Our B9's most notable
feature, and what makes our creation a bit more
special
to us, is the fact he is fully battery powered, as
the "real" robot was. As if
that isn't rare in and of itself, our robot is the
only B9 in existence that is
recharged exclusively by a state-of-the-art solar
power charging system.
We already had these components on hand for another
project, but decided
our B9 Robot should inherit them. We also realized,
in keeping with the theme
of the television series, powering and recharging
our robot in this fashion was
an appropriate feature that parallels the TV
series, adding greater authenticity
to him.
As with all things,
including powering a B9 robot, there are many
different ways to go about it, this is just one
example, if not unusual.
Although, Classic Reborn was to produce their top
tier B9 Robot
as a fully battery powered version, regrettably,
the company closed
their doors before this happened.
These are the Solar components that maintain our
battery powered B9 Robot. The photo on
the left is a top quality Siemens, fully laminated,
aluminum, Mono-crystalline solar panel that
is fully weather proofed and designed to withstand
anything Mother Nature can throw at it,
including a marine environment. The photo on the
right is a 20 amp input capacity, true 0-100%
Pulse Width Modulation series type solar charge
controller. This system is fully automated and
requires no intervention on my part. The controller
also has an added benefit in that it is also
designed to connect to an external 12 volt
regulated power supply in the event the robot
requires
charging and weather conditions do not permit it.
This is one of the only companies that designs
their charge controllers with this important
feature in mind. Although, even under heavy
cloud cover, the efficiency of this type of solar
panel still does a great job.
Other animated features
include a fully operable power pack. When pulled,
the robot
deactivates, making the customary, "Aaaahh" sound.
When reactivated, he sounds off
with three additional appropriate phrases, all of
which are burned onto microprocessors.
He produces his own background mechanical sounds,
also burned onto a microprocessor,
that can be turned on or off by an SPST toggle,
located within his programming bay.
Two additional phrases can be recited controlled by
momentary switches,
also within the programming bay.
We didn't want to deal with CD's in our robot. To
eliminate CD's altogether, the
voice phrases have been digitally recorded, all
1.75 gigabytes of them. One of the best
features of our robot is that at the touch of a
button, he recites virtually every line ever
spoken by the real robot on the TV series. He can
talk nonstop and never say the same
thing twice for over three hours and simply start
over again. Of course, we can stop him
at any point along the way. The phrases and
mechanical sounds have both been digitally
remastered for great clean audio.
Please click on a figure for
details on some of our other life-size
characters.
Check out our robot's mention in an article in Forbes
FYI magazine! Read
it here.