Creating a Dalek
The Fairfax Dalek started out in 2013 with our First Lego League team wanting to have a Dalek in our local town parade. He was originally was created with mostly recycled parts and promptly broke down part way through the parade. Over the years he has acquired his own Dalek Facebook page. This began a long journey to today with many Maker Faires, science fairs, halloweens, maker popups, conventions, and making many friends along the way.
The Dalek has been the Design Process (Design, Build, Test, Rebuild) in action. From getting him working after breaking down at the Fairfax parade to ripping a large portion of wiring at a North Bay science faire, he has tested our skills and persistence. Along the way, he became a family and friends hobby.
When the project started out, I wanted him to be different from most Daleks and made him remote controlled as opposed to sitting inside him. He has mecanum wheels which allow him to move forwards, backwards and sideways. The eyestalk could move up and down and the head could rotate. He had an arduino with sound board to allow us to play back sound clip through an on board amplifier by triggering them with a remote controller. ( His favorite word is “Exterminate!!! )
The Dalek has been an integral part of our maker community. A robotics teammate, Max, made it up from UC Santa Cruz to help us out at the 2018 Maker Faire. Max had been with us from middle school days on through Vex Robotics in high school. He received his degree in Computer Science.
When we heard that Maker Faire was starting up again, Nick and I pulled him out of his trailer and started to assess him. We decided to rebuild him with some other the things we had thought of over the years. Some of the ideas included adding wireless microphone with sound changer, motorizing the weapon so it can move, and adding an iris to the eye to give a little more personality.
Nick had recently graduated from Cal Poly in Electrical Engineering so he took on building up the voice changer system. He also built a new power system, and implement a new BMS. He redid all the wiring for the motors and cleaned up the electronics, and designed and built a new circuit board to operate the lights for the gun, which was powered by an arduino. Andrew did the 3D printing for the iris and the ears, and rebuilt the chassis and redesigned it to be broken down into smaller pieces for transportation. Carol made the hemispheres and helped Nick with the gun programming. Ralph added AI, so that the eyestalk will track faces.
