Star Wars R2-D2 Repair Video 

"I wonder if you knew what you were doing, you could re-program this to say other things like rude words". Kid at heart, never change;

You are a genius Vince. I am in the process of building the Fanhome release of this R2D2 and could not get the light sabre flap to open. Then I recalled watching this video and came back to see how you resolved the issue. I copied your method of using two staples and now the lightsabre flap opens smoothly and still sits flush to the metal housing. Thank you.

I am about 40 stages through the assembly of R2, this video has given me so much confidence that I will be able to troubleshoot any issues. Thanks. The kit comes with a test board so you confirm the components work before assembly. Really is a nice kit, loads of fun to assemble with the kids.

Re: the Orange Pi… you’ve got it right. A USB or Bluetooth keyboard and mouse would be attached for debugging. Also, I agree that it’s probably the brain of the whole thing. It would be overkill to just control LCDs on the head.

Hi Vince, I love the robot! You might use some hot glue for the connectors to hold them in place. In case you need to remove them a bit of IPA helps to loose it up.

Your fixes make my wife and I so happy Vince. Thank you for being the blessing that you are….don’t forget your guitar pick.

Now R2-D2 is fully alive thanks to you. To see the HDMI working and showing some cool stuff on the TV was very interesting too.

Great video Vince, the Orange Pi is the result of the Clone Wars. Had to get that one in. 🤣

great video Vince, love the r2d2. thanks for having me think "vince don't forget the blue plastic thingy that fell in" for about 25 minutes.

Long LCD not LED, loved the video , screamed every time you said LED 😢😂😂

LOL @ Vince getting completely mesmerized by the sound the shaft makes when pulling out. 😂😂

It should be noted, this is a full scale R2 unit. Vince is just an absolute giant in repair entertainment.

18:46 I have an Orange Pi PC running Linux, great little board at a fraction of the cost of Raspberry Pi. Interesting to see it used in this model. It's nice to see things being repaired.

Thank you for all your videos Vince. Particularly enjoyed these ones & hope you decide to keep R2D2, it’s so good! Speedy recovery of injured finger 👍

Hi Vince I love your fault finding on R2D2 it just goes to show sometimes it’s just a simple fix

I only discovered your channel a week ago and I'm addicted. Your knowledge and logical process is a joy to see. From your reactions in this pair of videos, I'd be surprised if your children ever get to see R2D2 again 😉

For something like that wee hinge, you could also use paper or thin cardboard, like a cereal box, as a shim. Cheers from future Greg.

R2-D2 ASMR. Vince has found a corner of the internet that we all wanted to be a part of. Even down to the pop sound from removing the neck brace.

I always thought that these weekly build it yourself magazines were a rip off but this is awesome!!

I signed up for a few magazine projects back in the day - the Robots one was a kit before the Pi or any of these small compute boards where a thing so the controls where all made with discrete components. Quite an achievement given the era. £8.99/week is quite expensive, but the end result does look good!

So cool that you got it all working.

Brilliant fix Vince , that’s a gorgeous bit of kit well done

Hi Vince, only just found your channel and subscribed last night, I'm building this very same R2 D2 at the moment for my son, I'm on magazine 91-95 so almost finished. I found your video really useful. Brilliant. Been building R2-D2 for almost 2 years now. 😎

Best video so far. You fixed R2 May the force be with.

Yes! Another R2-D2 video, loved the first one! Also, those magazines are amazing, would love a full set.

Open the box and look inside, oh look there's an SBC and Vince fell into the rabbit hole....cheers.

Great video Vince. I am not a R2-D2 fan but it was fascinating.

Lovely to see R2-D2 back together and working properly. I could see you dropping that guitar pick inside. Going... going... GONE! :)

Thanks vince.. Super model.. And great repair video.. May the force be with you..

Love the video Vince - I was hoping for the follow up! In terms of Raspberry Pi vs. Orange Pi - Raspberry had sever supply chain issues over the past 3 years and when you could get what would normally be a $75 Pi 4 it would be upwards of 2 or 3 times the price and sold from an untrusted source. I think that companies weren't necessarily trying to put Raspberry Pi out of business or flooding the market with cheap knock offs but providing a lot of hobbyists a way to work on their projects. I think that Raspberry is just now _starting_ to catch up with demand and supply chain issues - hopefully so.

