Soldering or tinkering...

We also had a look at curiousmarc's sketch-up for running the droid on specific arduinos, called "Marcduino" cards. They are adapted Arduino boards specifically designed for the use of droid-control, servo, coordinated light and sound effects and so on!

There is always the option of building an entire new system, and there are some other systems that are widely spread throughout the R2D2 builders community.

Basically it is possible to order these cards off a site called Oshpark, https://store.oshpark.com/

they do keep alot of neat stuff, but there is some work to be done as is to be seen in the second picture.

Some of the R2 builders use what they call, SHADOW together with a Padawan 360 system, which is infact using a Playstation 2 or XBOX controller to actually manage the droids technical systems. We have a background in regular RC flying and cars so we will go for a more traditional sollution with RC controllers but also Arduino or Marcduino to manage some of the electrical systems.

After actually putting the cards together there is ofcourse the actual code to be written onto these cards. ,,,babysteps. Marc does keep some very useful information on his website. If this is the system we are going to use or not. Well, time will tell. We got the cards, so it is a definite option.

http://www.curiousmarc.com/dome-automation/building-marcduino-boards

For now, we are looking at how to interconnect the light&sound system with dome automation, and also the mechanics for the feet-drive of the R2 unit.