Can Lego Bricks be Jinxed?

L3-G0 went to a small school's kid's dance last night. Everyone had a great time, and he danced with some of the kids.

Most of the kids at the school knew L3-G0 already, but they were happy that he could join in. Given the environment, there was a lot of touching and stuff, and eventually there was a small accident with his LEFT shoulder, which had to be repaired. And made me wonder if bricks can be cursed?

Is it possible to have unlucky bricks? Cursed? Jinxed? Did I run afoul of a Voodoo Doctor somewhere?

You see, there's a kind of Déjà vu here...

On the completed L3-G0's first outing, to Emerald City Comicon (ECCC), there was a bit of a mishap.  He was driving along and the escalator reached it's rail out to smash him in the right shoulder.  (I'm sure that's what happened, I would have never driven that close to the rail!)  Since the escalator was moving, bricks when flying everywhere.  Huge gasp from the crowd.  Very impressive.  We even got censured by security and prohibited from the escalator for some reason.

Then a bit later we took L3-G0 out to a friend's bookstore for Star Wars Day.  May the Fourth be With You!  Unfortunately there was an earthquake which opened a gap in the sidewalk, tripping L3-G0 and causing a faceplant, along with the right shoulder.  (I'm sure it was an earthquake, this is Seattle after all.  I'm sure it wasn't something so mundane as me trying to outrun the rain and not looking at the crack!)

(Ironically this is one of my favorite pictures of him.  I just love the Tuskan Raider's expression - it was he who invited me, and this is before the event I was supposed to participate in).
 

Wrecked Lego R2-D2

You don't get it, I know.  How is he cursed if those were the right shoulder, but the party broke the left.  Patience young Padawan, I'm getting there...

Next time the curse struck was at Rose City Comicon (RCCC, kinda like ECCC, but smaller).  Things were going well, but one of the vendors shoved his table out into his shoulder as I turned the corner (I'm sure that's what happened, I mean he looked nice and all, and the table was loaded with stuff so it looked like it couldn't possibly move, but there's no way I was inept enough to drive down a 50 foot path and smash into a table on one side).

You guessed it, the right shoulder was destroyed AGAIN!!!!  No pix, sorry.  Of course we're getting better at fixing the shoulder by now.

Mishap #4 was back at that accursed book store.  This time it was an endcap full of books that attacked.  Darth Vader was there and may have used the Dark Side to yank L3-G0 into the books.  This time we were picking right shoulder bricks out from between the books.

We had uneventful trips to Children's and some schools and work and stuff, but then it was time for Star Wars Celebration, Anaheim.  Which I know I still need to blog about, but until then he has some pix on facebook.

On the way down we stopped in Endor (Redwoods park) to take a cool photograph.  Unfortunately Lara stumbled.  I'm sure she was falling away from R2, but at the last instant she jumped towards him and smashed down on the... wait for it... right shoulder!  (You could've guessed by now.  The fifth time we smashed his right shoulder).  Fortunately a couple kind schoolteachers helped get the bricks out of the dirt and a while later we were ready for the pictures.


L3-G0 smashed shoulder on Endor (Redwood's National Park)

After several stops (including LEGOLAND) we reached Celebration!  And there was a lot of activity, running around, launching lightsabers and generally showing off, which all went pretty smoothly.

Buttons Front!

R2 Builders have had huge debates and discussions about "Buttons Front" or "Buttons Back".  You see, at the top of his legs, each of Artoo's shoulder has 2 buttons on one side and a hydraulic bar on the other side.  Unfortunately the legs are kind of interchangeable, so in some scenes and movies, they're flipped, sometimes buttons are front, sometimes buttons are back.

At Celebration we met Lee and Oliver, a couple great fellow builders who built R2-D2 for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens!  (Way to go guys, he looks great!)  Anyway, building Artoo for the movie they had to make a decision, and the decided "Buttons Front."

That's all well and good, however L3-G0 was built "Buttons Back".  I don't remember all of my reasoning, but thought about flipping the shoulders.  On day three, we were hanging out by the Sandcrawler, and someone teased us that Oliver had said "Buttons Front". 

