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. 
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@DJ.
Lol, I did seriously think about it after seeing yours, but had second thoughts because I didn’t really want to cut in to the dome and wanted to keep it looking as original as possible (that’s my excuse anyway, lol) I’ll see how it goes and may have second thoughts down the road.
I actually got the lil fella driving around earlier. Man alive does that bad boy move on full PWM, lol eek. Had to ramp it down to 50%. I’ll post an update later on.
start looking good.are you going to use the sound detectors too ? i love to see how it works.
Hey Patrick. I used sound sensor before on K-9 and E4-B4. They are not that great, but they do work. Yes I am using sound sensors in this build as well (see post #4).
ah thanks for the info.am thinking also a light sensor.
light sensor
Cool work! I need to upgrade an R2 unit to go along with my EZ Robot C3PO.
@mcsdaver
Thanks buddy. Funny, just browsing the forum the other day and came across your C3P0 thread. Very cool.
Centre Foot.
So after starting work on the body, I needed to do a little work on the centre foot. Not a big job but wanted to fit a ping sensor for obstacle avoidance...
I may look in to covering the ping sensors PC board over with something. Anyway, I fitted the centre leg in to the body the hooked up the H-Bridge to the EZ-B...
Test Drive.
With the H-Bridge connected up to the EZ-B, I temporarily fitted the body panels together and fitted the legs...
Then gave the little guy a test drive to see if everything was hunky dory...
Happy with the test, I connected the rest of the servos, sensors and camera the the EZ-B, fitted the dome, and secured the body panels...
Doesn’t look that much different from when I started... on the outside that is, lol. So with R2 back in one piece, it’s time to call it a day for now and crack on with his ARC project tomorrow.