Tonight we only had about 3-4 small groups of kids trick er treating Halloween ... maybe 9-10 kids total. A couple adults recognized the robot but most of the kids had a look of confusion on their faces. Next to my B9 was a small R2D2 and the kids recognized him.
The wireless video/audio systems performed flawlessly and I recorded the interactions with the robot.
I can't believe how much I got done in the last 24 hours. Last night and this morning I put another coat of paint on my B9 torso. One tip when using hammered paint for anyone considering it. Lay it on thick and if you get a run, dab it with a paper towel. A few seconds later, spray more on. Very easy paint to use.
Putting the B9 together and wiring it back up went very smooth. Well almost. Once again I tried hooking my chest lights into my Belly light controller and ONCE AGAIN, I fried channels on the controller. There was smoke and that burning rubber smell again. When that happened last month, I was rushing and blamed myself. Today I was taking my time and the wiring was perfect. So I realized that the chest lights must be drawing too much current for the controller. To fix the problem, I bought two inexpensive ($2.98 each) automotive 12v flashers and hooked those up to the chest lights. They work beautiful and I wish I would have done that in the first place. The lights look good. On the controller they were much dimmer.
Another thing I realized after finishing the wiring is the Tom W. light controller which runs my brain and finger lights requires 6v bulbs. I didn't know that. My finger lights are 12v and they seem to work just fine. Too late to change. I'm going to change the finger lights later when I get better sockets anyway.
The B9's miniature color camera is now mounted in the front behind the vent. It's no problem viewing through the even in low light (night) conditions. The microphone is mounted in the legs. It's so small you can't see it. It's about 1/8" round. Don't let it's size fool you. That microphone is very sensitive and clear.
I will control the robot's dialog from my desk and be able to interact with the kids using this closed circuit tv system. The robot's phrases will be transmitted on another audio wireless unit that has the receiver in the robot. It's a fun system and reminds me of when I was about 11 years old and built a talking pumpkin that I put in our tree on halloween one year to interact with trick-er-treaters. Same concept.
I was ahead of schedule today so the jawa's ion blaster got a blue light added to the inside of the blasters barrel.
Normally we don't get many kids around here but it should be a fun night.Almost all my lights worked perfectly. Then I decided to hook up the 3 lights on top the brain. Somewhere there was a short and the entire Tom W. controller fried. That's it. So much for having the B9 out on Halloween. I think it was a light bulb socket I had that shorted. Oh well ... there's always next year.
The way the Tom W. directions are written threw me off earlier. The color codes blue/white and white/blue for instance. The solid blue wire means blue/white. I got some of these screwed up earlier and one channel was fried on the controller because I didn't realize the first color in the phrase is the most significant color. It doesn't matter if the second color in the phrase doesn't exist. It was confusing but only one channel was initially fried so I just moved those finger lights to another channel. All the finger lights worked great and most of the brain LED's were ok. That was until the final frying with the lights on top of the brain.
Sigh ...
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ONE HOUR LATER:
I go back out and start playing with the dip switches and wiring. Now it works ! Needless to say I'm not going to try to hook the top lights up again until after halloween. It would have been so disappointing to abort B9 Halloween plans.
I finally got some time to work on the B9 again. Last night I dismanteled the robot electronics and laid it out on the bench. The finger lights and lights on top of the brain need to be added. To do that, I needed to remove everthing from the collar up. The bubble bottom plate slipped and fell at one point but I miraculously caught it as it fell and no permanent damage was done (other than to my furiously pumping heart).
I don't have the correct finger light ends so I made recepticals from rubber network cable ends that were found at radio shack. They fit over the aluminum tubes perfectly. After a little silver paint, they look halfway decent. A B9 purist wouldn't like them but I'm happy with the look for now. The 12v lights I got at radio shack fit perfectly into the cable ends. Using Tom W.'s controller required soldering diodes and shrink wrap the connectors. I can see keeping all these wires neat in the brain and brain cup will be a challenge.
I really enjoyed soldering with an older craftsman soldering iron that was recently found at a flea market for $5.00. Building the robot is such an enjoyable and (sometimes) relaxing hobby. It's nice working with your hands after being on a stupid computer all day.
Putting another coat of paint on the B9 before halloween is also something that needs to be done but my wife has been making plans for this weekend so I may not get much B9 time in. The main focus this weekend is lights and then see how much time is left to attend to the other 45,287 items on the B9 robot to do list.
We're coming into the good Robot building season in Florida. Perfect weather for working in the garage.
The @#%#% cold from hell is FINALLY gone. Time to get back on track working on the robot(s).
The cool project of the day is the wireless video / audio system I'm putting together. The little 1.5" x 1.5" color camera is an amazing piece of technology. The image quality is impeccable. I actually put the camera inside my B9 microphone and it somehow filtered out the screen and showed me a clear beautiful image. I couldn't believe it. But I won't mount it in my microphone, I'll leave that for the miniature high sensitivity microphone. I think I'm going to mount the camera in the programming bay area because if I put it in the collar, it will be hard to interact/see the children. The automatic focus/white balance and low light features make this system super cool. All the components are 12v so it will be integrated into the B9's atomic power grid.
