Designation: BB8 Head
Name: BB8 Head
Sci-Fi Origins: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
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About our Steampunk BB8 Head
Our BB8 Head started life as a normal BB8. He was 3D printed, built, and put together for fun right after The Force Awakens was released. We intended to make him a static display, on top of a papier-mâché body, but this sadly never happened. We did manage to use the head for some silly Christmastime holiday pictures, which were quite funny. He was originally painted to match the cinematic BB8 unit.
Modifications Since Built:
In 2024, we were aiming to go to the Portmeirion Steampunk Spectacular, which had a theme of Star Wars. So, we thought it would be a perfect idea to try to make our BB8 head a little more steampunk for the event.
To start, the head was sanded back as far as we could, and it was repainted in a gloss white. We’re not the greatest painters in the world, by a long way (and we’re worse, when we rush), so it’s not the best job, but it looked good enough for us to continue. We repainted the ‘eyes’ in gloss black, and trimmed the bottom of the head in chrome vehicle trim. It was really effective, very adhesive, and it’s very shiny.
Next, we were looking for a way to make the highlighted areas on BB8 that are usually orange, a brass/copper look colour instead. In the usual rush that we were in, we could only find copper tape for stopping snails climbing up your garden flowerpots.
It’s quite thin as tape goes, almost like laying gold leaf, and on top of the imperfections of not just the 3D print, but our hasty paint job on top, it did not apply quite as well as we’d hoped. It’s also not very amenable to being trimmed neatly either, but we made it work well enough.
The red eye LED was added to BB8, as it traditional, and then we used ten, 3mm LEDs in the side areas to indicate BB8 actively processing his environment.
We used a trick to do this. In the movies, these LEDs all flash at different times, suggesting they indicate processing, just like on a PC. As there are ten, not only would this be difficult to accurately simulate, even with ten microcontrollers, it can also be done a lot easier another way.
We used colour changing LEDs to start with, but in addition to that, these LEDs also flashed in two separate and distinct patterns. We’d used them before in another project, to simulate Christmas lights on our Coed-Anne Christmas Tree Robot. So, we wired them in parallel, in two groups of five, simply bending the anode and cathode 90°, and then soldering them together (picture in the gallery below).
Now, logic dictates, that if these LEDs are all exactly the same, they should all flash the same, and they should switch colours, and patterns, simultaneously. But they did not do that. Instead, we got wildly varying degrees of LEDs flashing slower, and faster, which when they went out of sync, gave the impression of the droid computing.
Despite the LEDs all flashing through the same colours and patterns in the same way separately, there are subtle differences when wired together. Perhaps caused by things like; small variations or imperfections in the makeup of each LED, making them act slightly differently when all started at the same time? Or, when wired together, do they all get the same current at a different time, maybe fractions of a second apart, which then causes them all to fall quite quickly out of sync with each other? Do they get a slightly different current, despite being wired in parallel?
We don’t have the definitive answer, but it’s a cool effect, and it’s very easy to achieve. We will try to upload a video of BB8 being switched on, and show this effect.
Further to that, our BB8 Head was going to be worn as a hat, which would have been part of an overall costume, however on any one of us, the head only comes down to our chin. So, we managed to attach a thin, silky black covering that covers the rest of the user when worn. We lastly made a wooden stand for BB8, so that we can show him at events, attached a few cogs, and we were finished.
Full Stats:
Version: 2.0
Designation: BB8 1
Name: Steampunk BB8 Head
Utility: Entertainment
Length: 29cm
Width: 29.cm
Height: 19.5cm
Servos: None
Gallery:
