Brickcon 2015!

Subtitle: how to be completely out-of-sync since I haven't even posted about (much) earlier events....  Oh well.

This weekend was Brickcon 2015, one of the biggest Lego conventions around.  Tons of "well known" Lego artists show stuff there, and we've been going most recent years.  We represented the R2-D2 Builder's Club, showing off the banner we picked up at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim.


L3-G0 and MCK-Y, Lego Droids at BrickCon 2015

MCK-Y the Mouse Droid and I had tons of fun entertaining folks 

Entertaining kids at BrickCon

On Saturday we had some excitement when the fire alarm went off.  Apparently some mom had her kiddo in one of those backpack things, and was leaning against the wall to rest.  When she went to leave, the kid was apparently really curious about this thing attached to the wall and tried to hang on.
Lara was wrangling L3-G0 at the time and was wondering what kind of whacky noise she'd triggered!

 

MCK-Y also took it upon himself to go entertain some of the folks in the crowd outside waiting to get tickets (there's often a line, particularly in the morning).  Unfortunately, he also tried to test the strength of this wall by backing into it!
The line curved around this shallow fountain, so MCK-Y decided to show off his off-road skillz!



Lego Mouse Droid driving through fountain!

Here are some of the other MOCs (My Own Creation, 'cept that these other people's creations, it's a Lego Builder acronym for things they make).

Cool Lighthouse, 2nd place in People's Choice



Nifty Lego Mosaic, Our Neighbor won an Mosaic award



These computers were also our neighbors, Look at those Lego cases!

On Sunday we were privileged to receive the BrickCon 2015 People's Choice Award.  What a cool honor!  We're glad you liked L3-G0 and MCK-Y, and thanks to everyone who voted for us.  We go to the cons because like showing off the droids for the crowds, especially when folks are excited and curious, but we don't mind winning prizes :)  There were tons of other great and deserving Lego Creations at the show, so we're thrilled and humbled that you chose us.

L3-G0 with People's Choice Award

L3-G0 trying the People's Choice Trophy on as a hat!

Now maybe I'll get around to posting some of the things that happened earlier in the year...

 

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... 

R2-D2 in Star Trek Redshirt Costume

Well, L3-G0 decided to crash a Star Trek convention.  And, of course if you're gonna mix canons like that, your gonna need a costume:


Lego R2-D2 wearing Star Trek Redshirt

Our daughter has been collecting signatures, so we wanted to see some of the stars, and Lara thought it would be a good idea to bring L3-G0.  I wasn't so sure, but she had the idea for the red shirt.  Of course we put off actually making the costume 'til the last minute.  Anyway it turned out pretty fun.

Artoo wasn't the only cosplayer there:


R2-D2 with Star Trek Cosplay

Of course, there were scarier things than Klingons:


Borg with Artoo Red Shirt

Artoo did get to meet some of the Star Trek talent.  Some of them left early and missed him, but Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis, Denise Crosby and John De Lancie all got a chance to say hi to him.  They also had some talks that were pretty enjoyable with funny anecdotes, their an entertaining crowd.  (I guess that's their job.)

Marina was really funny.  She saw R2 in his red shirt and whipped out her phone... a Blackberry... asking if she could tweet a picture.  There was lots of tapping and phone wrangling, but finally she held it out to take a picture... Whoops, another one... And another.  Finally she apparently has a picture and taps a bunch more (all the while insisting she loves her Blackberry).  Viola, she announces that she's done it and posted the pix to twitter.

Curious about this 5 minute picture taking of course I check twitter when we move on:

The universes collide!!!! R2D2 in a starfleet shirt!!!
— Marina Sirtis (@Marina_Sirtis) December 14, 2014

Hilarious, all that and no photo :)

Later in the day the talent had no visitors, so we went back and let her know about the faux pas.  It didn't take as long this time:

OK OK I know I'm dumb. Here's the pic of R2D2 pic.twitter.com/PPiGFOHRoT
— Marina Sirtis (@Marina_Sirtis) December 15, 2014

I know she likes that phone, but maybe she wants one with a better camera, just sayin'.  Anyway, thanks a ton to Marina for providing us with such a fun story and memories.

Another hilarious bit was when the talent first arrived.  Apparently they had been told to bring photos, but Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes apparently hadn't been listening.  Marina was like "men".  Brent was griping and grouching, digging around his bag and pulled out the only shot he could find, all bent and torn, turning around and asking the fans if they'd buy that.  (Someone did scrounge up some stills for them eventually.)

In short, we had as much fun as Lara predicted, and he was better received than I expected, considering that we had the wrong genre.  I guess we're all just geeks. 



L3-G0 (in costume) saying hi to famous people

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 :)

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.

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.