My daughter got an R2D2 toy believing it was electronically controlled, just to find out that it was only an empty shell. She was very disappointed, so I said I could probably make it come alive. So this is where it all started.
The challenge was to add the mechanical component that were missing inside the shell. Thankfully, I have a 3D printer, I really love it!
I had to print a few parts and put together some electronics.
The head gear is mounted on a geared DC motor (bottom left) I got off ebay. The motor are controlled using a DRV8833 H-Bridge circuit via the PCA9685 I2C PWM drive circuit.
The optical beam interrupter (top right) is used with 3 optical switches. The switches provide travel limits to the head. The optical switches are wired to regular GPIO on the RPi.
For this project I purchased an off the shelf lithium battery that provides a 5V output. I took the cells out and the charging circuit and I made some mounting hardware and a button to be able to push it to see the 4 LED indicating the state of charge. I also added an On/Off circuit to control cycle the RPi on or off. The motors and all the circuits that needs a lot of current are wired directly to the 5V supply.
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