The line at CVI

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R2 builders pool party

Pool party first night at CVI

Location:Red Roof Inn

Internal Electronic's Prototyping "Vision" part 1

This weekend was mostly filled with the smell of solder, piles of wires and polymorph, My goal this weekend (which I fell a little short of) was to have R2-A6's (color changing paint makes him also a R2-A3) vision sensors prototyped. Unfortunately the chips were stacked against me, sparkfun did not get my order to me when I had hoped instead it will be here Monday so I only had 1/2 the sensors I wanted to use.

Next when I was learning / experimenting with each of the sensors and the LED screen I noticed my LED screen had some damage to it (just not my day). However despite all of that I was able to get the a few components "working".

For those of you whom do not know my sensor plan for R2-A6 is to have the very top of his dome extend vertically by about 3-4 inches which will expose 4 sensors configured in a square (see below). These will provide the room mapping and motion detecting functions for R2. This "map" will be fed into a Raspberry PI using the mesh communication protocol I have been developing on top of ZigBee (I might change to Wixel to increase flexibility). The Rasberry PI will then help pilot R2-R6 in autonomous mode. More information on the protocol and control algorithms to follow. And yes before you mention it I looked at ROS and found that it did not mesh (as in mesh networking) the way I wanted and it had some limitations on clustering and dynamic module inclusion which would not work for me. If you are interested in ROS you can get it from here. I am however spending some cycles looking into OpenCV. The jury is still out on this one.

Anyone off the rant and back onto the weekend progress.

Continuous Rotation Servo Control:
I was able to get this working almost to where I am almost happy with it. The accuracy is close (not close enough yet). I may have to add some optical encoders or stop switches to ensure I can "reset" back to position 0.

PING Distance Sensor:
This thing works very well, actually much better than I expected however the range is not exactly what I would have hoped for so I may migrate to a XL-MaxSonar or at least buy one to test it out.

PIR Motion Sensor:
Yes this works, however it is FAR to sensitive so I am working out some ways to fix that by modulating the duration of the power,

JPeg Camera:
Has not arrived

IR Distance Sensor:
Has not arrived

GPS:
It is really remarkable how well this works, however the embedded antenna is to small and it has a lot of trouble picking up anything from my basement.

Mapping Functions:
The software so far is turning out really well, however it is really hard to cram all of this into about 15k which is all I have to work with. However so far I am still very happy with it. I am currently outputting the room map to a small LCD screen, and that still needs work.

I also build a simple servo and PING sensor harness to help me test and collect data for the room mapping function you can see a picture below.

Another Shirt

Once my kids saw my R2 KC shirt they wanted one so here is my T-Shirt design

Kids' T-Shirts by Vistaprint

Parts... Electronics.... & Organization

Took inventory of all my electronics and parts this weekend. It seems I still have a bit to go on collecting parts for droid #2

Polo Shirt

I decided to create a polo shirt to have before I go to CVI. Here it is:

Embroidered Polos by Vistaprint

Kansas City R2 Builders Logo!!!

Yes!!! I love it the logo for the Kansas City R2 Builders group is now finished what a great job KC Web Geeks did designing this.

Testing Color Changing Paint

On droid number 2 I wanted to do something a little different so I am testing the color changing paint from Rust-Oleum. I grabbed some small aluminum sheets from the local hardware store and gave it a go. I tried the Blue - Purple and the Green - Red. I also tried them on various types of backing to see how well it would coat and if high gloss or flat would work best.

I did not wait long enough for the blue to dry before I flipped it over so it has a bit of dirt on it, it really looked better before I screwed that part up. I have decided to go with the Green - Red blend as I really liked the look of the primary green color and the red was really subtle and that looked nice.

Here is the Blue - Purple

Here is the green. It was a bit hard to have the camera pick up the transition to red but in person I really liked the effect.

The Painted Dome.... almost done

First let me start by saying I am dumb as I forgot to take picture of the masking job I did that took me almost 3 1/2 hours to complete. I used the yellow Frog Tape and I have to say this stuff is worth every penny. I highly recommend it. I still screwed up the paint a little but not nearly as much as I could have. So without further adieu here is R2's dome in all it's blue and silver glory.

Now to keep this blog as honest of a record as possible here are all the shots that show you the paint I screwed up and will have to touch up.

EL Wire... The Not So Traditional Droid Lighting.

If you are not familiar with EL Wire check this out. I just got my samples in from two suppliers and I really like them. I need to pick a color and then decided if I want the .9mm or the 1.2mm they both fit however the 1.2 might need a bit of "help" getting in the correct spots.

