(6-15-2017) Long time since I updated...

I just looked at my blog and it had been over a year since it had been updated, but I have been working on R2.

First of all the skin frames front and rear have been powder coated - the next two images are of the skins just mounted onto the frame, but not glued together.

Then I worked on the rear door, put magnets to attach it to R2's frame and finished it out.  This is an image where the rear panels are being glued using some tape to hold them in place until they dried.

 Then I glued the rear skins together and added the door panels...  At this point the back side of R2 is done!

The next thing I wanted to do was finish the front skins, but I'm still waiting on some more parts (and there I thought I had everything I needed...) - so I put the front skins on hold and moved on to testing out the electronics that I built years ago...

The lights and sound work great, but the dome control wasn't working at all.  I tried to buy a new controller to see if that would fix the problem, but I couldn't find one - so I had to update my control system to something else...

This is a test with the new control system, using an XBox 360 controller, and it works great.  No lights in this video, but they work great.

Since this video I've also added a slip ring (used for things like steering wheel controls in cars) to allow power and signal to travel from the body to the dome.  This allows for the dome lights and accessories to be powered from the battery inside the body of R2.  It also makes it so that when I power up R2, the lights come on automatically, instead of having batteries inside the dome that had to be powered on separately.

I've also been working on the legs, the center leg/foot is ready, but the outer legs still need quite a bit of work before those are ready.  

And that's the status of R2 at the moment.  I'm sure there is more that I've done to him that can't think of at the moment, but he's a lot of fun to power him on and see him light up and make some noise.