Rose City Comicon

I've been remiss in posting.  L3-G0 has visited a school, Children's Hospital, and a few conventions, and attended a Unicode Technical Committee meeting (last post was backdated).  He's also gotten a new friend, MCK-Y the Lego MSE-6 Mouse (aka Baby Box) droid.

Anyway, here he is at Rose City Comicon.  Roaming the halls we met lots of folks, including Master Chief from Halo!

Hey, Master Chief!

It wasn't as crowded as ECCC, so we were fairly free to roam at will, though we always attracted a crowd.  Some weren't very well behaved though, vandals!

Vandal Attacking Lego R2D2 With a Bat!

And, of course, there was tons of other cool stuff.  Here L3-G0 poses on the red carpet with a Back to the Future Delorean replica, and a Doctor Who Tardis.

L3-G0 with Tardis and Delorean

This hexacopter was flying around the celebrity area, Artoo took offence and tried to tell him that it was a no-fly no-camera zone!  (I'm still hoping to find his video of this confrontation).

L3-G0 tries to fend off a Quadrocopter



While we were in the celebrity area, Wil Wheaton took notice.  He was nice.

Just a full-sized R2-D2 made out of LEGO, that talks and does R2 stuff. O.o pic.twitter.com/gCzGGO7MKv
— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) September 21, 2014

Garrett Wang was also hilarious on the red carpet.  He saw L3-G0 while talking to a fan and flew over his table to run up to L3-G0 and take his photo.  Startled us terribly.  I heard him apologize to his fans when he went back.

 

Oh, no, L3-G0's lost his head!   We also participated in the R2-D2 Builder's Club talk about building Astromechs, where we showed off some of our droids and how they are built.  It was a talk like this that helped me decide to make L3-G0, lots of folks get there start building by seeing the other droids at a 'con and seeing such a talk.

 

L3-G0 at builder's talk with head off.

And we all posed together in the lobby.  Group photo time.

Astromechs in the Lobby at Rose City Comicon

And of course everyone wanted to pose with L3-G0 and the other droids.  I don't think he minds.

L3-G0 likes her R2-D2 skirt

It can get quite crowded though....

Crowds of picture takers

Things went pretty well this time around, I guess we're getting better at this.  We had two problems: the drive wheels keep slipping on the driveshaft.  The chain turns a sprocket which uses a bolt as an axle, but the set screws (on all 4 shafts, he's 8-wheel drive) keep slipping.  I tried drilling a notch in the shaft for the set screw to grip, and broke the bit.  That seems to have helped the most, having the ground up bit mashed in there to keep it from slipping!  Anyway we had to fix it several times.

I also drove ineptly (again) and mashed a shoulder (same one) into a vendor's table.  The right shoulder's smashed itself 3 times now!!!

The lights died right before seeing Wil Wheaton, so we had to come back for a better pix.

The other problem is an odd electrical thing.  He started freaking out and spraying his mist all the time (he can startle folks with canned air), and his dome started spinning madly.  We'd had a similar problem where the mist freaked out, so we unplugged it.  Then his dome refused to move.  But we thought it was fixed before the con.  Last day we had to leave early though.

When I got home I checked EVERYTHING trying to repro the problem, but it wouldn't happen.  Eventually I replaced the fuse on that circuit (it's the car-type fuses) and he was great.  I left his head spinning for a half hour to prove it.  What happened is that the fuse was apparently weak.  Eventually the dome motor controller got it hot enough that the volts dropped (from resistance), but it didn't blow.  That confused the motor controller which was also reading the RC signals, and sent gibberish to the Arduino controlling the mist, and of course it confused itself about the dome's movement.  What a freaky problem.  What a relief to have figured it out.

We had tons of fun at Rose City Comicon, we'll try to see if we can make it next year!

L3-G0 attends Unicode Technical Committee Meeting

L3-G0 has a good buddy that's interested in millions of forms of communication.  He couldn't make it, so L3-G0 decided to attend the Unicode Technical Committee meeting in his stead.  (L3-G0 follows me to work somewhat often.  I'm losing count, but he's visited about 10 of the buildings on campus).

