Gonna' Light You Up!

Alright, so it's been a while since my last post, but I have just received and tested the dome lighting kit and thought it'd be the perfect time to make a new post!

I'm a mechanical guy; anything electrical/computer/software engineering related has never been my strong point... so I thought it best that for this project I start with something related to exactly that!

Thankfully, there are some really talented people out there who make "kits" for the lighting effects, which makes it much more simpler for me to wrap my head around and get rolling.

With this I don't have to do much soldering or write the code from scratch, the basics of everything is already included and set up to create a working product for me so I can hit the ground running and start playing around with things.

As far as R2 dome lighting systems go, the most widely used, and simplest, kit for the R2 Builders community is called the TEECES Dome Lighting set. This has all the components one needs to light up all the different parts on the dome!

Pictured below is everything that is included. From left to right: Front PSI, Top FLD, Rear PSI, Bottom PSI, RLD and Arduino Mini board, FTDI Programmer, White LED for HP's, and the battery box.

 And when I say Arduino Pro Mini board, I mean it. These things are tiny. That's a pic of the board with my index finger for comparison. Crazy how these powerful computers can be so small!

The FTDI programmer is an add-on that will allow me to tap into the Arduino controller and change/upload a new "sketch". A sketch is basically the controller coding where all the logic is typed out.

Like I mentioned before, the software side of things is not where my talents lye, but I DO know enough that I can get into the code and change a few settings around.

For example, the default startup sequence displays some words across the top and bottom FLDs and the RLD. It normally says "R2-D2" across the top FLD,  "ASTROMECH" across the bottom FLD, and "PADAWAN" across the RLD. I changed them to "R2-N7" on the top FLD, "REPORTING FOR DUTY" on the bottom FLD, and "SYSTEMS NOMINAL" on the RLD. Thought it'd be a cool little change up for my droid.

There are also other things I could tweak such as FLD and RLD intensity and "flicker" patterns, speed at which the PSIs move, etc. Minor things. Once I get more familiar with the Arduino language, I'll probably start getting a bit more brave with what I play with.

Check out the short video below detailing the start-up sequence (might be hard to actually read the words) and each LED cluster to see what effects they produce! It's all ready to go!

The last part that I will need to integrate into the dome lighting system is the servo controllers for controlling the movement of the HPs. These guys are small enough that the Arduino Pro Mini board can handle these in addition to the lighting effects. More on that to come later.

Last. but definitely not least. I now had the opportunity to fit up the several 3D printed mounts I had made earlier in my previous post. 

The FLD mounts fit perfect, however it looks like the RLD mount was about .125" too narrow in the opening. Most likely that a row of LEDs was added to the board design in the TEECES set without having the drawing for the RLD mount updated to reflect.

Like a glove!

... not quite right.

Oh well. no big deal. Will modify my model and 3D print another as soon as I get another chance

One last thing, I want to throw a quick shout out to the R2 Builders Group member who made the lighting kit shown above. His name is Nate, screen mane Mister Fubar, and did a great job! And for a VERY reasonable price, can't beat that! 

He also threw in some cool Rebel and Imperial 3D printed emblems, as well as his card. Badass! he's a member of the Star Wars fan group the 501st Legion!