figured I’d start a new project and share it with you guys. What I’m working on this time is a toy hack rather than a scratch build, and for this I’ll be using the R2-D2 Interactive Astromech Droid from Hasbro.
For those of you who don’t know, this was released in 2002 and was fully voice controlled (no smart phone or R/C controllers). I purchased this off eBay a couple of years back and after finding out that the voice recognition wasn’t that great (not for me anyway), I was going to do an EZ-Robot conversion similar to what DJ and a few others did... but, as some of you know, I ended up scratch building a full size droid instead so it got packed away and forgot about it.
Recently my girlfriends granddaughter has shown an interest in robotics so I have started helping her out and introducing her to EZ-Robot. While searching for robot bits and peices, I can across the little droid and have set about giving him a new lease of life and make him better than he ever was using a EZ-B v4/2 dev kit and a few sensors etc.
Here goes. Enjoy. 
Other robots from Synthiam community
Animator28's AVA (Advance Visual Android)
Daman's Meet Ray. My Custom Friendlybot
And gutted...
That’s the easy bit done :).
The Dome Slip Ring.
The first place I started was with the dome rotation....
So with the original DC motor and optical position reader sensor removed, I found a nice little place to install a HDD servo (little bit of plastic cutting required)...
In the battery compartment, there is a black plastic flap which separates the AA batteries from the D cell batteries. This made a great servo arm extension which I screwed to the dome slip ring. Then with a quick successful test connecting the servo to an EZ-B, it could be put aside for now...
Next job, the dome itself.
With the dome already stripped out, it’s time to put some goodies back in. First off, replacing the original sound sensors with new ones...
Using the original sound sensor mounts, I cut off the screw hole grommets and used them as washers to secure the new sensors...
Next job was to fit an RGB LED behind the front Process State Indicator, only using it as a bi-colour board using the red and blue diode pins (and ground of course) for originality. I also put a small peice of paper inside of the lens to defuse the light...
More to come.
Next job on the list was to fit the EZ-Robot camera. DJ added a camera to his build where he cut a panel out of the dome and mounted the camera to a servo for up/down movement, which was really cool. I decided to go a different way as I didn’t want to cut into the dome on mine so I mounted mine in the eye panel.
I removed the inner and outer eye panels, cut a hole into the dome (this will be covered by the outer panel later), then mounted the camera. I cut a hole through the inner eye panel, thread the camera cable through, and fixed the inner panel to the dome...
I then drilled a hole through the centre of the eye piece, just large enough for the camera lens to fit through. I fitted the outer eye panel to the dome then tested the camera with an EZ-B to make sure the lens wasn’t obscured. With the black eye piece and black camera lens, the drilled hole is not really noticeable...
A couple more finishing touches for the dome was to add an analog light sensor just under the eye, and fitted another RGB LED behind the Holo Projector lens. This will be wired up as red and green and will flash (sound response) when R2 speaks.
Final job was to fit the dome to the slip ring. I fed the wires through a gap in the slip ring, leaving enough length of wire in the dome for when it rotates. Then it was all screwed together and tested. Here’s a quick test demo video of the dome...
That’s me done for the day. I’ve made a start on the body, but will finish that tomorrow.
the sound is really good.
I'm a complete noob when it comes to this but I have the Hasbro R2-D2 and was considering hacking him. Is it possible to just change:
A: Original voice recognition phrases?
ex. Change "Hey R2" to "Hey BB-8"
B: Change his sound fx responses?
Basically hacking and using the current software/hardware without installing new ones?
Again, I don't really have experience with this but thought it would be a fun project!
Thanks!
Thanks for the comment. So answering your questions...
A.) To change the existing speech recognition software on the existing hardware would be a difficult task and from what I know, you would need specialized equipment to do so, it it’s actually possible.
B.) To change the existing sfx and phrases would be equally difficult to do for the same reasons mentioned above.
As you mentioned that you are new to this, trying to customise the original software would be an extremely difficailt task for you to perform, in no impossible. The best solution is to do the modification I and others did, and replace the original circuitry with an EZ-B v4/2 or an IoTiny. Then you can get to use some of the many tools available in ARC to make your R2 so much better than it is now, and that includes making up your own speech recognition phrases, and adding your own sound fx and phrases like I did.