L3-G0 with colleague at UTC meeting

I saw a copy of the meeting minutes, and he's listed on the attendee roster :)

Transporting L3-G0, the full size Lego R2-D2

People have asked several times how we transport L3-G0.  It's actually really, really easy.

Many MOCs (My Own Creations) are fairly fragile.  I was terrified of figuring out how to move L3-G0 and that was in fact one of my first experiments.  I had tons of bungees and other stuff ready to move, plans for a plywood base and all sorts of stuff.  Moving the Lego Space Needle is pretty challenging.  I feel happy that it only takes 1/2 hour (usually) to get it back together now.  That's only 4500 bricks.  L3-G0 is closer to 16,000 bricks!  So I figured it'd be harder.

He's only 60-65 pounds or so (almost 30kg), so unlike many other R2-D2 builds he's not too hard to lift.

The first part is to take off his head (remembering to unplug the wire helps) and stick it on the car seat, careful of the holoprojectors.  I put the seat back up as far as possible, but don't really worry about strapping it in or anything.

 

Then we pick up L3-G0's body and put it in back.  The front foot shell comes off and the casters get shoved in around the rear seat's mounting point.  Hooking the bungee around the top of the foot is about the only hard part since the hooks don't have much room on the mounting point.

 

 

And then last is to merely hook the back seat belts around the central foot guide post, pulling them to ratchet tight (like you would a child seat).  Again, watch the wire on the top.

The sad thing is that getting the bungee is sometimes tricky, and the last step, the seatbelts, is so simple, that I've forgotten about the seatbelts about three times already.  Fortunately the last two times I caught myself, but on the way to Hosik's science fair we were late & rushing, so I drove down the driveway with them off.  I was reminded to fix it when L3-G0 fell over on his face.  Fortunately it didn't do much damage.

Anyway, once he's secured, the model's ridiculously stable.  It barely moves and I don't need to be nearly as careful driving as with the other models.  (The Space Needle wants the sections I divide it into to fall apart, and the Lego Disney Wonder's nice wooden platform has slippery velvet on it, so it wants to slide around.  The worst part for L3-G0 is putting the front shell back together.

Made it to Emerald City Comicon (finally)

I'll try to post more later, but here's a tiny bit about the first day at ECCC.  Everyone loved the full size Lego R2-D2.  Asking wonderful things like "do you know about the R2-D2 Builder's Club? (yes)  And then L3-G0 would beep and they'd go "oh, he makes sound too!"  When they started to turn away I'd drive him out and run around the show floor and they'd say "No way, he moves?!?!?!"

L3-G0 was supposed to get set up yesterday, but the skirt took too long to get behaving.  I blogged about what he looked like yesterday morning.  That required 3D printing some bricks and stuff, but I still had time.  Unfortunately the skirt's on the bottom, so he had to be upside down with the legs & feet off to work on the skirt. 

 

When I flipped him back over and stuck on the remaining parts I found little things like the dome wouldn't fit: 

• Above the shoulders, I'd fixed a gap that was missing last time, he hadn't had that before, so I didn't know it'd cause clearance issues. Because of the tightness I'd left out a plate of thickness, about 1/8" and forgot it'd make the sides 1/8" too narrow.
• The left battery box hadn't been Kragle'd and tried to disassemble itself when sticking it on.
• Worst, somehow I'd messed up the center caster.  I knew the standards 3" caster didn't fit in my Lego shell, but my custom casters failed miserably.  But in the trials I found a 3" caster that seemed to work well.  I was so fixated on the fore-aft clearance I forgot about sideways, so he couldn't go backwards without the caster jamming or slamming the box to pieces.  So I gave up on Thursday.  Show didn't open 'til Friday @ 10 so I had time.  I used an early prototype and finally got his feet behaving around midnight.

Getting to the convention center was tricky.  His tie-down is actually really trivial in the minivan.  Jam the front casters into the hold-down for the far back seat (after taking out the seat) and throwing a bungee around it.  Then, with the dome off (sitting on the rear seat), stick the way-back seatbelts around the center post and let them click into being tight.  I'm used to Lego MOCs being fragile and insecure, but L3-G0 travels unbelievably well.