Actually raspberry pi is mostly open source. It is ment to be "copied" (is open source it called fork). And the orange pi is open source. There also is a Banana pi and a whole bunch of another pies. They have different set of form factors, different processors and other hardware. For example banana pi has a board for DIY router based on similar to raspberry pi hardware

@17:55 didn't expect to see an Orange Pi in there!

Just a quick note.. the two silver vents on the front ( centre vents ) are upside down.. just sayin' 😃

Hey Vince, the Raspberry Pi was designed to be a cheap and mostly open source computer to give everyone the chance to have a computer.The raspberry pi pico is even fully open source. Orange Pis and many other of these computers are open source. They are meant to be tinkered on and improved. Open Source is amazing.

Well done on completing Vince. Was looking forward to this after you told me via email. Im by no means an avid Star Wars buff but as we spoke about in out emails back and forth I am a massive smart home/automation need and this would be so cool if you reprogram aspects of him to work with Google Home/ Alexa especially with the camera integration. Massive respect to your work as always. We'll done. Myke

With all the magazines that came with it there are probably some information about the orange pi and what you can do with it.

100% love you pointing out the Dangers of Thoses batteries.

Damn... I love that thing! Thanks for showing us R2 againe Vince! 😍

love the use of the pro tech toolkit in these vids, ive had mine for a few years now an its great

Thoroughly enjoyable view of both videos. Really lucky buy.

great video Vince. well done.

Vince, as you are trying to take out that bend, I was thinking about the watch and all the other things where you wish you left well enough alone. Glad it worked out though!! This is a cool fix!

Another Great Video Vince! Ingenious use of staples, and glad you got the long LED working even though it was just a loose plug! I especially liked the debug mode, it's my kind of thing! I would think either a USB touch screen? or keyboard / mouse would be needed to access it. Hope your finger is doing better!

Great video. Loved building mine and I repainted it as I was building...cheers

I WANT ONE!!! What a fantastic toy!

@10:25 I was 100% sure that Vince would take the metal washer thingy from that E.T. cards corner :D

You know I gave this subscription a cursory look originally and dismissed it after assuming it would be plastic rubbish. I'm amazed at the quality of it! Damn!

Heya! I just came across your channel. Very interesting especially with the short and long LCD Display Units. The Long Display is correctly at the rear, the short one, However is the Round LED in the Front. The Stacked LCD Display next the Round LED Display is actually R2's Processor Display that indicates his calibration as he's powering up or charging while switched on. The Lightsabre Unit unfortunately has a hinge that has to be loosened slightly so attain functionality. The connection in the rear panel power's R2's speaker. I will continue to watch! Enjoying the Show.

I have been getting the kits of this to build him but have been waiting for all of it to show up. Within these next few months, I think I'll receive the 100th kit. I will be going out on leave from work for a total knee replacement in June, so I think I'll start putting mine together in between knee therapy. Thanks about the battery problem as I'll be making sure to get them with the nibs.

Fab video again, love this series of R2D2 videos, I would check if you can remote into the pi boards ip address on you local network via a browser and control the UI you see on the hdmi output. if not i would be looking to connect a keyboard and mouse to setup a remote desktop service to enable that same kind of functionality.

From my understanding orange pi is a single board computer that can be programmed on board if you connect a keyboard and mouse but you need have the correct software on it. I think they used an SD card with the r2d2 firmware and inserted it in the pi to flash the firmware. I think Vince found a development/debug interface for the people manufacturing the magazine.

The Orange Pi is an ARM based single board computer, as you say a clone of the raspberry pi, running Linux. You can use a micro USB to full size USB adapter to plug in a keyboard/mouse in and control the interface that way. Ctrl+alt+f1 or f2 should also give you a full Linux command line where you can browse around the operating system. As you say, the build quality of this is very impressive, and considering its a magazine build, I don't honestly think the price is that obscene.

Awesome. Thank you.

Great job! Chewbacca would be proud!

I so want one of these.. It`s wicked.. i would spend all day playing with it.😃

vince is a man of taste, he has the same "multiple tip laptop charger" as me XD

My OCD was off the charts with the staple repair..but it worked still 😁

thanks for the videos

Legend says Vince is still playing with R2-D2 to this day

Been looking forward to the repairs on r2-d2 only thing i can think of that would have tiny washers is rc car kit parts/ spares kits you can buy

Vince, you are now ready to go on arduino computing and start my mate vince robotics

Vince maybe look at the magazine for the week the orange pi was installed maybe there are some instructions !!

