Borg Alcove is complete !

My good friend Brad finished his Borg Alcove today. Unbelievable prop. After watching this video my wife agreed it looked very cool .... and then looked at me and added "We don't have room for one".

My droid sounds like a 1930 Ford Model 'A'

After an entire weekend of wiring and rewiring R2's electronics, I'm starting to realize that one of the components has a major problem. The vmusic2 sound module seems to be the weak link because instead of playing the R2 sounds, it sounds like an obnoxious noisy engine.

It's frustrating because there are only 17 days until Celebration V and this droid must be fully operational by then. To remove these new electronics and rewire the old back is my last resort. But it's beginning to look like that's going to be my only option unless I can figure out what I did wrong or find out the cause and then find a suitable replacement component.

Normally things like this don't rattle me but when you have a hard deadline it can drive you crazy. I tested the amplifier independently and it works just fine. My guess is the vmusic2 module is the bad guy.

Slip ring wiring R2D2

Wires wires everywhere

You get what you pay for

I don't know how many more times in life I'm going to have to learn this lesson but trying to get by on the cheap comes back to bite you more often than not. Again, with this JEDI Controller I lost an entire weekend of work due to problems from buying a cheap component. Normally I spend a little extra$ and try to get good quality over cheap but this was one of those impulsive EBAY purchases with very little thought behind it.

Because we needed our dining room table back to entertain friends coming over for dinner, I ended up moving the entire mess of wires and components back out to the garage. After the move, JEDI controller stopped working with an insistent error regarding the VMUSIC2 module. I rewired the controller completely double, triple and quadrupled checked all connections. I tried a different VMUSIC module, a different flash drive, a different receiver board, a different jedi controller board all to no avail. It was starting to drive me nuts (again).

So after good advice from Todd in Orlando, I disconnected the piece @@ @%#@%# cheap amplifier I bought off EBAY and instead hooked up a pair of headphones.

All of a sudden everything started working perfectly and the sound problems also went away. So once again cheap ended up being much more expensive in the long run.

Resistance is futile

Today was loads of fun. First we stopped by a good friend of ours house and took video of his almost completed life size Borg Alcove (from Star Trek). This prop is very cool and very detailed.


Later in the day we stopped by R2's #1 fan (Jeremy) and enjoyed hanging out with the 501st at Jeremy's birthday party. His family and friends are the best and we had a ball. What a great day !

Smile for the day

The countdown begins

With only a month to go before Celebration V, my to do list all of a sudden sounded an alarm within me.  I'll have to work overtime to finish all the projects required for Celebration V.  First of all, the massive rats nest of wires on the dining room table needs to be finished and then integrated into R2D2.  Then the transmitter needs to be reconfigured and tested.  Plus, I'm still not even sure where I'll have room to mount the new electronics in R2.  Mounting the periscope is a possibility but that's going to probably be put on the back burner for now.

Next I'm going to have to build a special droid transport crate for C3PO and my friend Brad Carpenter's Hoth K3PO.   The plan is for them to ride in the back of my truck along with R2 in his Escape Pod.  It will be tight but do-able if we can build a suitable container.

The "Blown up" R2 foot that is 90% complete needs to be finished.  Then R2D2 needs to be weathered correctly and I will also need to install the new MGA Waterset aluminum claw which is scheduled to be delivered in the next couple weeks.  I'm not sure how that's going to work out.

So it's going to be a busy month.

On the Giraffe front...  This week, Yvonne and I enhanced his spots with a black outline around them.  Makes them stand out and be more distinct.  Much better effect because in the bright sunlight the copper spots tended to blend together.  After a few weeks of heavy rain, I noticed rust in a few spots which is inevitable.  They were mostly around the welds and holes.  It will be interesting to see how this projects weathers.  A little rust will add character to the sculpture.  Hopefully not too much though.

J.E.D.I. Controller for R2

I hate to take apart a perfectly good running droid but in this case the new JEDI Controller that a member of the R2D2 builders club created, warrants a few modifications to R2's existing electronics.  The JEDI Controller (Joystick enhanced drive input) allows the transmitter to control a high number of devices on the droid allowing you to overcome the 6 channel limitation of the transmitter.  Plus you can control the sounds on a single transmitter.


The JEDI controller is programmable and the genius developer (Scott Gray) of this microchip even gave it a language that we can program.  He aptly named the language "JAWA"script and it seems to have a rich array of features.  For instance, I plan on programming the droid to go on standby where sensors (hooked into the controller) can detect people walking by and activate the droid to wake up and interact with the person autonomously.  Which gives the droid wrangler a break now and then.  The droid acts like he's aware of his surroundings.  Not sure how good I'll be at programming this but I think it may be right up my alley.  Oh and when I say autonomously, that doesn't include him driving around on his own.  That would not be practical.