 

Of course that's before putting the fragile shell on it.  I thought I could lift it up, but it turned out there wasn't enough room for the bungee, so the shell came off.  That wasn't too hard, but I outsmarted myself and it was harder to put back on than I'd expected once I got to the convention center.

Once there, the fans loved him.  One seems to have found the droid they were looking for!

 



L3-G0 worked really well.  On the previous trials parts fell off and there were other small problems, like when the shoulder broke.  But he was really reliable.  Unfortunately the battery died before lunch, and I let it get really low, so it wouldn't fast-charge.  Fortunately I found a motorcycle shop that had another.  Alternating two seemed to work fine later in the day (though it's annoying to swap), but we'll see tomorrow. 

 

The worst part was the prodding of the fans.  They liked to poke.  And many wanted pictures with their hand resting on the top of his head.  Which is the most fragile part, so his head was dented a few times.  And he had an accident with his front foot, but for the most part L3-G0 was strong and ran well.

 

At the end of the day the sprockets on the bolts I'm using for axles started slipping :(  The best I can do is probably tighten the set screws in the morning and cross my fingers, but I think it'll be OK.  And maybe slow down the acceleration curve a bit.  It looks like the rest of the stuff I did to tighten up the wheels worked OK though, so it should be solvable.

 

Gotta get over to the R2-D2 Builder's Club folks sometime, which should be tricky as they're in the other building, and worse, on the other side of the trade floor.  The alternate route crosses the street and L3-G0 hates pavement (way, way, way too bumpy).

 

Need sleep, two nights up way too late.

Brickcon 2013 L3-G0 Setup

L3-G0 Made it to Brickcon!!!

Whew, that was way more complicated that I expected.  Especially since the new! lights blew up at 1:30 AM. 

But he made it, here's a quick clip of L3-G0 doing his thing and some of the other MOCs at Brickcon 2013 (Oct 6/7).

 

Robotics

Right now L3-G0 is using FOUR computers:

 

• Perhaps counterintuitively, a Lego EV3 Mindstorms to make his head spin
• An Arduino for the blinking lights.
• A Microsoft Surface for the sound effects (looping audio track)
• And a Surface Pro that programmed the Arduino and the EV3, at the moment needed to trigger the EV3 (start button's buried), and was using it to tune the dome program for the conference today and tomorrow.

L3-G0 is Ready for Brickcon!

Yippee!  All ready for Brickcon 2013 (October 5-6 at the Seattle Center)  He's not going to have feet at Brickcon because that's going to be another very huge undertaking.

 

I didn't have a ton of time to post, so a lot happened.  The dome sits on a bearing, so that had to be mounted and bolted on.  The dome also basically fell apart and had to be rebuilt... better... stronger... faster... (yes faster, and it didn't even cost me Six Million Dollars).

 

Nikita helped test the dome:



 

The bearing and dome base rest on a support that is made from the hinges that hold the panels together.  There are two motors for the Lego EV3 Mindstorms (this is the largest Mindstorms robot I've built by far).  Two because they push a lot better than they pull.  The wheels will rest on the inside of the bearing, attached to the dome of L3-G0.  On the right, near L3-G0's blue front you can see a color/light sensor.  The light sensor is used so the EV3 knows when he's facing forward.

 



And here it is with the dome base on.  You can see that the plates on the base of the dome ring are bolted to the aluminum bearing.  The bearing has a plastic support ring on top of it, also to keep it from dragging the dome bottom on the static side of the bearing.

 

The bottom of the bearing is mounted to 1/4" plywood, seen here from inside the body, before the dome ring was installed on top. 

 

 The dome itself has been strengthened, and stays together much better now.

 

Also finally got the shoulders finished.  Lots of bits weren't perfectly aligned in the Lego Digital Designer (LDD), and LDD also doesn't show you how to attach 12 pieces from different directions at the same time!  Getting everything to snap together right was a bit challenging.



I like the detail on the shoulders, and also I like the "Under Shoulder Detail" (R2 Builders Club Lingo):

 

Timelapse Video on YouTube

 

I show his dome spinning at the end.  I'll have a better video of that later, but here's what I have so far:

Building the 2nd Dome Panel Row

Hosik, a Korean foreign exchange student helped out this time, thanks Hosik!



