Over the last week or so I have been cleaning out boxes and boxes of old belongings that had been kept in storage for years and years. It turns out my childhood was filled with Nintendo things (which probably isn’t a surprise). Today, in a box that was uncovered (Nooo!), sat our favorite Robotic Operating Buddy, or as most know him: R.O.B. Since he had last seen daylight several years ago, his robo-body had gathered a bit of dirt and grime, so this afternoon I spent a little time cleaning him off.
I’ll get the bad news out of the first: no, he no longer powers on. An intense pang of guilt hit me right in the chest cavity when the little red light on his head did not light up. I guess that is why we make robots in the shape of ourselves.
Cleaning up the old robot was a pretty simple affair. With bit of rubbing alcohol and elbow grease, R.O.B. gained back a bit of his shine, though the discoloration in the plastic is too bad. We’ll just pretend he has a tan.
Since he wouldn’t turn on, I thought that checking out his internals wouldn’t be a bad idea. Maybe something simple had come loose over the years that could be soldered back on. Upon further inspection, I couldn’t find anything amiss (though my knowledge in such areas is pretty limited). But now we know what the inside of R.O.B. looks like.
About an hour later R.O.B. looked quite a bit better, though his off-white shell makes him still look a bit dingy. The good news is that the spider I found living in his arm cavity is no longer there, so that’s a plus all around.
Next year, Rob will be 30 years old, so I feel like he is still in pretty good shape, all things considered. I feel bad that he was left to rot in storage for so long, so for the time being he’ll have a new home on my shelf. And as I write that, I have an idea for the best Raspberry Pi security camera mod ever…