Some bits of L3-G0's Innards

I was poking around looking for some of my pictures to show off and couldn't find them, so I've uploaded them to an album on Flickr... 

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!

Star Wars Day, May the 4th be With You!

(General L3-G0 Video is at http://youtube.com/myL3G0 if you are just looking for Lego R2D2 videos)

@()$*&)(*& Sandpeople!



L3-G0 faceplant, @#$_()* Sandpeople!

I was running a little bit late, so I let us be a little rushed and didn't watch for sidewalk cracks close enough (I even thought about it and figured the 2 I could see were OK so the 3rd was probably good), and L3-G0's body tripped as I was trying to get it out of the slight drizzle. 

His right shoulder got mangled again, and one of the front panels screws got pulled out.  A few bricks were scratched or dented and I'll probably replace them.

On the plus side, I don't think I have another picture of the bottom of his feet, and from the label I can now clearly tell which one is the Right Foot!  (As if I didn't know).

Fortunately the 501st was there, though where an Imperial learned to repair Lego Astromechs is beyond me.



L3-G0 the Lego R2-D2 and a 501st Jawa

501st trying to repair L3-G0 the Lego R2D2

Unfortunately he missed the group photo while I put his shoulder back together, but I got a couple more photos with the 501st.

L3-G0 the Lego R2D2 with some of the 501st

L3-G0 considering a Tuskan Raider

Probably even more dangerous than the face plant was a run-in with a Sarlacc, I mean Gus Lopez, a Star Wars... collector!  Fortunately the endorphin rush Gus got from bagging a stuffed Bantha allowed L3-G0 to slip away...


No Gus, you may not collect L3-G0 the Lego R2-D2 :)

(I'm not quite sure what's up with the pigeon-toed Sandtrooper, I guess he's still looking for the right droids :-)

 

After going back home (and finding my daughter who managed to vanish) we went back out to the mall for a few minutes.  Apparently the Minifig he bought at Comicon wasn't enough for him.

 

First stop was to check out the Lego store. I tried explaining the birds and the bees, but apparently I didn't make the right beeps and whistles, so L3-G0's still trying to figure out where he came from.

L3-G0, the Lego R2-D2 trying to figure out from whence he came

After my earlier wipe out (and random stranger kids wonder why we don't let them at the remote control), my daughter insisted that she be the one with the controls.  I'm not quite sure if it was her or L3-G0 that wanted to look at XBox One games...



L3-G0 the Lego R2D2 perusing a shelf of XBox One games

 Since it was Star Wars Day, we ran into the obligatory Princess Leia hairdo of course!


L3-G0 with a fan on Star Wars Day

And as if L3-G0's ''where did I come from?" question wasn't confusing enough already, we ended up at the Disney store.  (Looking for one of those Banthas Gus had showed us.)  Everyone there learned that, in addition to several Star Wars classics, L3-G0 already knows the Disney production logo theme "When You Wish Upon a Star" as well as "Let it Go".


L3-G0 at the local Disney Store



 Anyway, that was L3-G0's Star Wars Day, May the 4th be With You!

Emerald City Comicon 2014

L3-G0, a life size Lego R2-D2 attended ECCC (Emerald City Comicon) in 2014.  It took me a bit to get the video and stuff organized, I've been busy, so the post's been delayed.

In case you're new here, as far as I know this is the first time a complete full sized Lego R2-D2 has been displayed in public.  L3-G0's been "out" a couple times (at Microsoft, Lowe's and a Sealug meeting), but not with all his bits.

By completed I mean that as in "just completed."  The last bit got complicated and he didn't show up until nearly the last minute before the doors opened.

We had tons of fun with L3-G0 at Comic Con, here's the aforementioned video:

The video has several short segments I thought showed pretty much the experience, skip ahead if you don't like a piece, the parts get better.

