Astromech

So I recently went to Disney's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge park and built my own custom astromech unit at the Droid Depot. The park let's you build either a BB-Series or R-Series droid. Based on which you pick, you get a parts list. You then get to pick one of each of those parts from a moving conveyor belt of pieces. They have different colors of each piece. You then assemble the droid, pair it with a controller, and take it home!

I built a BB-Series one. The droid is controllable: it can move foward, backward, turn, and make noise / light up. It also reacts to things around the park by picking up Bluetooth signals. You can also buy different personality chips to insert into it - which replace the different sounds that it makes.

I REALLY want to hack the controller. I would love to be able to control it via my phone or even add simple sensors to it to make it somewhat autonomous. Unfortunately, hacking the controller isn't seeming that simple... But I figured I'd compile any notes I gather about the droid here.

The droid reacts to various Bluetooth signals around the park. You can mimic the signals by broadcasting the following as manufacturer data using the nFR Connect app.

| Signal | Locations | | ------------- |:-------------:| | 0x0A040102A601 | Marketplace, Droid Depot, Dok-Ondar's Den of Antiquities | | 0x0A040202A601 | Droid Play Area | | 0x0A040302A601 | Resistance | | 0x0A040402A601 | ??? | | 0x0A040502A601 | Marketplace-Entrance, Droid Depot | | 0x0A040602A601 | Dok-Ondar's Den of Antiquities | | 0x0A040702A601 | First Order |

I also created a little beacon to broadcast these signals in a loop using an nRF52832 Bluefruit Feather board. The code is in the beacon folder in this repo. Every 2.5 minutes it changes the signal it's broadcasting.

Useful Resources

• Vince Parker sniffed all of the signal’s around the park and talked about how to recreate them using the nFR Connect app on an android device.
• Ruthsarian has many good videos about the droid and other Star Wars things in general. Notable Ones:
  • He added an LED to the Droid’s Head and explained how to head works. Link
  • He added a power indicator LED to the droid’s remote control. Link
  • He created a custom personality chip for the droid:
    • Part 0
    • Part 1
    • Part 1A - an edit
    • Part 2
    • Part 3 - R2 accessory noises/lights with custom chip
• Dead Bothans Society has a section on the droids
  • R2 Unit Teardown
  • R2 Accessory Teardown