R2D2 Budget Mod by Frenk Janse

Speakers

Just before I finished I came up with an idea: An R2 without the bleeps and the bleeps isn't really a convincing droid, right? After some searching (mainly for the correct size and budget), I came upon this high-tech iPod look-a-like stereo speaker set for a measly €3.49.

I whipped it apart to find it runs fine from a PC's 5V source. Now the best part: where to put the speakers? Inside the Dome? Inside the Body? NO! In the legs! If you compare my legs with the "real" thing, you can see I am missing the outside hinge-axle. At first it didn't bother me one bit, but since the speakers are made from reflecting material it made sense to put them in the shoulders.


To tidy up the cut, I made two rings for the speaker edges into large hexa-shapes, that resembles a nut. The power and speaker cables come back through the inside to join the LED power cables. When I was mounting the right leg through the body, I accidentally ripped
the wires and I had to disassemble the whole thing. AARRGHH! Here are what the new wires look like.


My friends Sting and NoTo helped me with a playlist of R2 sounds with a small programme called TrayPlay. With the aid of Audioconvert, I made a whole lot of empty MP3s with long periods of silence to play in between the beeps. Together with the real R2 MP3s into one large list, shuffled at random, this will give me random beeps at random silence intervals.

Final Shots