Gadgetory

Star Wars The Force awakens opens in theaters this December but you don't have to wait until then to get up close and personal with one of the movies new characters thanks the robot makers spero fans can by their very own albeit slightly smaller version of bb-8 one of the astromech droids featured in the movie now I got my hands on one of the new bb-8 robots and after taking it for a test drive I wanted to find out what makes it work and what makes it different from spiros other rolling robot now luckily I have my own show where I get to do just that I'm Bill Detweiler and this is cracking open from the outside there are a few noticeable differences between the bb-8 and the older Sphero and the Sphero too this one's a spark Edition with a clear shell the bb-8 has a handy little droid head here has a new droid inspired paint job and has a different charging station now like the Sphero and the Sphero 2 it measures 2.9 inches in diameter it stands for point five inches tall and weighs about 7 ounces now the real magic with the new bb-8 happens with the app designed just for this version of the Sphero now using the app you can drive the droid like you would a regular Sphero you can also issue voice commands you can have the unit follow pre-programmed commands such as patrol and you can even record and play messages that the app makes look like the holographic communications used in the Star Wars movies now what makes the bb-8 so different from the older sphero's on the inside well to find out we'll need to crack it open unfortunately there's no way to get inside the bb-8 without cutting through the shell now I could use something like this hacksaw but that's a little slow so instead we're going to use a rotary cutting tool and a diamond wheel but I want to be safe so we're going to use our safety glasses and our safety gloves let's get cutting now that we're inside the BB eggshell we can lift out the internal hardware which is comprised of a plastic frame to which the circuit board motors drive gears batteries and charging coil is attached the internal design of the bb-8 is very similar to that of the Sphero - with the addition of the mast which extends up from the center of the frame and contains two magnets and these magnets are what hold the bb-8 s-- head in place and allow it to move to dissect the internals I started by removing the mast and magnets after removing a pair of Phillips screws I also removed the main system board on the board we find the BBH brain and st micro stm32f4 - bit arm cortex m4 core now there's also a csr 10:10 Bluetooth chip ST micro 512 kilobit serial EEPROM and a white high battery charging chip along with a gyroscope and accelerometer flipping the unit over I removed another pair of screws and a part of the internal plastic body that covers the motors and batteries flipping the unit again I removed a thin plastic piece that covers the batteries and then the pair of three point seven volt 350 milliamps lithium-ion batteries next I removed the bb-8 to standard motor FP 130 - Katie electric motors the drive wheels and axle came out next and finally the receiver coil for the inductive charger now with our BBA in pieces the teardown was complete so now that we know what's inside the bb-8 how does it compare to its older cousin the Sphero - well except for the mast and magnets which move BB aides head it's nearly identical there is one surprising difference between the spark addition of the Sphero tube and the bb-8 besides the clear shell the spark Edition has an extra ST micro MCU on the I'm bored now I suspect this extra chip allows the spark which is designed to teach kids about robotics and coding to actually run the programs written by the users all in all the bb-8 was a lot of fun to crack open and even more fun to use for more information on the bb-8 check out michelle stars full CNET review to see more tear down photos and read my full hardware analysis go to TechRepublic com4 slash cracking open