• L3-G0 with some of the fans taking pictures, even Unikitty!
• The astromech parade with other Pacific NW R2 Builders Club R2-D2s and other droids.
• The crowd and going back to "Brick Nation" where the Lego exhibits were.
• A short encounter with a taller pirate.
• Darth Lily, one of L3-G0's more enthusiastic fans.
• L3-G0's shopping spree, it is a con after all, you've gotta buy something!
• Keeping all those pesky Daleks away from Brick Nation.

People don't seem to be getting past the first bits so I might post individual videos later, however if you want to share only one bit with your friends, YouTube lets you share starting at a certain time.  Or just ask them to skip to 3:57 or whatever.

I forgot to include a bit on packing him up :(  Too bad you can't edit YouTube videos.

Some photos as well:

Darth Lily comforting R2-D2 after she scared him so badly.  She was cute enough she has her own post

Darth Lily comforting R2-D2 after she scared him so badly.

L3-G0's on the right with the other club droids.  It's kinda cool to see him next to the other droids.
The ankle details on his right ankle are backwards, fortunately it's hiding in this photo.  I was so mortified when I noticed that a couple weeks after the con.

Pacific NW R2 Builder's Club droids all lined up

I liked this nook while waiting for the droid parade.  Reminds me of Jabba's Palace for whatever reason.  (Not saying anyone else would make that jump, but I did).


L3-G0, Lego R2-D2 in a nook

What's a Lego exhibition without a Unikitty?  Unikitty came to see L3-G0.

Unikitty posing with L3-G0

Eventually it all ended :(


L3-G0 packed up and ready to go home

Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoyed the ECCC 2014 report.

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.

Group photo at ECCC

Photo of L3-G0 with other R2 Builders Club astromechs here at ECCC.

It was great finally meeting other club members up here.

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.

Latest Video

Still needs legs and a few other details, but lights and sound are working now!  He went on another test run at work (Microsoft Building 50).  Afterward we took a spin through the café where he got quite a few pictures taken.

Latest video:

Sealug Meeting

L3-G0's not done yet, but he's getting there!  We went on a test run to the Sealug meeting, which was held at ECCC's headquarters.  The kids loved chasing around a life size R2-D2 and were willing to look past his partially completed state.

He's obviously missing his legs/shoulders, skirt, front foot skin and a few other details, but I wanted to test transporting him and see what problems I might encounter, and where he might fall to pieces.  I don't want to be spending all of Emerald City Comicon fixing him!  Sounds are also still on a random loop, and he has no dome LEDs at the moment (which means he can spin his head a ton).

I have some video of his outing, the meeting starts about 40 seconds into the clip.  I took a week off work to make a big push to get him from frame to nearly complete:


I didn't think I was going to get the dome reattached before the meeting, but Lara prodded me and it was mostly reconnected just in time (I was a few minutes late).

The test outing was a great success, we learned tons that we'll need to know for ECCC later in the month:

• He does great with his new shoulders in the car.  Tying down's going to be tricky when the front foot cover gets on, but otherwise much more stable than when I took the frame to work.
• The new shoulders (laminated plywood) seem to be doing OK.  Since he has 4 wheels in each foot, there's a lot of stress when he turns because some of the wheels have to slip.  That pretty much destroyed the old thinner shoulder hub.  I'd expected to need aluminum, but the plywood's doing OK.
• On a related note, when turning hard, the feet can chatter a lot, enough to knock off the battery box (at 60 seconds in the clip one of them is missing).  The outer foot panels chatter too.
• He can spin his head fast enough to throw off a holoprojector, which happens at about 1:20 in the video.
• With the throttle limit off on the motors he has pretty much a perfect amount of power, much faster than walking, but not so quick as to be uncontrollable or unrealistic.  (My previous outing was limiting the motor controllers and he was just under walking speed).
• He looks funny without shoulders :)
• The vibration from pavement or even a sidewalk is a bit scary, he knocked a couple dome panels loose that way.
• The body held up really well.
• L3-G0 knew to expect rain in Seattle, but it started to snow at the end!

