I need him to eat frogs and eggs and spit them out also, make it happen.

Or Baby Yoda "collapses" after the strain of throwing your ball into the rollover lanes.

In interview with Brian Eddy on Dead Flip the concern was the durability and reliability, but would be cool if Grogu would evolve to be animated one day.

floating Grogu Pod opening & closing.

Hasbro makes an animated one for $60, for sale on Amazon. Someone could use these as the starting point, come up with an interface, and....Bob's your uncle!!

Yeah, I know there is more to it than that, but still....if someone can homemake an interface for aftermarket light rail ramps to work on a TRON Pro and interface with the modes....this should be doable as well.

Someone already proved did that I believe. Post #4517:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/this-is-the-way-stern-mandalorian-pinball/page/91

Done, how hard was that!?

I think the concern is legitimate, and they probably made the right call here.

Plopping a $50 Hasbro toy on the playfield and "circuit bending" it to interface with a node board is easy enough to do, but there is absolutely NO WAY such a toy would remotely last as long as the rest of the machine, and it would likely become an ongoing headache for Stern's service department.

Designing and implementing an appropriately robust mechanism with a proper metal chassis/actuators/gears, brass or ball bearings, decent stepper motors/controllers, etc. would almost certainly add way too much to the overall costs to even consider for the Pro model, and might even be a challenge for the Prem/LE as well (ie. other features like the elevating playfield would need to be sacrificed).

In my humble opinion not trying to accomplish an animated Grogu is a missed opportunity and would more than justify the cost of these LE's. Furthermore if it was an extra thousand, then an add on to the Premium at a cost down the road would be bought up if it was well done. If the other features like Upper playfield and Razer Crest were strong enough new additions to attract buyers, then leaving it up to modders to create the animated puppet (or hot wire the Hasbro one) would be fine. But those two features were weak in this case and the animated Grogu could have been very cool if done properly.

Oh, I don't disagree at all, personally.

An animatronic Grogu (done right) would be a lot more desirable to me than the Razer Crest thing (I don't think I'd want to give up the UPF), but as we know all too well everything is built to a price. I can imagine that Brian Eddy et al. would have gone for all three mechs, but Bob (or maybe Jennifer) from Accounting took a more "sober" look at the thing and mandated that they choose 2/3!

Easy. Bob's my uncle.

Joe Abate on Facebook posted this:

https://www.facebook.com/acejedi72/videos/4356525694370237/

Joe modded the $60 Hasbro brand Grogu toy to fit in his LE and rewired it to lift up his hand ‘use the force’ when the magnet is activated to hold the ball.

Nice!
This makes me really wish I didn’t sell me SW LE that was perfectly modded

Looks like Joe/ Acejedi released his instructions on the moving grogu. Tied to movement on one light so lots of room for improvement for folks that are crafty with circuits....

https://www.facebook.com/groups/35138159505/permalink/10158571028689506/

He mentions a kit in the PDF so not sure yet when or where that will be released. Anyways the community is fortunate someone like him is willing to release such detailed instructions.

AceJedi's DAMMIT GROGU DOES SOMETHING Mod .pdf

Thank you Joe!!! I appreciate all the help. Can't wait to get the remainder of parts to finish this mod.

Your Welcome Guys, I just wanted him to move, he’s been running for hundreds of hours with zero issues. It was a project I wanted the community to be able to create for free with off the shelf store bought parts. I wanted it basic and easy and I think we did just that. You could definitely add to it. Mines got a light up necklace and you can tie the whole thing to an Arduino and program it if that’s what you want yours to do.

Enjoy and now Grogu does something!!!

It is an awesome mod and I am looking forward to making and fitting one to our Mando when it arrives. Awesome instructions.

I have a request as I am not really a modder. Could you please give me a size of the female connector (instruction sheet says 6 pin, but I think it is a 5 pin) for Stern cabinet node 12V and the location of the wires (e.g. red is pin 1 and black is pin 4) and the loaction of connection on the cabinet node board (eg CN11)

Thanks

Picking up my LE on Friday afternoon but already ordered the grogu animated doll and it arrive today. So I’ll get to work taking it apart and making the modifications while I wait for the rest of the electronic parts to arrive.

F0829B15-3423-4E65-9054-4F331361DF86 (resized).jpeg

keep us posted! Good luck!