I was like "fine", and ripped the shoulders off and flipped them, putting the left shoulder on the right side and the left on the right.  I think I surprised him, most builders are pretty picky about the buttons decision.  They're symmetrical so it was pretty easy and I'd been thinking about it anyway.  I thought it looked a little funny at first, but now I don't notice.

What do Buttons have to do with this story?

Now that you ask, an interesting thing happened.  A little bit after I swapped the shoulders we had what I call "The Great Parking of the Droids".  We all got together for a group photo.  As you can imagine, it took forever, but it was tons of fun.  Notice the buttons front in the picture.

The Great Parking of the Droids, L3-G0 and R2-KT

Of course there was lots of maneuvering and people getting their droids into place. During all of that activity someone was a little unbalanced and reached for... wait for it.... Can you guess?  L3-G0's LEFT shoulder.  Small pile of bricks on the floor, fortunately not too bad of a fix.

Got that?  His right shoulder was smashed 5 times, then we flipped the bricks around and the next time it was the left shoulder, SAME BRICKS!  They must be cursed.

Which brings us back to the dance.  No picture, but there was a small oops and L3-G0's left shoulder fell apart onto the dance floor.  Now it's twice since moving the bricks to the other side.

So Can Lego Bricks be Jinxed?

L3-G0 is made out of Lego, and all sorts of things happen, his feet have to be snapped back together quite often as that what sticks out the most.  His head gets dizzy and bricks wiggle loose.  The dog's stepped on his head.  We've fried electronics, etc, etc.  But smashed shoulders is one of the most annoying problems and he's had his shoulders destroyed a total of 7 times now.  It's been different shoulders now, but the same bricks all seven times!

The totally random odds of having two shoulders and smashing the same shoulder bricks 7 times in a row is 1 in 128.  Kind of between the odds of rolling double sixes on 2 dice and triple sixes on 3 dice.  I use to think I was just leading with the right shoulder somehow, but now???  I thought it was bad when it was 4 in a row.

I think he's got some cursed bricks.  Maybe they were bought from a seller that runs a Voodoo shop on the side or something.  Somehow his bricks have been jinxed.  Maybe it's just the main ones that connect to the rest of the leg.  Maybe it's the whole thing.  At least I know which side is L3-G0's unlucky one!

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!

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.

Little Darth Vader (Darth Lily?) Loves R2-D2

One of the fans attending ECCC, Lily, was dressed up as Darth Vader when she came to visit L3-G0.  Her dad asked her to go put on her Vader mask and pose with R2-D2.  As she came up, "R2" saw "Vader", made his sad sound and backed up.  She came closer and he did it again.  And again.

Lily didn't like R2 being sad, so she took it off and showed him it was just a mask.  Then she gave R2 a hug to comfort him.  She talked to him a lot saying how she saw his movie and he was her favorite robot and other stuff again. 

Everyone wanted to put the mask back on again to take pictures, but she didn't want to scare R2 again.  They "talked" a bit, and her dad translated his beeping as really wanting to be scared again.  She asked if he was sure and I managed to hit a button that did a somewhat positive sounding beep.  Reluctantly she put the mask on again, and when he shuddered again, she quickly ripped it off and gave him a hug.

Normally L3-G0's a "don't touch", but Lily was so short and concerned and gentle I wasn't worried.  It's the kids patting him on the head that cave in the dome, or people tripping over his feet (I've learned R2 has big feet). 

Thanks to Lily and her parents for letting us share her picture and video.  I start this clip just before Lily so you can see just why he's so scared of her costume.


Yes, Lily, L3-G0/R2-D2 hasn't forgotten your name :)

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.

Umm, when is ECCC?

Emerald City Comicon's tonight.  L3-G0's gonna be working, flashing lights, sound and everything, right?!!?!?!?

He's decapitated, and the body's upside down!  And doesn't that 3D printer look like its on and running to you?  Hope it's nothing critical.

 

The table's covered with a pile of parts, tools everywhere.

And his legs are off and the insides of his feet are showing.



I'm supposed to be at Emerald City Comicon when!!?  Maybe I should show him as R2-D2 in the droid factory.

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.