- Okay, one of my favorite things about Star Wars,
and I think everyone loves it, is the droids.
And what's really, really cool about Celebration,
is that the entire droid building community, which is huge,
comes out to show off all of the things they have created.
We're talking about fans that build amazing things
that look like this.
And now we're gonna to go talk to a few,
we're gonna check out as many droids as we can,
and we're basically just gonna have a great time with
astromechs and protocol droids any droids we can get near.
Let's go.
(resonant music)
Hey so we are lucky enough to not only be at Celebration,
but be talking to people from the R2 Builders Club.
This is my new friend, Gene.
Gene, where do you start on a project like this?
- Well, what you want to do is basically go to our website
at astromech.net.
We actually have the plans, we have everything that
you need to basically make one of these guys.
It does take a little time but, research.
Do your research.
When I started this one I spent about three months
before I even decided what I'm going to do with it,
what I'm going to put into it and go from there.
Then you can actually start to build.
You can actually take the blueprints,
it's a one to one scale, make it yourself or what our club
does offer is called parts runs.
And they can actually offer
a particular part for that droid.
- Okay, so question number two.
How technically skilled do you have to be to undertake
a project like this?
- [Gene] If you're a little mechanically inclined basically.
- [Woman] If you could fix a bike,
could you build an astromech?
- [Gene] Yes, I think you sure can.
- [Woman] Perfect!
- [Gene] Exactly.
- [Woman] Perfect!
- How long did this one take you?
- This one took me about two and a half years.
- How much of that was polishing it to a high shine?
- [Gene] That took a bit too much for that.
- [Woman] It's absolutely gorgeous.
So this has been Gene, his gorgeous R2 unit.
This is the R2 Builders Club.
(resonant music)
So we are here with Bob.
Bob will you introduce yourself?
- [Bob] I'm Bob from actually Seattle area,
and this is R2-D2, you may not need to be introduced to him.
(laughing)
- [Woman] All right so, a couple of quick questions.
One what inspired you to jump into R2 building?
'Cause it's a commitment.
- Yeah, I guess probably when I first saw the movie,
I saw R2 go across that hallway,
and said someday I want to build him.
I'm getting really old, so I figured better do it now,
while I still could.
- [Woman] He's absolutely gorgeous.
- Oh, thank you!
- [Woman] How long did it take you to put it together?
- I spent about six years of building this one,
it's been operational about five years.
- [Woman] What would you rate the level of expertise in
mechanics that you would need to put together an R2 unit?
- [Bob] What you are able to do when you're done,
as opposed to when you started are two different things.
You just learn along the way.
I'm not an engineer but, I learned a lot of things.
(resonant music)
- So, we've seen a lot of astromech droids at the show.
But for a lot of people one of
the coolest pieces of technology
in Star Wars are these guys.
The mouse droids.
And this is Thomas, and it's his baby.
So, will you tell us a little bit about it?
- Okay, well it's made from ABS plastic,
it's also made with a little bit of sintron as well.
You can see a lot of bondo work and stuff on the outside,
it's nice and smooth.
But, we just glued it all up together,
just some hot glue on the inside to just help stabilize it.
Nice size speakers on the inside.
I'm running it using lithium polymer battery packs.
We also have an arduino uno,
that goes to an MP3 board by WiFi,
and I can control the sounds for
the whole droid from my phone.
This is an amplifier, a 10 by 10 watt amplifier.
A battery pack here to run the arduino.
We're rerunning a spectrum system.
It's great stuff 'cause we don't have to deal with
hurting other people's droids.
We got ourselves a brushless motor system,
that's censored so the action on it is extremely smooth.
Again running by lithium polymer battery packs.
Digital servo.
That's the motor there and we've done
a custom chain drive using parts that we had leftover
from the laser cut parts.
- So cool, so at what point did you decide that in the world
of all these other droids,
the mouse droid was the one for you?
- Well, I am actually working on my own R2 but,
this was a good start.
Just trying to figure out
what materials I like to work with,
kind of figure out my style.
- [Woman] How long did this take you to build?
'Cause there's a lot going on,
and you've got it very elegantly laid out in the chassis.
- [Thomas] We've been working on this guy here now
for the better part of two years.
You know, changes in life and everything.
So just kind of held back.
- Thank you so much for taking time to show
this amazing creation with us.
We love it, it's ready to hit the Death Star,
and run the hallways.
- That's it.
- All right, well cool, thank you so much Thomas.
- Take care, it was a pleasure chatting.
- You too, have a great show.
(resonant music)
So who's your favorite Star Wars character?
If you could live on any planet,
or any location in the Star Wars universe, what would it be?
If you could have one piece of Star Wars technology,
alive in your world, what would it be?
Okay you get force powers right now,
what's the first thing you do?
All right, the big one.
What makes Star Wars special for you?
(resonant music)