ACE, I'm happy you took this on and did the community a solid. Great work. Do you have a gameplay video with your mod in action? I'd love to see it.

My Mando is on order so I'm very excited to follow in your footsteps.

Modded Grogu and won't work when wired up. Looks like both relays I have are bad because when testing on the multi-meter, I get 12v in, but nothing out on any of the output terminals at all. Grogu moves and powers up when I apply 5v to the motor.

I ordered one of these... when you goto the link, it shows you where to connect.
https://www.pinballlife.com/spike-12v-power-adapter-53-long.html

The spike-12v-power-adapter also has the suggested in-line fuse holder.

That is awesome, Thankyou!

You will need to add a jumper wire from the input terminal to the center (common) terminal of the relay output. It’s not shown in the pdf diagram. Maybe the photo board Joe used was internally connecting those points but the ones linked on Amazon are not. So if you are wiring the grogu power wire to the relay output then you will need to jumper the 12v in to the center of the output. If you are using the relay to switch the ground wire then the center common terminal needs to be jumpered back to the ground input terminal.

800DD5A6-41CE-42A1-9AF3-BBA5F45492EA (resized).jpeg

Awesome info and much appreciated. Joe did find that out and mentioned it to me on Facebook as well but I appreciate your updated diagram. It’s funny when I was looking at replacement relay boards I saw some people added a jumper wire but couldn’t make sense of why in their comments. Now I know why LOL

Exactly what I was talking about on the Facebook page. I agree with this.

Yup that did the trick. Now I need to add resistors to slow him down I guess. He’s a total spaz.

So there is 12V output to Grogu instead of 5?

Yes, the relay I have does not step down to 5v output. I ordered a 12v - 5v step down converter for $8 and will use that instead of the resistors. I didn't have the right resistors needed and could only get the output down to 8.5v.

Slowed him down some, but not like out of the box. It arrives on Friday so will have to wait.

Looking forward to someone putting out a parts kit for this. Ive already got a grogu

https://www.facebook.com/groups/35138159505/permalink/10158571028689506/

I have the same issue. I didn't see anything in the PDF with regards changes required to the speed etc.
What converter did you buy, and where from? Also, how does that wire in??
Thank you in advance.

Or I could use this resistors, what would I need there?
Thanks again

I bought this step-down converter and it arrived today from Amazon. Will test it out tomorrow at some point, probably in the evening, and report back.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J3MHRNO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00

And don't user resistors. Too much heat and not the way to correctly and safely get 5v.

OK, Cool. Thank you.

Sweet. Thanks! Looks like he says the kits should be available any day now.

Can someone share video here? Dont have facebook.

If I owned one of these machines and did this mod I think I'd buy 2 or 3 of those toys as spares.

Double post - posted this in the owner thread thinking I was in this thread.

Animated Grogu testing completed with the 12v-5v converter. Tomorrow I'll button it all up nicely and install him.

Video:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/d37aaKGG3pyfgiBX7

This will b awesome

Game Stop and Best Buy have this animated Grogu on clearance for $51, same as Amazon, but if you have points for those stores, then even better.

Had some time this evening to finish up mounting the relay, converter and Grogu. All done. What a fantastic upgrade!

Much thanks to everyone involved with the mod!

hey PoMC
Any final video? Also interested in pics on how you mounted the new modded grogu?
Thank you

Yup, here's video I took when test fitting and playing one handed. I'm streaming gameplay on FB later and will take a better video then as well.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/UXLkWwWuRdRkJvZt8

I mounted using the suggestion in the instructions. When you make the mod, you'll have two plastic stand-offs at the bottom front of Grogu. Slide them under the ramp protector and he stays in place. I'll probably make a mounting plate for him since the original bolt holes in the backboard from the original Grogu are there to use. But he's not going anywhere as is.

Glad everyone is building them and enjoying doing it. My goal was here’s the jumping off point guys now let’s make it better. The prototyping is what takes weeks. I can cut a grogu down now in 25 minutes with no marks but I’ve cut too many lol. If anyone has any questions feel free to PM me here or on FB. Glad the jumper got mentioned as I stated on FB the relay I used in the prototype first version has that jumper built in but it’s slightly more expensive. I didn’t realize the other version we linked it two required it. It is in the Amazon purchase ad description though.

Cheers

Joe
(AceJedi)

Looks super cool! Did you mount the light censor in the same place the Acejedi suggested?
Thanks again