Changing B9 power supply and Belly lights to LED

At MegaCon, B9 ran for up to 9 hours at a time. That's when I noticed there was a problem with the power supply. I think it was too powerful of a power supply which was why it fried B9's belly lights every couple hours. It went through about 50 lights (Thanks Charlie for bringing some out from Denver for me) during the show. The last couple hours at MegaCon, one lone belly light was left blinking in B9.

The blinker controller and rats nest of wires that were connected to the belly lights always has bothered me. Even though it was redone a few weeks ago, it was still a rats nest.

So I removed all the belly light sockets and cut off the part that the bulb goes into. That left a small shaft and a way to attach the colored lenses. After making a template of the holes on a piece of styrene, I cut two holes in each light bulb slot on the template. Then the blinking LED's were fed into the holes and attached to two thin long breadboards. Of course, hot glue was used to attach the LED's to the breadboard. Not only is hot glue a good insulator, it firmly attached all the LED's. I let them protrude forward as much as I could so they are level with the beginning of the colored lenses.

After a few hours, B9 had a nice neat little blinking LED belly light box. I hooked it into a switch in the programming bay and fired it up. I have to admit it looks spectacular. And the inside of B9's torso is much neater now. This should have been done this long ago. It only took a few hours.

Having LED's mean less heat, less power consumption, and no more burnt out bulbs.

As far as the power supply problem, I switched out the current power supply with a radio shack 12v power supply. That works perfect and also lightens the leg section by about 10-15 pounds. The Tripp power supply that was in the B9 was just too powerful.

What a great week !

Sorry for the lack of posts but we're still putting things away after the convention. Very busy week and we had a blast at MegaCon with the other builders and robots. I just posted pictures at http://www.floridarobot.com/megapics.php

More info next week ..... After I put these robots back together.

These delicate robots

One of the disadvantages of moving a robot is that you greatly increase the odds that something on your robot will get damaged. For some insane reason, I decided to rewire my B9 again the other day (but I'm glad I did because it's really neat inside the torso now). That entailed moving him out to the garage.

Well, somehow in the move, the adjustable voltage regulator in the head broke. The casing that held the input voltage broke right off. As the regulator is attached inside the radar unit, that posed a real problem. I finally ended up fixing it after a lot of work by directly soldering the input wires onto contacts in the regulator and then hot glueing it together to keep the wires from tugging on anything and to insulate the connection. IT WORKED !!! But ... that problem caused another. The shafts to my ears fell out and I thought they were lost for good. Those are required to make the ears turn. While drinking my morning coffee, I thought about where they could have fallen out and by pure luck, found them in the corner of my garage. Very lucky that time. So now B9 is online and in good shape.

Millions of other issues are cropping up days before the SciFi Robot invasion so I need to get going and get ready. I took today off to take care of some of these details.

Is that a real robot mom ?

In my typical fashion, I found another excuse to wander from my list of things to do to get ready for the MegaCon SciFi robot invasion. I've been tweaking Robby's electronics and an idea that has been forming in my mind for a few weeks finally gripped me to go for it.

Robby's neon is about eye level. If you peer inside, you can see the wires and the modern electronics that I installed. So I installed clips and a black cloth to cover that up.

Let's face it, we know these robots are not real robots but like a movie, we display them to fuel human imagination and wonder. So why not add a little extra fuel by displaying a wall of retro electronics behind the neon.

Originally I built a platform about 18" long and 4" wide which sits behind the neon and houses the speakers and microcontroller. On the front (neon) side of the platform, I extended it a few inches and completely covered it with 1950's vintage electronics. Vacuum tubes, large resistors, capacitors, potentiometers and all types of old style wire and connectors. Some LED blue lights shine behind the vacuum tubes to make them look like they are actually glowing. I have to say it really looks cool. Yes, very cool.

So when people are looking at Robby, they may peek through the neon tubes and catch a glimpse of a head full of 1950's electronics .... and who knows what direction their imagination will take them.

On the MegaCon SciFi robot invasion front. We are beyond capacity. The only thing I know for sure is we are going to have a massive turnout .... so much so that we will be very crowded. But it's going to be a lot of fun. Also, I never mentioned this before but we have a big celebrity displaying a robot with us. He was in a top American POP band as well in movies and broadway. His robot will be with us during the whole convention but he will only be stopping by for a few hours. And that's all I'm going to say about this to protect his privacy.

Also, all exhibitor passes and guest passes have been mailed out to builders and collectors with an information packet. You should get everything by the end of the week. That's a relief for me since I dread paperwork and details like that. The MegaCon promoters are really excited about us showing up and are rolling out the red carpet for the robots. It should be fun and I can't wait !