YEE!! HAAA! Movement

As expected, after a frantic Xmas eve troubleshooting, R2-ST was ready for movement on Boxing Day.
The motors were in, the battery boxes screwed on and makeshift ankle wedges in place for R2 to start rolling using a RC transmitter and receiver from the very first thing I bought with my very first credit card -  a Tamaya Ford Escort Cosworth.  R2 gently made his way through all the cars and positioned outside the window for all the guests to see. And to be honest I was pretty chuffed with how he was going, turning on the spot, forwards, backwards - absolutely fantastic. The best bit was how surprised the wife was - helps negotiate for more funds.

 

Inspired by the above success, a thorough clean of the workbench and floor in the DMW was followed by some gentle soldering on the rear PSI board. This was hooked up to the rear logic and joy of joys that worked too. Something is going to go wrong somewhere along the line!!!!!

What's happening? Not a lot!!!

These blogs are getting very infrequent. I must do more!!!

I have not really done a lot since the last one. Except move the supports for the long front arm slots so that they face forward(ish) as opposed from the centre point. This will enable the use of arms coming out to the front instead of the side. Someone mentioned it somewhere and it was a "Oh yeah!" moment. Also James from the UK R2 Builders mentioned that he has had to strengthen his shoulders so this has been done also.

Even though the dome is untouched, I wanted to get the displays working so I have been soldereing the components on. In line with everyone else I put some LEDs in to make sure it all worked and only 1 set of them worked!!!!!  After about 18+ hours of investigating, swapping bits over, resoldering, testing with a multimeter and writing down what IC pin went where all with a X10 magnifying glass stuck to the eye, it transpires that there is a small break between pins joining the first IC to the 2nd (and thus the 3rd). A small jumper wire soldered on and hey presto! we're in business. Now all I have to do is file the flange on the 135 LED's down so the bezel will fit.




Bright Light!!!

So far about 50 done.

I have been wondering about the centre wheel and found a site on fleabay which was based a few miles away. Deciding to pop in the way home from work I managed to get a centre swivel 100mm castor for £6. It did look like I was going to have a smaller 75mm wheel for a time though. Bigger is better - especially when I get the suspension on it.

Where there's a wheel, there's a way!!!

Time to go and file another few LED's.