The interesting thing about this build is that I hit many "peaks" throughout the process. After working on a particular part for a good part of a day, it just does not excite me that much... ADD kid is back.
Over the course of the build, I have been upgrading and experimenting with different parts to see what warns / what I like. For the most part, I believe I have all that I need to get this guy done, it is getting down to the task of actually doing the deed.
The main power scheme scared the doo-doo out of me at first. After a series of successful implementations, delivering power to whatever R2 needs is no longer an issue. Actually assembling some of the finer electronics... that is another story. Or at least was, until today.
Here is the periscope with the switch installed. The switch in the upper right corner of the photo allows me to change the lighting mode. It is a cool feature of this board. By selecting a position on the rotary switch, a signal is sent to the microprocessor to run a certain code and, in turn, change the lighting mode. The suggested placement of the switch is somewhere inside the dome. I don't see a great need to change the mode that often, so I devised a way to fit it in the periscope body. If I feel like changing the lights, I can pop the periscope up, take off the pie panel and turn the switch.
So here is the test - can all of these guts fit into the periscope head ????
Another angle of the electro-sinews. Note - the lights on the back have not been permanently mounted, and they are protruding from the periscope. That will be addressed later.
Here we go - believe it or not, it all fits ! You can see some of the rubber housing material stuck on with J-B Weld that I hacked up to block off some of the light cracks to inhibit light from bleeding into the other sections.
.. And another video of the unit in action - including use of the selection switch.
Once the periscope failed to capture my fancy, I turned to soldering up one of my many additional breadboards that will be used to control various devices.
Below is a shot of my soldering station. FLUX is a MUST (as is really thin solder).
Honestly, this board took me no more than 20 minutes to put together. About a week ago, I had watched a tutorial on "Proper Soldering Techniques" on the YouTube. This is where I learned about the proper solder diameter and the use of flux. The gentleman presenting the video said "Once you learn how to do it properly, it is actually quite difficult to perform a 'bad' solder". Initially I thought, "yeah right, I can show you otherwise...."
The truth is, like anything else, once you find out how to do it right, you DO find it difficult to do it wrong. Here are the results. This breakout board is used to hook up the servos that will control the animated doors and pie panels on R2's dome.
Here is a shot of the front of the board - looking good.
A little bit closer - still nice. Apparently there are different lengths of pin headers. I must have purchased the "extra-long" variety, as these all had to be cut down to accept the servo wire connectors. Not a huge issue - a pair of electronic side snips made short order of that task.
Extremely excited to see my new creation in action, I went home and hooked up the board to my computer via an Arduino controller / microprocessor. I uploaded the "sketch" that controls the servo motors and before you know it, I had 5 servos rolling back and forth.
The code and idea comes from this link.
Indeed I had success just like the video shows... then I got confident. I went in to change the code to bump the cycle time down and increase the throw of the servos. That is where things started going horribly wrong. For whatever reason, the code and board performed without a hitch with the first power-up. Then, magically, my computer realized that there was something drawing an unusual amount of power from the USB port. After that, I barely got the servos to twitch..... When an Arduino board has too much demand on the processor, it "saves" itself by resetting. This causes the code to stop, and it makes an attempt to restart itself.
Well - I never got back to the point of getting it working again. Between the Arduino resetting itself, and the USB port disconnecting itself - I was back where I started, with a pile of wires and breadboards. (Well soldered breadboards if I may) Ultimately, the servo control board will be powered with a source from the distribution board within R2. Unfortunately, I do not have an independent 5-6 Volt 3-4 amp power source sitting around home to use while prototyping and tweaking the code. I do, however have one on order, as it will be used for this and a few other electro-goodies.
Soooooo close to having a really good feeling about the coding and use of the Arduino.... alas, that is what they make other weekends for.
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