Tonight I got a lot of the electronics hooked up and we're on our way.

William the Giraffe

In the cool morning breeze my wife and I finished the final coat on the last of the spots. It was a lot of work painting all the spots on this giraffe. I noticed small rust areas forming that were a result of water getting in the giraffe and leaking out from some of the weld areas. So I did what I could to copperize those areas to minimize any rust lines that will be appearing on "William". Yes, William is the official name of this giraffe. William is giraffe and part time "Smile Machine". Named after the original giraffe artist (William Allen) that helped me with this project by giving me encouragement, advice, and pointers. William Allen creates beautiful sculptures and if you're looking to buy a giraffe like this pay a visit to Mainstreet Gallery in Leland Michigan.

I had a great deal of copper coating left so it was time to spruce up the ugly mailbox in front of our house. The flag and plastic pieces were faded so I used plastic primer and paint to rejuvenate them. Then the mailbox was painted silver and copper spots applied. Looks pretty good and didn't cost me a cent.

William still isn't anchored down in cement yet. Fortunately, we've had some pretty good storms with wind and all and he doesn't even move a bit. Giraffes are known to be steady on their feet though.

The final touches

 With the help of my artistic niece, Mr. Giraffe started looking pretty spiffy in his new spots.  The copper patina we applied looks absolutely beautiful when the sunshine hits it.  Looks like real copper.

So as of now, we have a giraffe keeping watch over the pedestrians and vehicles driving behind our home.  

Metal prep and patina

I'm lazy today so I'll let the video do all the talking

Time for a beer

Giraffe is done.  The final piece (the tail) was fabricated and installed today.  No more welding and no more re-do's.  I'm glad because this project was a lot harder than I originally planned.  Moving this beast outside to get a few pictures was a real challenge.

Still quite a bit of work to do installing the cement pilings and welding something that I can bolt the giraffe down with on the pilings. 

Can't wait.

There's a giraffe in our attic

There was a crazy amount of work on the giraffe this weekend.  I'm pushing very hard to have him done by the fourth of July as there's more significance to this sculpture than just being a giant steel giraffe. 

Well in the redo department, I completely redid the thighs AGAIN.  They were too skinny.  I'm still not completely happy with them but they'll have to do because that was a lot of work.  This week I also finished the feet, legs and knees.  Everything went pretty well and the only complaint is one leg is about an inch shorter than the others so I'll have to come up with a method to shim when it's installed.

One thing I learned is it's very difficult to sculpt an animal when it's laying on it's side or back.  Especially for me who is not very artistic.  So that's why I needed to stand him up while working.  My wife reminded me of our original idea of working on him underneath the open attic door.  That way his head can extend into the attic while I work on the lower extremities.  The downside was the heat pouring out of the attic on a hot Florida day really heated things up during the peak of the day.  The second day I aimed a fan at the attic and that seemed to keep the heat from dropping onto me while working.

So the last item to fabricate is a tail.  That shouldn't be too difficult.  I'm just about out of co2/arg so I called it an evening.  When this project is complete I'll take a little break from summer welding.

Runaway Giraffe

As many mistakes as I made on this giraffe, I probably could have  made two of them with the same materials and time if I knew what I was doing. I spend more time redoing things and it sometimes drives me crazy !!! Yesterday I decided that the removable leg idea was a bad idea because it compromises the stability of this large top heavy metal beast. And come to think of it, I really don't plan on taking this Giraffe on any road trips in the near future. I was going to get him sandblasted but instead I think I'll use oxysolv (or the Eastwood equivalent) over the surface rust before I topcoat it.

Just when I'm about ready to finish him up I add ankles and Hooves pads. They look great and are solid as can be. BUT .... they add about 5-6 inches to the leg which makes the giraffe look grossly out of proportion. Big time. Like he grew overnight. So the only option is to cut 6-10 inches off the lower 4 legs which will be a bit of work. Very disappointing. I took him out to stand him up and it about killed me with the weight and cumbersome bulk. The wife helped a little but then she gave me this serious look and told me I need to start making smaller projects. I had a heck of a time getting him back into the garage.  Between heavy robots and now this giraffe I can see her point. Oh and a large vice from my welding workbench fell from the bench onto my big toe yesterday (just thought I'd throw that in for sympathy : ). 

Moving this beast to the back yard and positioning him will be a major crazy challenge. I have no clue how that's going to happen. Maybe I'll have to run cables and stake him down.  But that will take away from the look.  He needs to withstand wind and the elements. It's the old "be careful what you wish for" scenario.  After all, this is a wild giraffe we're talking about.