Thank you for your feedback. I appreciate the honesty!
I noticed you did a K-9 build which is awesome. I am a huge fan of the Baker doctor and K-9 so my logic was to try to take and use R2-D2's interactive insides and repurpose them into a K-9 unit. Possibly using this RC K-9 toy. I have no prior experience but love to try new things so I was thinking sticking with R2's software/hardware would make it easier which doesn't seem the case!
Yes, the IoTiny would work great with an R/C K-9 hack. The only benefits of using an EZ-B over an IoTiny is more digital and analog ports, so it would really depend on how many ports you would want to use.
For example, 2 servos for the ears, 2 servos for the neck (up/down, left/right), and an L298 motor controller for drive control which would use 4 digital ports, would use up all 8 of the IoTinys digital ports, unless you used 2 continuous rotation servos instead of a motor controller which would then leave you 2 spare digital ports.
In a nutshell, it really depends on how far you want to go with your modification.
is this comtrol or control ?
Thank you. With this K-9 there is no head/neck movement. Much like the Hasbro R2, it is controlled by two wheels in front with a free spinning wheel in back. It does have the laser gun that can be extended and retracted which I would like to control with voice command.
With the IoTiny, can the voice recognition/command be used on a internal mic in the K-9 unit or is it through the iphone/tablet?
Also, like Hasbro R2, I was looking to have K-9 have such voice command features as the dance, sentry, etc. Are these types of things available through ARC?
Thank you again for your help.
Voice recognition cannot be used with the mobile app on Android or iOS devices, so has to be used with a Windows device (PC, Laptop or full Windows tablet).
The microphone has to be connected to the Windows device running ARC. The only way to have an internal mic in the robot is to also have an onboard computer. But this can have its own issues...
1.) Noise from the robot, (drive motors, servos etc), can interfere with recognition causing phrases not to be heard or cause false positives (robot noises can be interpreted as phrases and the robot would do thinks you don’t want it to).
2.) You would need a special type of microphone known as a Far Field or DSR (distant speech recognition) microphones, meaning that your voice can be heard from across a room.
Your best bet would be to use a wired or Bluetooth microphone connected to your computer running ARC. The following tutorial I have linked to below maybe of help to you, specifically the final step.
Speech Recognition Tutorial
Yes, all of these features are available through ARC. My R2 project only uses ARC to do all the features you quoted.
@nomad
C o m t r o l
(Comunication control
Lol, just kidding, it was a spelling error.
Very helpful feedback. One more question if you don’t mind. Again a noob but the unit currently runs on 4 AA batteries. Can I use this power supply to run the IoTiny or would I need a different battery/power source?
Again, it really depends on what kind of modifications you want to do. In a nutshell, you could’ power the EZ-B or IoTiny off the 4 AA batteries, but I wouldn’t recommend it as you will forever be changing the batteries and only get limited run time, especially if you add servos. Rechargeable LiPo batteries are a much better option.
I think the best thing for you to do, is to start your own forum thread, share your ideas, questions etc of what you want to achieve, post some photos of what you have, and the kind of work you want to do or feel capable of doing. From there, you can get some great feedback from myself and some of the great members here to help you along the way. For example, your asking about power requirements which at the moment can’t really be fully answered as we don’t know what modifications you want to do. Once we establish that, we can talk about power.
I’ve posted another tutorial link I wrote below, that talks about different power supply’s that you may find useful.
Amps, Volts, Power Converters and Power Supplies
Thank you sir. Just getting the intial thought juices flowing to see if this would be a project to undertake.
I will definitely start a new thread if I decide to do the modification. I think it could be a fun side project!
Thanks for your time!
Good luck.
Full Size K-9 2.0 Project
When I did my live hack, I used the same thing as DJ: IoTIny, EZ-Robot 7.4V Lipo, and the EZ-Robot L298 H-bridge. I also used a small H-bridge for the head rotation motor.
Here's my live hack video if you're interested
*EDit: Ooops I lied I used an EZ-Bv4, but I could have used an IoTiny!