So the plan is to place them in all the lines that separate the panels for R2. Since this droid is going to be the more durable droid and I am not cutting many or any of the pie panels and side panels out I wanted to give him a little "flare" here are EL Wire pictures in my office (aka basement electronics workshop).

Metallic Coat Finished

OK I gave up.... After I finally got a near mirror finish on the dome I spotted 2 runs and 3 odd "dots" in the paint and it was showing every possible in perfection to such a level that my 3 year old was happy to point them all out.

URRG I hate failing at this stuff. So I decided to texture to the paint to mimic a hammered metallic finish. Here is the result of the silver / metallic coat.

I am pretty happy with the results, no runs no bubbles and I got out all of the pitting and strange "dots" plus this finish hides the imperfections and fingerprints really well.

Starting the Metallic Coat

Time paint the metallic color. I am going for a high shine, highly reflective paint job. I am using Rust-Oleum metallic and metallic finish. The plan was 2 - 3 base coats of standard metallic and 2 - 3 coats of metallic finish. I applied the first set of coats of metallic with sanding in between coats and it went on well but I ended up with a few drips and some pitting in the paint. I continued and tried to get the paint as shinny and perfect as I could. However I ended up the day with a nice shine but not nearly as clean / pure as I wanted.

In the end I used 4 coats of standard metallic and 5 coats of metallic finish. However with all the sanding in between I feel like a total of 3-4 coats was sanded clean off the dome.

Here are some pictures. Click to enlarge.

Time To Prime The Dome

today I primed the dome. I used Kilz primer in a spray can. I sprayed 2 thin coats then sanded the primer. Then added an additional coat and wet sanded the primer then a final 4th coat and wet sanded that one. In between each coat I cleaned it with Goo Gone which was very messy but did a really good job. Next time I am going to wear latex gloves.

Painting The Dome Before Cutting.... Ohhhh No.....

I am getting ready to paint my dome tomorrow and I have not cut out any of the panels yet. I know I know this is really not the order you are supposed to do things in however as I am not sure how long it will be before I get all the electronics designed and my circuit boards built I wanted to have something that started to look like R2.

So I am taking a chance that I can cut slow and careful enough with my Dremel that only minor paint repair will be required.

Show Is Over... Time To Drive Home

4pm time to drive home. Man I am tired so time to grab a red bull and a 5 hour energy. What a great show, I had a great time and learned a lot. Andy maybe able to make it up here to KC to help with a local event which should be a lot of fun since we are a bit shy on local KC builders.

Contamination St. Louis

What a fun show. It was really great to meet everyone had dinner with the flash and captain marvel. The droids were great. I got to pick Andy's (R7Dude) brain about my A&A build. Below are some pictures of the event. I am really glad I made the trip, what a great experience.

 B9... What's not to love.

 Pictures from the table.

More Pictures.

And more pictures. I love looking at the size difference between R2 and B9.

 Here I am with one of the vendors posing with Andy's droid (thanks Andy).

The 501st was in attendance with the best Darth Maul and Vader I have seen to-date.

 I got to meet one of my local 501st leaders and he is going to help me get a costume that is droid operator friendly but still canon.
  

And of course getting to watch R2 drive was great, and watching the children's reaction was simply amazing I can not wait until my droid is functional.

Get Up Early To Drive To St. Louis

Leaving tomorrow morning at 5am to drive to St. Louis for Contamination 3D to meet some builders and help man the booth for a bit. This should be a lot of fun and I am looking forward to another Droid gathering.

Heading Home After A Fun Cookout

The trip up was good, the kids were great. The weekend was fun... We had a great time.

Now it is time to pack-up and head home. I only hope that the boys are as good on the way home as they were on the way up here.

Cookout in Indiana

What a great day. The kids had some really wonderful (and patient) girls to play with. We had some great food.

I got a chance to talk droid with some experienced builders.

Dream about parts.

 And more parts....

All in all it was a great day we had a lot of fun, good food, good talks, and got to meet a bunch of really nice people.

We are glad we made the trip.

Packing Up... Driving to Indiana

Today the family and I packing the car and driving up to Indiana Dunes to meet some builders. This should be a fun and interesting weekend as this is the first time we have packed the kids in the car for a longer then 2 hours drive.

Horseshoes Part #1

Once the kids got sidetracked I decided to assemble the horseshoe leg details. It is hard to see in the picture below but some of the holes in the plastic did not get cut all the way. So I grabbed the drill and fixed the three holes that were blocked.

The horseshoes were layed out before any glue was applied being careful to ensure that the pieces were correctly laid out to ensure I had a left and right horse shoe.

Once glued it was time to clamp everything down. As you can see from the picture below I am quickly running out of clamps and deskspace. If you look closely in the picture below you will see my IPad... Which I think is a builders best friend.