More donated parts

So George was kind enough to also donate 2 resin octagon ports.  They need a little cleaning up and one little piece fixed but I think it's doable.

This brings my list of donated parts to:

Alu restraining bolt v1 with earth magnet - Mike

(3) Clear HP lens - George

(2) Resin octagon ports - George

DroidCONduino kit ordered

Ordered a DroidCONduino kits minus the PCB from the infamous Michael Erwin.  Don't know if I'll use it anytime soon but I'd like to play with the I2C setup with the RSeries controller system later on.

Dome progress and error

Got some work done on the inner dome.  I wound up cutting the top off the inner dome as well as cutting the lower portion open so I can size it properly.  I need to get some bolts for the hinges in the upper portion of the inner dome so that its read to be bonded in. Then I can work more on the lower section.  So my first error turns out to be the fact I cut out all the pie panels on the inner dome including the section where the upper HP is supposed to go which I wasn't supposed to cut out.  I don't think this is going to be a real problem though as I can easily add in a replacement.  Looking at how the HP rings go in I think this might be a blessing in disguise.  We'll see once the new HPs arrive and I can look at how they go together.

HPs and radar eye

Ordered a set of 3 HPs as well as a resin radar eye from WORR.  They should ship out this weekend. The HP lenses the George was gracious to donate to my droid should complete the HPs nicely.  I just need to see about picking up some locking rings to hold the lenses in place.  

Of course that means I'm gonna need to decide on a paint and method.  I think I'd like to include the Rub-n-Buff I've read about on the forums.  Have to see where to get some but it's gonna be a while before I need it since that's the last step after any weathering I decide to do.

Should pick up some PSI diffusers on Thursday from Mike.  I think this completes the external parts for my dome so I can hopefully start painting and assembling soon.  I'll check with the guys and see if I am missing anything.  I do need servos for all the pie panels but I plan to add those later.

Hinges delivered

So the hinges arrived today.  Some loose test fitting looks like the will fit.  I may have to cut a small notch for the hinge in the inner skin to place the hinge correctly but I don't have an issue with that.  The small screw in the pivot point lets me tighten the hinge as needed for tension and eliminate the small wobble.  The arm has nice attachment points for the servos so I am hoping these will work well.

Teeces udate

I finally broke down and bought a desoldering iron.  After the second failed attempt to replace/fix and LED on FLDs I'd had enough.   With the desoldering iron, replacing the LEDs is a snap and it doesn't burn out the replacements trying to fight it through the old solder.  (Go figure) So now all my Logic LEDs work.  YAY!

Been slowly working on Logic sketch to integrate JawaLite into the Teeces Logics.  The Arduino implementation of C is not perfect.  Tried to make some nested CASE block inside an IF/ELSE statment and Arduino doens't like it.  Not sure why as from what I can find online other people say it should be possible.  For now I've had to write teh sketch to include some duplicate code that the nested CASE statements would have avoided but at least I can now use either Latin or Aurebesh lettering.  I still have to hard code which to use until I figure out the "sending/receiving" of strings from the Marcduino.

On the down side, I am beginning to suspect that George was right when he mentioned that he didn't think the Pro Mini would have enough memory to hold all the code needed for the different Jawalite commands needed.  I may have to upgrade to the Micro as it has double the memory.  We'll just have to see what happens as the code grows.  I'm probably gonna wind up commenting code sections out as I work on other pieces and then put the whole thing together at the end.

Wow, its been a while since my last update.  Lets see, whats happened since.

1.  Maker's Faire was fun and I got to meet more of the local KS builders.

2. I've done some work on my dome and also made my first mistake.  Pics and details to come soon.

3.  Local Builders had a build day over at George's place.  That was fantastic.  Learned a lot about what I got ahead of me and some things to watch out for.  I think Brandon was the one who pointed out that I made a mistake on my dome inner skin.  (see updated item 2)

4.  I've ordered some hinges from China that I think are going to be great for the dome Pie panels.   they are plastic and come with ready made attachment points for servo linkages.  They are pretty in-expensive too but the shipping wait is annoying so I ordered 3 sets to make sure I have enough and some spares.  Once those arrive I'll post some pics.