Watch for members of Gateway Squad to appear on stage with Weird Al again this year. He returns to The Family Arena in St. Charles on July 12, 2010. Assuming all goes well, this will be my third time appearing on stage with him. Fun fun!!

Oh, and if you’re in St. Louis on June 6th, and not busy, head on out to the Ramada Inn at Lindbergh & I-70.

I’ve been on vacation the past week.  And that meant a lot of time to devote to R2 building!!  If you’ve been keeping up, then you know I got my J.E.D.I. Display system.  Well today I took the time to mount most of it, along with all the associated hardware into the dome.  All three holoprojectors, the front and rear logics, and the circuit boards are now all properly mounted and working.

I also created different “modes” for the switches.  So if I’m in mode 1, switch 11 might always play Leia’s short message (”Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”).  But if I’m in mode 2, the same switch now plays the full message.  The same can be done to store store a bunch of different songs under another switch.

Next, I created a true random mode.  Before I just had an audio loop, so the “random” sounds were always in the same order, and always ended after 3 minutes.  This new mode picks generic and chatty sounds at random, and keeps them going until I stop it.

And finally, since I’m saving a number of switches on the remote now, I was able to dedicate the last two as volume controls.  This means I won’t have to open up Artoo to adjust the volume.  Handy!!

I got my JEDI Display system this weekend. This includes the front and rear Logic Displays, the front and rear Process State Indicators (PSIs), 3 Holoprojector LEDs, a display controller, a DC/DC voltage converter, and a buncha wires!! Video is of a test assembly.

I tested out the new fused power distribution box along with the battery and sound system this weekend. The good news is that all worked! No magic smoke was released!

I have to say, wiring stuff up using the Power Pole quick connects is a breeze! It even made it possible for me to plug in Artoo so I can power him from the wall (in non-mobile mode). This will be good at conventions while the battery is charging.

I got the new COM-8 Aluminum frame last week. And now that I’m back from my holiday trip, I had to do a test fit of a few parts. This thing is starting to look like an astromech!

I took the plunge yesterday and cut a circle into the inner dome.  After much filing to get it smooth enough and large enough, I mounted the first holoprojector.  Everything looks good.  Hopefully it doesn’t break off when the first kid touches it.

On a side note, I will have to repaint the pie panel that surrounds it since filing the circle chipped a bunch of the paint.  That will teach me to wait before I paint.  I suspect I will have to do that to all of the dome panels since none of the laser-cut circles are the correct diameter.