Fredalek captured and tortured with lightning!

Bay Area Maker Faire 2012 was a blast! Two full days trundling around interacting with the puny humans. Most of the time EXTERMINATE! was replaced with EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME!! I played minder most of the time as it turns out that my son is a natural Kaled mutant – who’d have guessed?

Highlight of the event was being invited up to the Arc Attack stage for a ceremonial zapping.

We had our own 11th Doctor with us too. Great picture at tested.com (the mythbusters guys website).

Fredalek, Davros, Amy Pond and The Doctor at Bay Area Maker Faire 2012

We also met up with various other mobile creations.

Fredalek suffered minor only damage from the swarms of clambering children, dislocating a gun-rod and crumpling one hemisphere (which popped back out). We need to re-light the gun as the 12V got past the resistors at one point of extreme gun wiggling and fried the LEDs. I think a dedicated LED supply will be better than the scattered step-down resistors. Improved wire-routing is a must. Batteries got mild charging overnight, but probably did not need it (35AH @ 24V) Also a removable seat-booster. The poor mutant was sitting on his foot to see out – and only told me this late on Sunday. A real trooper! Smoother dome rotation would be good, and a little revision of the eye control to make the transition from park to down smoother also.
And some way to lock the arm and gun in “park” for general safety – or at least some way to stop them pulling the arm out! I’ve decided not to upgrade the collars to Mk III with slats, as it will cover up the shiny brass. I gave them a rubdown with Brasso before each trundle to remove the paw-prints and it really does catch the eye in the sun. Particularly during an eclipse (which happened on the way back to the parking garage). Polishing the back sides and installing some LEDs behind them would be good for trundling in the dark, along with a few on the top and bottom of the fender and some other places. One success was the 4″ computer fan installed in one of the lower rear hemispheres – helps with cooling. I think a narrow spacer around the bottom of the voile would help too.

Fezzes off to my enthusiastic assistants, who really got into the spirit of it with way more energy and imagination than I can muster.

More pictures and links below as they turn up.