Greetings, I believe in the film the blue trapazoid shaped hatch recessed and slid open for the lightsaber to be laumched out versus just opening like a hindged lid. It would have been nice if this had those options, but it would have definitely increased the price considerably. Awesome fix! Thanks for doing this video!

Well at least it wasn't broke in Alderaan places 🤣 Enjoyed!

16:45 I'm sorry, I laughed so much at the "Oops!"

Use the force Vince

ShOcK & AWE quality "machine". Vince, you R the "R2D2 Whisperer"... Cheers from So.Ca.USA 3rd House On the Left.

Orange Pi is a single board computer like the Raspberry Pi. There are lots of different SBCs on the market. It was probably easier to utilise an SBC rather than design something from the ground up.

Nice video 👌

That was fun!

Vince, I know you'd either buy the right cells or use magnet spacers, don't worry about that. My worry is about people who didn't know the foil was very temporary, and copy you on that part, or people who just kinda scrub through your video, saw that part, thought it was a solution and copied it. Not everybody understands that these video's are meant for entertainment only, and are maybe a bit dense and saw the foil worked, and thought: hey, solution to my problem ! :) I never thought you yourself would do this for any length of time or any sort of even semi permanent solution.

To make shim washers. Drill the correct size hole for the screw into that hard plastic cover material on the super glue packet(or similar type) and then use a hole punch (like one for ring binder folders) and make as many as necessary to "shim up". Great also if you need insulator shims. Learned this on model railway stuff.

I am building my own from Fanhome sucription. The mistakes I made was putting parts backwards. The only problem with the manufacturer is that they don't lable the screw packets.

10:20 you could have just got a hole punch and punched out a bit of the blister pack from that super glue package or some other blister pack plastic and then got a Dremel and drilled a hole through the bit of blister plastic that was punched out, or just cut a tiny square and cut he corners off off and made a hole in the middle blister pack plastic makes good washers in a pinch and I bet you can find different thickness plastic around the house no problem.

You could connect USB keyboard and mouse to OrangePi and play with it. Debug mode sounds interesting.

Good job 👏 👍. Would be good for next video where u connected it to a keyboard and change a few things like voice or lights

Surprised Vince doesn't have more knowledge of SBC's, single board computers. He should definitely subscribe to explaining computers. It s a great channel for learning about SBC's. The Orange PI 5 is much more powerful than a raspberry pi 4 , it has a rock chip 3588, the thing about non raspberry pi boards is that they don't have as great of software and support for different OS's and other stuff but there are tons of different SBC's and a lot of them have better hardware and specs than the raspberry PI boards. Also it's not a copy any more than different Windows desktop or laptops from different OEM's are copies of uh something, they are just computers.

Hi just came across your channel. My son built this when he was 12. I bought all the magazines 100 and saved them to give as a Christmas present. Took him 4 days to build it fully. Sadly whilst plugged in charging smoke stared to come from the head. Turned out the light saber motor burnt out. Hoping to try and repair this year. Also my projector never worked. Sound and light but no image 😭. Just manged today to get a replacement but £43. Worth it if now works. Will let you know when I get the time to look at it l as later this year.

I had an Orange Pi actually. It has a USB port so you can connect a USB hub and a normal keyboard and mouse to it, as if it was an ordinary computer. Too bad I misplaced it somewhere. As for the lightsaber door - in the movie it slides open on the inside of the head. Which would probably be harder to implement in the model, so they went with a simpler design that swings open

Selling a device without the lithium batteries is a good practice since it removes any fall back on you if the end user does unsafe things with the battery pack.

I'm quite sure the Orange Pi is the brains. It seems to be the Orange Pi Zero Plus2, which has 8GB eMMC flash and also a SD card reader. I wonder if they pre-flashed the eMMC with the software for the robot. Either way, you can definitely connect a keyboard and play with the UI. If there is a SD card (it would be on the underside) you can check on a computer what's on it. Most likely it's formatted as the ext2 (or ext3/ext4) filesystem and should be readable by at least Linux or a Mac. If there is no SD card the software will be on the eMMC. You can flash a SD card with Linux (the orange pi website has an image and instructions), put it into the Orange Pi, boot it and then mount the eMMC and look around the files. Requires a bit of knowledge working with Linux and navigating with command line tools, but you'll very likely be able to mess with the sound files :)

A quick tip for the people who are technical enough to modify 18650's without blowing themselves up. To convert a flat top to a button top, get yourself some 6mm x 2mm neodymium magnets and put one on the positive end of the battery. A dot of super glue can also be a good idea to stop it sliding.

