Rolling Lego BB-8

[Feshbismcup]

Basically it is a BB-8 model that uses the large spheres that came with the Planet Series for its body. Inside you'll find magnets from M-Tron sets and weights from the solid hull boat sets from the days of old. With all those parts, when the body rolls, the head will stay up on top.

Here is a little video of it in action.

And this photo depicts the internal components.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Feshbismcup
Removed excessive IDEAS promotion

[Hinckley]

Please read the Site Guidelines:

LEGO Ideas: If you have a great MOC, that is also a LEGO Ideas project, you may present it on EB as you would any MOC, with a single link to the Ideas entry. Make the title about the MOC, not the Ideas business; don't be too shouty, and it is likely to be tolerated. You need to be thinking: 'I want people on EB to see my MOC and comment on it. If they like it, perhaps they'll support it on LEGO Ideas', rather than: 'I want Ideas support! If I post it on EB, perhaps more people will vote!.

I've edited your post to comply with that guideline. Please don't use our site as an IDEAS promotion billboard. That's not what we're here for. Thank you.

Hope this was of interest and on topic.

Take the time to read the Site Guidelines and you might get an idea of the tone of our community. Thank you.

[hadidi1999]

And, it is not very likely for a project on LEGO Ideas to be as successful as this one is, and not be noticed by the EuroBricks Community. In other words: You can talk all about it at the Lego Ideas Thread.

[Feshbismcup]

Okay, I couldn't delete the post so I edited it quite a bit down. Hope folks think its nifty. Take care.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Feshbismcup

[Brickthus]

I think BB-8 is a difficult concept to for TLG to produce as a product, firstly because Sphero already had a sphere product and were able to add a head to it and provide full control from a phone for £130.

A static model can look OK, and some of those I've seen look great, but the dynamics are part of the deal with BB-8.

The rolling one has now achieved 10,000 votes so good luck passing the review with a licence-based product!

I decided that BB-8 could be an opportunity for TLG to show off the technical capability of their products and promote their values by making a controllable one with Power Functions. This means the user can build the droid, operate it remotely (even if not programmable) and get the play value out of the tools. I started at 40% scale and increased to about half scale. When finished, it should have a similar level of functionality to Volvo Loader 42030 for a similar price point of £170. There is always the possibility that replacing the internal mechanism with an EV3 kit could make it programmable, but I'll leave that to the EV3 experts.

It's not easy to get the tools right; even getting the faces in the right order has meant trawling through the videos of the real BB-8.

There are a couple of helpful diagrams available but they need to be checked before use.

I found only the flame tool and the cables in photos. The only one of the map drawer seems to be someone else's interpretation for their 3D-printed full-size droid. If anyone has found pictures of other tools deployed (lightning zapper, perhaps circular saw?) then please reply here as I would like to have a look and reproduce the functionality.

Since we have not seen all the tools deployed in Ep7, there is still some mystery and speculation; I suppose some of the arms may deploy like those of R2D2.

In the movie there can be multiple BB-8 droids, some for chase scenes and others for deploying tools. I have to do both with a single model. There will be no external additions!

Here is the flame tool for "Thumbs Up", which fits in the shell and stays out of the way of the internal drive mechanism.

This is how it folds away:

Today I have developed a solution to deploy the cables that BB-8 uses to maintain position in the barrel-rolling Millennium Falcon.

The cables are also stored within the shell and out of the way of the drive mechanism. Will post more pics of that in my Brickshelf Gallery soon.

There is also a link to the project if you would like to support it.

Mark

[Jayoheazy]

The problem with the OPs design for me is that it doesn't look or feel like 'Lego.' Sure it's using Lego spheres, but not many people would catch onto that. It's halfway between Lego and a third party company. If I were to choose the most accurate looking model with play features I'd get something else. If I want a Lego BB-8 I want it to look the part of that makes sense?

Edited March 25, 2016 by Jayoheazy