killercarrot

I managed to get the little Jansen style walker up and running on radio control. Probably overloaded the central supports with a huge 5 cell AA Nicad pack, and 7 channel Rx... and indeed it did "realign" the gears, which caused a bit of skipping. However the point of the exercise was to see if it would take a radio signal, and it does. If it takes a radio signal it means I wan swap in an Arduino and use the PWM channel. On another tack I nipped down to #buildbrighton last  Thursday and with Adam's help disassembled a Dalek voice changer helmet, and stuck the sound circuitry into the head of our "real" Dalek. It works after a fashion, and flashes the dome lights too. Once I've done the hard work building the neck section, I'll strat wiring stuff up properly.

I've won an ebay auction for a Dalek Voice changer helmet, £13 for some basic dalek sounds, which I can shove in my Dalek, seems like a bargain.

I've cut some temporary "solar panels" out of MDF until I can get round to cutting some aluminium, or maybe some of lexan I have littering my cellar. Anyway, primer coat has been applied, sanded, and a second coat added... I might spray them with a top coat tomorrow, simply because I'm keen to see some progress. I remember having the same issues with the hemispheres, there's just so many of them, each that requires filling, sanding, priming, undercoating, top coating, finishing etc... I also ordered up some indicator units for a LandRover Defender which are the same pattern as the ones used in the 70's Daleks, which I think my Dalek most closely matches. I had to cut slightly bigger holes in the side of the head to accomodate. That's about it, neck building next....I'm bidding on a new Dalek Voice changer helmet which seems a very cheap way of getting hold of ring modulator style electronics. 29 minutes to go!

I'm amazed the grey paint I used on the skirts about 8 years ago is still ok, and have added a coat to the waist section. Silver spray on the band, and some mesh from Wickes. Next step is to paint the "solar panels" and fit them.

I started building this Dalek so long ago I can't even remember when... I think it was probably 2002/3. Since then I've had half a Dalek taking up space in my basement, gathering dust. My recent visit to the Brighton mini Maker Faire sparked off a desire to do some creative things in the real world again, as I spend so much of my time in the computer world. So I joined the Planet Dalek forum, realised that my build is a little at odds with the plans (no much in the way of plans available back in 2002 when I started). I thought I'd bash on anyway, and this week I've been working on and off on the waist section. With luck I'll have the waist sort of finished by the weekend, but it's fiddly work.

This blog wasn't always here. It started as a frontpage site, on freeserve, then moved to geocities where it got a swanky update when I learned how to use Dreamweaver 2... Blogging wasn't even called blogging back then, but performed the same function. The problem with migrating it was the images didn't make the transfer very well. I had an hour to spare this evening so went through the html and matched up images back to 5-6-2002. The posts go back a fair bit further, and I'll add some more images when I have a little more time. What prompted this spurt of enthusiasm? Well, I got fed up with looking at the old Dalek that has been cluttering up my basement for 10 years, and decided to have a bash at finishing it. I tried to find some pics to post to the Dalek forum, but couldn't find any...but did find a backup of "robotweb" I've stuck all the very tiny images (these are from the days of 56k modems) up on a picasa album: robotweb I'l...