modernizing the heathkit hero 2000, hero 1, and hero jr with modern day parts

Woah that's intense

Wow thats a mindblowing piece of kit. Never met one in person!

keep us updated on your tinkering with it!

So far, I have spent a lot of time De-Yellowing my Hero 2000 (ET-19).   See left side example below.

The front lower section still has to be De-Yellowed, but I left it till last since it was yellowed almost not at all.

The side panels and the upper sections are now complete. It took a lot of work to get rid of the orange/yellow.

Despite its age, everything is still up and going.    Modernizing will have to wait till I catch my breath.

Beautiful David. Just recently bought a very good condition HERO 1 and am having a blast learning. Oh the usual repairs (Broken wire, cracked 12 pin connector, new batteries, etc.). But when I fired him up he said "Ready". Really having fun. Gary

Wow - a HERO 2000. Only about 50 of those were produced. Maybe one day.....for now I'm just starting to learn my (new to me HERO 1) and having an absolute blast!

The HERO (Heathkit Educational RObot) 2000 had about 3000 sold according to Wikipedia.

Other than that, the only other improvement I did, was reshape part of the plastic head section.

This reshaping is at the window area where the multiple LED's are located.  It was warped a bit.  

So out with the hair dryer.  

A little bit of heat was just enough required to reshape it back to its proper shape.

Stumbled across this 1984 archive video footage of a HERO 1 robot recently on the BBC Computer Literacy Project. It includes an introduction to the HERO 1 robot by Jim Bartley of the Heath company, at the Chicago robot exhibition.

https://computer-literacy-project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/3c875382ef173f4f8adaf5325eeb07cb

May be of interest.

Found one on ebay for ya.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Heathkit-Hero-2000-Programmable-Robot-ET-19-clean-working-no-battery/323848847072?hash=item4b66e53ee0:g:0WYAAOSw-GtdF89k

Hi I am also in the process of modernising the Hero 2000 and was really impressed how you de yellowed it! Is there any chance you could share how you did it,I would be very grateful.

I cannot decide if the best way to modernize it, either to up grade the whole motherboard with new graphics and CPU or just to restore the original components with faster ones where possible.

To de-yellow the plastic, I used ice cream.    LOL 

It's called "Ice Cream 40". It is a hair bleach product that contains 12% Hydrogen Peroxide.

Lots of other hair bleach products are out there that also contain 12% Hydrogen Peroxide.

Normally one would use ultraviolet light to assist in this Hydrogen Peroxide bleaching method, but instead I simply used a couple of cheap regular shaped Luminus "Daylight" led bulbs (15 watt, 1500LM, 5000 K Color Temp).  I purchased these at the Dollar store. Nothing expensive there.  The "Ice Cream 40"  was purchased at Shoppers Drug Mart.

The bleaching procedure was to first coat the yellowed plastic with a layer of the "Ice Cream 40", and then cover that with your typical kitchen "Plastic Wrap" to prevent the "Ice Cream 40" from drying up. Try to keep the thickness of the Ice Cream 40 evenly distributed.  Next, typically working of course with just one plastic piece at a time, I placed the plastic in my kitchen stainless steel sink, since it reflects light.  After that I had two LED bulbs hanging just above the sink, and then I used additional " Tin Foil " placed over the sink to help trap the light in the sink via reflection.

Another way to do it would be to line the walls, top, and bottom of a box, with Tin Foil.   Again have a couple of LED bulbs hanging from the top.   Of course those hot bulbs would best be kept at a safe distance from the box top itself.  Anyhow, It took from 6 to 8 hours for the bleaching to finish.  Of course there were times that I had to do some additional work to de-yellow some spots or edges that still were a tad bit yellow.

Good Luck.