CHOC Visit - November 2022

Today R2 and I were joined by Mike and Amy Senna, along with Mike's WALL•E, as we visited patients at Childrens Hospital Orange County.



We checked in at 1pm and headed for the elevators to begin our room-to-room visits.



As usual, we didn't get pictures with the patients, but plenty of staff came out to get pictures with the droids, as we made our rounds.



Once we were done visiting the patients, we went to the on-site Ryan Seacrest Studios, where they taped a holiday message from R2 and WALL•E, and did a short, live interview with them, which was available to view in the patients' rooms.



It's always a good visit at CHOC, and hopefully we'll be back sooner than later.

New Actuator for Mist Can

After over 9 years of service, the door lock actuator that I use for triggering the mist can started to fail. I opened it up to see if I could fix it, but I ended up making things worse. They are not expensive, so I ordered another. I figured I'd stick with the same mechanism, since it worked well for so long.



I desoldered the connection for the old actuator.



And I soldered the connection for the new actuator.



I tested it in the droid, and it works. It's a little tricky to take a picture of it in action (juggling the transmitter and phone camera), but I'm happy with the results.

Replaced Dome Speed Controller on Droid #1

Recently the dome motor on droid #1 has been sluggish or unable to turn. I saw that the Error LED usually flickers. According to Dimension Engineering's documentation, this is indicative of "overheating or current limit." I may contact Dimension Engineering about this, but in the meantime, I ordered a replacement Sabertooth 2x12RC, and installed it.



So far so good. Hopefully this will last a good long while.