I cut a pair of 1/2" mdf a tread panel covers. When I tear my B9 completely down they will be sanded fit to the tread section and finished.
I finally decided to attach my torso hooks to the torso today. After a lot of measuring and decisions, Murphy struck again. I don't know how I did it but the torso hook shifted and I didn't notice it until after I drilled the holes. The net result was I needed to fill a small hole. Mixing up a batch of fiberglass and filling it was no big deal. B9 is going to get his final coat of paint in November anyways.
The C3PO head had the recepticals attached to the inside of the head for lights. I'll work on lighting tomorrow. The eyes were cleaned up a little and a couple more coats of gold gloss were applied. C3PO looks good. I wish he had a body to go with the head. The new R2D2 is hilarious as he chatters and responds to voice commands while I work in the garage. Very entertaining.
It's been almost a month since I got this cold and although I'm slowly getting better, I won't do much robot wise until I completely shake this thing. Plus we have a hurricane headed this way and are expecting refugees from Naples in the next day or so. I was going to tear down the B9 and bring him into the dining room to do some wiring but until this hurricane threat is over, I'll leave B9 in the garage.
In my spare time I'm working on a C3PO head and painted it a glossy gold. It looks pretty good. Adding lighting to the eyes is taking a lot of time. I also bought a 15" R2D2 to hang with Jawa and company. It's a cool little robot that responds to voice commands and patrols around my garage while I'm working on my bots. The electronics on this little guy are amazing.
I bought a set of treads from a new club vendor and am looking forward to replacing the sloppy armaflex treads I made. I'm also going to completely refinish and repaint my entire B9 in November. The weather is getting nice around here and we're getting into the traditional Florida robot building season : )
New miniature wireless video and audio equipment arrived today which I'll install in the B9 next week. I'm trying a different frequency than what was used during the block party. Instead of 2.4ghz which is the same frequency my wireless LAN is on, I'm using 5.8 ghz which is a newer less used frequency. There's a miniature microphone with preamp which will be mounted in the microphone on the B9 that I made. It's coming together.
Hopefully Hurricane Wilma won't take the unlikely northern path and pay a visit to the Tampa Bay area. It appears it's path will cross the Naples area which is well to the south of us. This area will probably just get a lot of wind and rain.
I've had a really bad cold for almost 2 weeks now so my building has been pretty much on hold until today. I took another sick day today but I started feeling better so I decided to finish my Jawa. Today I built his Ion Blaster and put the finishing touches on him. A few days ago I did his eyes and hooked them into a small 12v transformer I was using to test my B9 last month.
The Ion Blaster came together pretty nicely. I even was able to get the jawa to pose holding the Ion Blaster as he looms over a blasted R3PO. Jawa looks pretty sinister.
This weekend I'll get back on track with my B9 project.Initially I didn't put enough of a bend into my torso hooks. So tonight I used the vice to bend the ends in a little more (even though they're already finished). Now they fit better with less of a gap under them. Shot em with some more hammered paint and they're good to go.
I'm still not sure if I'm going to use a gasket and if I should paint the gasket first.
I've been doing a lot of thinking how to permanently mount my electronics inside the torso. The 12w power supply gets a little warm and I may need to keep an eye on it. I was going to mount that inside the legs but there's no ventilation in there.
We had a nice block party today and it just so happened to be directly in front of my house. For the past 2 weeks I've been working like a banchee to get my B9 into in shape. Yesterday I completely redid my sound system and rewired my lights using two light controllers. There were a few problems because of my rushing but all in all he looked like a complete B9 today to everyone who stopped by.
They didn't know the torso hooks were taped to the torso with that blue non-permanent easy to remove masking tape. Same with the bubble ... I put a few small pieces of tape in case anyone bumped the robot since I haven't drilled the holes yet. I had borrowed claws and wrists which were also taped in place and the arms were just sitting in the robot and pushed into the sockets as much as possible. Thankfully nobody bumped them. The radar fins on the ears were hastily cut from colored cardboard and taped on an hour before the party.
I had a closed circuit TV system watching the robot all the time and I controlled him wirelessly from my home (he was in the garage) when I wanted to interact with the crowd. It was a lot of fun. Many questions and I was surprised how many people didn't know about lost in space. Several tried calling him Robby but were quickly corrected. One guy asked my wife where is the "nut case" that built this.
The robot talked, the neon lit and the brain and chest lights worked fine. I cooked one channel of my old light controller yesterday and fried an experimental sound system with malfunctioning components. Glad it fried on the bench and not in my robot. I'll admit it was because I was hurrying but the way I look at it, anything can be repaired. Now I'll slow down and go back to doing one thing at a time. Well maybe I'll just cut it down to 3 or 4 at a time. That attention deficit disorder keeps kicking in.
My niece, nephew and my sister came over and my nephew (8 yrs old) brought his miniature B9 robot which he proudly displayed next to my B9. He loves the little robot as well as the big one.
Now I can take a few days off ..... It was a fun day.
