Arduino (Teeces); PSI Flasher; Jaycar motors; Mounting Hardware

Today was a big ordering day. My droid is moving faster than I ever imagined, and the time has come to drop some coin. Fortunately, I am very close to the end of the ordering road. 

I intend to follow Teeces' build blog for the front and rear logic displays. Therefore, I need an Arduino control board ASAP. Locally, Sandy's Electronics seems to have everything else I'll be needing. I figure the F/R LDs will cost about $50 total, which is outstanding. I ordered the Arduino Uno off eBay for $20.50, including a USB cable. If the link doesn't work, it's just a simple Arduino Uno (ATMEGA328P / ATMEGA8U2), nothing fancy.

I also ordered JoyMonkey's night/day bezels off the astromech forums. All 3 for $12 is an excellent deal for CNC machined parts. 

Next up were the motors for the whole droid. I opted for the Jaycar motors, which also seem to be the most popular and appropriate for a styrene droid (lower weight). The motors are the 12V DC Reversible Gearhead Motors - 160 RPM at $28.25 each ($104.75 for all three with shipping from Australia).

I also needed mounting hardware for the motors to the wheels. Oh, I needed wheels too. BaneBots.com had both of what I needed. I ordered two of the 4-7/8" diameter wheels and two of the set-screw hubs. Total for all of this was $35.45 with shipping. 

I ended my spending spree by seeking out the PSI flasher LEDs. What a pain in the ass! These things were hard to find, only because the Fiberopticproducts.com website totally sucks. Eventually, I located red/blue flashers, and yellow/green flashers. The red goes on the front, yellow for the rear. It's important to find flashers that have a long and short flash, which is how the original R2 was in A New Hope/ESB/ROTJ. Anyway, at fiberopticproducts.com, the red/blue flasher is item #561, and the yellow/green flasher is item #565. I got both for $23.50 including shipping.

There is a great disturbance in the Force: I heard a rumor this weekend that my JEDI Control System might be shipping today. Finally. A year later....not that I'm complaining though: It's going to be a relief not having to program all the droid movements.

Last week I ordered a slip ring from the JEDI guys ($92.49) and a dome gear set from A&A for $60 (already rec'd). Not sure if I needed the slip ring, but that part run is exceptionally rare, so I figure I can sell it on the forum if it's not needed. The A&A gear was simply mandatory: dome won't rotate without one!

I have moved up my timetable for painting, only because I won't be able to do any of it after October when our brutal winters return. So, I have to purchase all my detail parts ASAP and get busy on the dome. The remaining detail pieces will all be about $300, and the paint another $100 probably. This all needs to be in my garage by the end of August if I'm going to get the painting done in time. Lights and other stuff I can do inside, but the painting is totally weather dependent. I have to get the droid assembled and all detail parts prepped, then I can coast on other aspects over the winter.

My initial plan was to airbrush most of the painting, but I have abandoned that for simple spray cans. Two reasons: Oil based paints in the airbrush are very messy and mixing the paint to match R2 color specs are problematic. Besides that, metallic paints don't go through an airbrush that well. I'd need a paint gun (automotive), and I don't want to spend $100 on another tool. So, I'll be using multiple layers of spray, following the paint schemes in the astromech wiki (Victor Franco's excellent tutorial).

Leftovers to buy: Rockler bearing $90, Logic Display guts $50, batteries $60, VEX Controller $100. That should be it. Thanks to Google and some serious shopping, this droid is probably going to come in under the $2000 mark.