We still have a ton to do before ECCC, crossing my fingers that we can get it all done!  L3-G0 will be in "Brick Nation" at ECCC, the biggest Lego display yet at Emerald City Comicon.  Ground floor of The Conference Center building.

Starting to get back together

Update for my L3-G0 build, the full size Lego R2-D2.

It's like cleaning where things get worse before they get better.  Finally he's starting to get back together WITH his frame!

He was upside down a bit while I tried to figure out the skirt (built back on "Day 3", but haven't had anything to attach it to until now.... and now it's not right :(

 

And unfortunately the shim that the dome's bearing is on didn't fit once the body was bolted together.  The original shim was hand cut, but now the body is in a laser cut 12-sided shape.  Apparently without a frame it had more play.

 

Even worse, the (@*&#()*%& bearing didn't come with properly spaced holes, so I had to get at the bearing to transfer the bolt holes correctly.  And the bearing was on the bottom of the dome.  I almost got away with having the dome upside down, but it didn't survive :(



I'm hoping to get the dome back together for the Sealug meeting tomorrow, but it might not happen.  He obviously isn't complete, but I'm hoping to see how well he transports.  I'd rather mess up tomorrow with weeks to fix it than mess up on the way to Emerald City Comicon and have a few hours to fix it!.

L3-G0's Frame Test Run!

Warning:  Reader Discretion Advised.  This post contains discussion, photos and video of the naked interior of a Lego model as filmed by my wife.  (People who searched for some of those keywords may be disappointed by this post.)

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This part has been a bit tricky, so it's been a while since I posted.  But it's starting to get there.

For Brickcon we pretty much had L3-G0's entire body built and ready, head moving, computers making noise, etc.  All that is pretty cool, but he was just sitting on a table, and we want him to move, run around the room, scare the cats, and all that.

To do that, we need some sort of "frame" to hold all the Lego together.  Something that won't shake apart on a rough sidewalk.  We investigated using Lego, like Technic bricks, but L3-G0 is pretty big and heavy.  The original model had a single Technic pin connecting the ankles, which clearly wouldn't work.  So we settled on wood and aluminum.



This is from a test run of the frame.  He's jury-rigged to move so that I can test how sound the design of the frame is.  Hopefully I'll shake out any structural issues before he gets his skin on.

He's RC controlled, like a model airplane, with 2 channels being mixed using the radio's v-tail mode to control the left & right motors.  So he ends up driving like a tank, though the control is with a single stick.

The motors are like what you'd use in a kid's electric scooter, and he's 8 wheel drive!!! (which actually isn't great).  The RC receiver outputs for 2 & 4 go to the motor controllers, which can be configured by computer.  There's a tiny acceleration/deceleration delay so that he doesn't slam the chains, which seems about right.  The motor controllers are also throttled at about 1/2 power because I didn't want to have a short or something and have the frame got out of control.  That'll have to be increased for real.  The speed's about right on smooth floor, but on carpet it's a bit slow, and it'll be even slower with another 30 pounds of Lego bricks on it!

Gory Details

The frame is mostly aluminum t-slot, with some brackets and stuff to help out.  I want him to eventually do "2-3-2", which is going from two legged mode to three legged mode and back.  Because of that his shoulders have a round bearing.  The insides are connected to a huge t-slot beam, and the outside edges have a smaller bar connecting them (to keep them in sync - theoretically).

Along with that theme, the center leg would need to retract, so the center foot is on a single t-slot rail, hooked up to a linear bearing (above the middle plate, behind the battery in the video).  At that point there are two fixed rails that go up (the ones sticking out the top).  The center foot bearing can slide all the way to the top.

However, I've put a stop on the center leg for now, and the bottom ankle hinge is fixed.  The outside legs are hinged in the middle, but they've got lots of wheels, unlike the front foot.  With the current single wheel, the front foot would fall over if the ankle wasn't rigid.