Hosik and Darius also helped make sure the cat (devil cat?) got some cameos.

It's sort-of days 11-12. Sort of because sometimes I only get an hour or two, so I try to get those into a "day" unit, whatever that is. This part of the dome's being really hard because of the multiple curves. At least the plan is mostly working, however the incomplete sections are fairly fragile. I also took time to build up some plates where the dome will rest on the Lazy Suzan bearing. Since the dome was already partially built, I did that from the bottom.

Also got the eye done!  The eye was challenging because the shapes don't align very well to actual brick sizes and shapes.

 

The logic display also looks particularly nice with a flashlight behind it.  This was fairly challenging to get all of the panels to fit next to each other and provide enough structure for the panels above and below.  It was rebuilt several times.

 

Its starting to get there.  I'm so focused on the detail that I miss the big picture sometimes.  A few times L3-G0's gotten my skin crawling when I walk into the room after stepping away.  Then it's like "who put that R2-D2 in my kitchen?"



Time Lapse Video for the Middle Dome Layer

 

Front Vents and Dome Ring

The last few days were complicated.

Saturday I took the body to the SEALUG meeting (Seattle Lego Users Group), and it fell apart in the car when I braked for a stop sign. Internally there's some hidden hinges that didn't really have a ton of surface area.  We cleaned up some to make the body sturdier. Now the hinges connect to the body panels with nearly 3 times the surface area. It might still need some glue to be motorized, but it should at least not fall apart.

The front vents weren't done earlier because the hole in the front panel needed to move a little from the original plans. Additionally, LDD let us have some error in the brick attachments that didn't work in the real world.  It took quite a bit of effort to get the panels securely attached. At one point there was a quarter-plate difference in height between the vents and the hole to attach them. I have no clue how to move something 1/4 plate, and it was too loose as it was. I fixed it by making the middle blue stripe slightly wider, it was a single stud (2.5 plates), now it's 3 plates. I also noticed a few missing outline tiles.

 

We also started on the dome ring, which was tricky because the original design had some pretty big flaws. (Lego Digital Designer doesn't really tell you if stuff is structural or not).  The ring portion is complicated because the middle bricks of each section are offset by 1/2 stud to help the illusion of being round.  Complicating matters are a couple slits that go the circumference of the dome, which we did by recessing the plates there by another 1/2 stud.  It took a little work to get everything secure

Time Lapse Youtube Video

The horses get to go on a carousel ride.

Barrels of L3-G0 Fun!

I skipped posting for "day 5" because it was sort of short due to my birthday activities, and because what was built (parts of the body) looked a lot like what you've already seen.  So days 5 & 6 are combined.

The back is done, but, as mentioned, it's pretty much like what you saw before, but a little bigger.

 

However, the front is also mostly done (except for the front vents).  The utility arms are probably the least detailed part on L3-G0, "the plan" is to improve L3-G0 over time.  Adding arms seemed like it'd take a while to figure out, without adding much.  Eventually we'll probably have doors and other stuff, and maybe even utility arms, but the first goal is just to get him built!  It's Lego, so we can update him later as needed. 

The kittens have a different plan for L3-G0.  They think he makes a nifty cat house or cat toy.  Cats love boxes and I guess they decided his body is a box.  The missing vent is apparently a perfect kitten door.  (I confess to using the streamer to get him to pose for the camera, but the kittens were the ones that started climbing into, and over, the body.  The also think the loose Lego bricks are great toys.)

 

The day 5/6 time lapse video 

Happy Birthday

There was an interruption of the construction and posting because of my (Shawn's) birthday.  A few more body panels were done, those'll get posted later.  Thanks everyone for the party and the presents!!!

The party was Star Wars L3-G0 themed for some reason, Lara got perfect cake!!!  (Apparently getting someone to print L3-G0) was a ton of work, but I really liked it.

 

And I got Brainz!!!!  L3-G0 will probably appreciate this.  Granted it's going to need a *lot* of help to make an EV3 control L3-G0, but it seems like a Lego Astromech's brain should be a Lego computer. 