You would connect via ssh or vnc for remote desktop to use the orange pi as a remote computer. You would also be able to look around the file system and probably the mp3 files to change the sounds.

With reference to Meccano - it was announced on Friday that the last remaining dedicated Meccano factory is to close. It is in Calais. Meccano will still be made in other factories alongside other toys.

I enjoyed that at no point did you consider referring to the stack of magazines they sent you, that explained how it all fit together and worked in order to find out for yourself!

Most likely, the original designer used that debug interface to test the motors and such before the iPad app was developed and the wifi control was set up. You could probably connect a wireless mouse dongle to the Pi board and control it with the head closed. There might also be HDMI touchscreens out there that you could hang out the side and not have to be tethered to a TV.

The force was with you on this one!!! I always said you were a jedi repairer! That video output - I suspect if you had a keyboard connected up to the USB you could interact there!

Always worth keeping things in a stash for the future, I bought a NOS Seiko 5M62 Kinetic at a very cheap price, dead cell and I was just about to order a new cell from cousins when something prompted me to check my kinetic cells tub and lo and behold, bought in error a few years back was a brand new, sealed Seiko 302324T capacitor saving me a fair bit as I bought that when they were only £4. So now I have up and running a brand new Seiko kinetic at a tiny fraction of the price of buying one working :) (also my first Seiko branded kinetic as I had only Pulsar and Lorus although I do have the ultra rare Pulsar Antonio Banderas (voice actor for Puss in Boots of Shrek fame) kinetic)

Aside from the fire dangers of lithium batteries, having seen one in person, I'd say for an indoor fire, the bigger danger would be poisoning from the huge volume of toxic smoke that would literally fill the room you are in, which simply adds to the danger of the fire. Most folks (I would hope) are aware of the possibility of fire, but the smoke is incredibly dangerous, much moreso than the smoke from say: a nickel metal hydride battery fire.

I thought the kinds of things that were wrong with R2 were really fair. Nothing major, but intimidating enough to keep someone from tearing into it. But in the end, just some usage faults that weren't real damage, but just needed to be poked at a little. I love this R2 though, its really bad ass. And its funny how people's perception of things differ. I try to keep track of the single board computer market and when I saw an orange pi in it, I was like wow - they gave it teeth. LOL (The OrangePi is faster than a raspberry pi in megahertz as you mentioned, its RAM is also faster. And the OS in your R2 is apparently booting from an eMMC module rather an SD card. So, faster boot times, faster load times, faster ram, faster processor, faster sensor polling and faster response times. The OrangePi is aggressive. LOL

19:50 LEGO is thriving these days. A huge increase in profits over the past few years, thanks in part to an increase in sales to AFOLs (adult fans of LEGO) during the pandemic rediscovering the hobby and that LEGO builders show on E4/Channel four. I mean just look at how many LEGO YT channels there are and how many LEGO sets cost £400+. They’ve just unveiled a new one in that price category, a Lord of the Rings Rivendell set with over 6000 pieces cost £500. They also have things like a giant version of the Titanic and a massive ATAT from Star Wars!

brilliant video as always! just to say, i wonder if the HDMI interface was a way to test the robot before it was fully built? i had the “Real Robots” Cybot in the early 2000s and before you’d built the remote controller for it there were a number of buttons and switches on the board itself to change modes and test features out!

you use a wireless keyboard and mouse the USB is normally to power outside of the robot and it outputting the os on the pi used to program it and test it

Pretty sure you could mess with the orange pi and sounds etc, not sure if it's secured/encrypted or anything, but if this is a orange pi zero plus2 board, it contains an 8gb eMMC, i would think that's where the software is located. What a cool little bot

My Mate Vince, the Macgyver or electronics repair. Using staples to fix r2d2 lol

Why did I never realise that R2D2 sounded like a demented budgie? Great video Vince ... although you are missing an opportunity by not twisting the StarWars film titles into your episode names. 😀👍

I think the HDMI is just a way to see the OS running in the pi. If you have a usb connector maybe you could use a mouse to get to the menu you are looking at. IF the pi has bluetooth maybe you could use a bluetooth mouse and keyboard with it.

Great videos ,look at Adam savage upgrade R2D2 astrometry droid build

A fun mod would be to add an extender to the HDMI and usb from the Orange Pi and install the connector to a spot on the head so you can hack R2D2 while he is fully together.

I'm sure you could use a keyboard on it and may be able to connect to it by fttp over your network from your computer.