The single foot was really loud when I hooked it directly up to the battery, but the noise on the frame isn't bad at all with both motors regulated and running more slowly.

The ankles are currently 3 layers of plywood glued together.  Originally the front ankle was a single layer, but that snapped pretty quickly and I rebuilt it.  There's a brass collar through the wood where the ankle pivots on the foot.

With the flexible ankles I figured I needed front & rear wheels, and for various reasons I chose 3" roller blade wheels. Of course, it's more stable if the foot has 4 wheels, so I did that too. And then I powered both axles. The chain runs under the foot, so I probably don't want to get on very rough or dirty surfaces.

What I realized a bit belatedly is that with 4 wheels in the corner of the foot, it's kind of "hard" to make him turn like a tank. Quite a few wheels have to slip sideways for a tank turn to work. It seems "good enough" for now though, and isn't too bad if I make wide turns. OTOH, if I rapidly switch directions, he wiggles like when Kenny Baker throws R2 around.

Test Results

I took it to work twice to see where the problems were.  Astromechs have a terrible problem with the front foot and bumps.  He did OK at first, but the impact seemed to weaken the joints, so he started folding up the legs.  If the front wheel stops, the power of the side legs is pretty impressive, they try to keep pushing. 

The first day, I'd zip-tied the beam connecting the outer hubs together to the top, so that he'd be stuck in three legged position.  However the beam is actually 3 parts because it has to avoid the center mount for the center foot.  Those joints proved weak on repeated banging into sidewalk cracks, and eventually the legs started folding up. 

In the car I'd tied him down with bungies to a tie point in the middle, which worked going to work, but on the way back I basically (gently) turned a corner and the bungies pulled all the feet together, his legs folded up and he fell over.

That also knocked the battery loose and trying to get him back upright I bumped one of the wires into the other terminal.  Fortunately it was only a momentary contact (melting the wire helped), but I probably want to do something about capping the terminals.  I'll have a better mount when I do it "for real", but better safe than sorry (it's an 18 Ah 12V lithium iron phosphate battery, like Tesla uses, but tinier).

2nd Test

I drilled a hole in the shoulder hubs and bolted them together to keep the feet from rotating.  Because the hubs are currently wood, it didn't work too well, but it helped my zip-tie thing.

The rear feet frames are also laser cut, and seem OK that way. The Lego brick shell fits nicely over the frames, almost perfect on the first try (close enough I'm not going to fix it). The wood's a tiny bit flexible, but way lighter than aluminum.  I put one of the Lego foot shells on for the second test to make sure that the Lego didn't vibrate apart.

I zipped by the company store to our makerspace to show off the parts I'd made on the laser cutter.  Even when he's just a bare frame people stop and gawk, and most recognize what he'll eventually be when he gets his skin on!

The second test seemed to go way better, but I noticed that the legs "wander" in and out a little (toward and away from the body). 

I'm not quite sure what happened, but on the way back to the car, one of the outer shoulder hubs cracked and he started doing the splits.  That was sort of expected, we've planned to replace the plywood with aluminum there, but it wasn't great timing, he was in the driveway, and a delivery truck chose that instant to start "beep beep beep" backing up.

I didn't really want the frame run over, so I picked him up to carry to the sidewalk, and the other leg fell off!  The four bolts near the hub had worked themselves loose a tad apparently.  That's not really a problem, but I'm clearly going to have to find a better way to secure it.  I'd noticed that several other bolts seem to have vibrated themselves a tad looser.

At home I took a closer look, and the brass inserts in the ankles are also working their way loose in the wood.  I'd already thought about making the ankles out of aluminum, but that seems more likely. 

I don't quite get chills watching the naked frame run around, but my wife thinks he's already getting a personality.

I can't wait to get the bricks on and get him back together. I sure hope I can make ECCC in March.

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:

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.

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