 

And that's pretty much it for the birthday photos.  We gave the camera to our teenage son, so most of the rest of the Shawn's birthday party photos are Darius' selfies :)

Filling Holes

Yippee, most of the rest of the bricks arrived (there are still a couple where we were short for various reasons, but that won't stop us).

So this post is "filling holes" in the parts we already built, along with some better photos once the right parts are in place

First I added the little gray ring on the tippy top of the dome, only one brick, but a pretty big detail

 

Next was filling in mostly the missing tiles on the body.  Some of the white tiles for the panel outlines were missing, as well as tiles on the vents and some of the coin return slopes.

 

Detail of the side vent, notice that the blue parts are recessed.

The quarter of the body that fits together so far (3 other panels are done, but they're the same or mirrors of these and don't directly connect).

 



Next, the legs.  I really like the detail on the leg strut and it's angled square top.  Also the complex curves where the notches are, and at the top of the booster cover under where the shoulder hub will go.  We were missing the little slope parts and some tiles to make this all work.

 

Top of strut in booster cover:

Notches recessed in a curve in the booster cover:

 

Complex curves at the top of the booster cover:

The center foot was also missing a couple square plates on one side, but the photo isn't really different than before, so I didn't include it.  Also the side "footprints" were also missing square plates, but they're not very far along, so I'll photograph them when I do the rest.

 

Lastly, I fixed the colors around the bottom edge of the Holoprojectors and removed the shim plates, so they look a lot better:

Next up is probably more of the body, probably starting with the rest of the back since the two remaining back panels would allow me to connect 8 of the 12 body panels.

Time lapse of filling holes and the resulting parts

Building on Day 4 - Starting the Body!

The parts we needed for the body arrived!!!  We're still waiting on ~1500 of the original ordered parts (a little bit of rework has caused us to order a little more since then).  So there're still some gaps for parts.  Considering it's 15K+ parts, we've done great missing 10% of the bricks!

The body is 12 panels, and I started on six of the easiest.  Mostly because they're either identical pairs or mirrors.  So that's about half of the body!  (just the easy half).  3 of them are contiguous, the next two holes in this photo need an additional panel, and the last two go next to each other (despite the gap in the photo).  You can see the missing bricks :(

 



Three are next to each other, so we can see how they fit.  If you can get over the missing bricks, you can get an idea of the 3-D detail.  I'll probably take some close ups when we get the other bricks filled in.

And an idea of the scale, Lara posing with the partial body.

 

Time lapse video for day 4

(All 3 cats interrupted the video, they like playing with the loose bricks.  Additionally there's.... horses?)

Building Session Three

Well, something about having to work, so I didn't get daily updates.  Instead the bits are interrupted and built over a few days.

We still don't have all of the parts, so there's a few holes to fill in the results, but there's a good start on the skirt (under the body), the very top of the dome (I thought I had all the parts, but it's missing a little gray ring), and the legs.

Worked on the skirt first (daughter realized it's his butt, what do you expect from a teenager?)  Unfortunately we're missing a bunch of the "wing" pieces to round out the edges :(

It's also a bit "wobbly" because the hinges let it bend, but that'll get fixed later.  Even so, I think it's looking pretty good.  (Photos are with the skirt upside down).



I thought I had all of the parts for the tippy top of the dome (above the pie plates), so I figured I'd whip that out in about 10 seconds.  Unfortunately I'm still waiting for a little ring on the very top.  (Hopefully tomorrow).  I was able to use the flying saucer or whatever they're called parts for this part of the dome.  The angles and sizes matched surprisingly well for that.

More successfully I worked on the legs.  Again, some parts are missing, but I got further, including some complicated stuff.  Obviously they're incomplete, but I'm reasonably happy with the detail.

 

One thing I realized looking at a photo of a real R2 is that my legs seem a bit tall.  I was expecting them to attach to the plate on top of the ankle, but the distance between the notch and the bottom seems longer than on the real photo.

 

Coincidentally, the R2 builders group had a thread today that mentioned "standard" and "extended" legs.  I wonder if I followed plans for "extended"?  Clearly there's some measuring in my future to make sure I get them the right height.

 

Top is missing some of the slopes to make the recess rounded (it's a pretty complex curve), but here's the top so far.  Hopefully the slopes come today:

Time Lapse of Phase 3 Building: