haha, yes - those colors are universal facts, which is why they're not defined in datasheets. The concept of gnd is also labelled with a symbol of - (minus). The opposite applies to positive, which is a + (plus). Much like your car battery, stereo speakers, well really anything...

Gnd is black Positive is red Which leaves white, and you guessed it, that would be signal

Do not just "check out" that link. Print it or save it to your desktop for reference. There is a lot of information in there which will be useful

Thanks DJ,

What great support ! Best in the business, actually any business for that matter ! Rick

Hello,

I made the mistake of leaving the adventure robot on too long past the point of the battery warnings. I inspected the battery and it wasn't deformed any. I removed the EZ-Bv4 and tried charging the battery with included charger. Originally I received 3 leds flashing red six times with one second delay in between. I let the battery sit for about 45 minutes and with the controller removed I tried recharging again and it appears to be charging fine. Is this pretty typical and should the battery be used now even if it charges with both cell lights green? In other words is it safe to use?

I thought about a way to power the Ez-bv4 on and off using a low power photon processor or other small internet of things processor. The small iot processor would control a relay to act as a remote power switch. You could tweet a command to turn relay on and off. This would allow one to conserve power on robot when not in use. Power could be turned on remotely when robot needs to be active. I'm thinking of cases where I might be away from home for a period of time. When I want to see what is going on in our house I could turn the robot on to view the camera on adventure robot then turn power off remotely until the next time I want to check things out. What are your thoughts regarding this idea?

Any chance that a larger milliampere lipo battery could be used with the ez-robots? Any plans for the future to offer such an upgrade?

I have successfully put adventure robot controller in the client mode. I was also able to port forward the ip address and ports and using ARC mobile, control and view camera over cell phone 4G connection. The response was quite good for both the robot movements and also the camera stream. It was actually pretty impressive and I am using the lower camera resolution. I'm also using an older Samsung s4 phone and T-Mobile's 4g network that isn't known for its speed compared to other carriers.

Can I post a photo of my adventure robot creation in this thread? It is pretty cool and I have modified original adventure robot design. Have added 1/4 × 3 inch rubber bands on the wheels and it moves much better on carpet. Also have found some small casters from pololu that should adapt easilly to the adventure robot. I' ll try and post photo of what I have done so far. I have also modified the adventure robot mobile app to run the rgb animation display and there was one button to play a sound that was not labeled, so I labeled it. Had to change a couple of buttons around to get the text to display correctly. The ARC windows and mobile versions are very powerful and way awesome ! Nice work ! I plan on adding a lever servo so I can tilt camera. Don't need rotation servo as I can rotate robot itself. Can save on servo and power this way. Will post mobile app to cloud once everything is done. Maybe I will post what I have so far.

Rick Bonari

Long as the battery isn't puffy - as per the tutorial and it's included example images - you will be fine.

You sure can post pictures! Post away Everything is about sharing here!

As for turning on and off the ez-b remotely - you will find that the ez-b will most likely use less power than any IoT device. This is because the ez-b most like uses the same STM32 ARM processor. Also, the EZ-B has a digital switching power supply, which is hundreds of times more efficient than a linear regulator which is found on cheap hobby products.

If you want the ez-b to turn off automatically when the battery is low, there are way more effective ways of doing that with less complications. One example, is to use an Arduino and a relay similar to that was used in the Bimbo The Clown..

This arduino code loop checks the status of the green pin of the ez-b to see if wifi is connected - if not, cycle the power via the relay. Use one of those 2 or 4 pack relay pcb's that we used for Bimbo The Clown - jeremie posted the link to the relay in one of the threads.

/**

analog 0 will be connected to battery to check voltage
digital 1 will be connected to master power relay
digital 2 will be connected to ez-b relay
**/

while (true) {

  if (analogRead(0) < 600) {

    // disable master relay that provides all power
    digitalWrite(1, LOW);

    // no need to do anything because the power will be cut 
  }

  // check if the green led on the ez-b is not on
  if (!digitalRead(2)) {

    // cycle ezb power with relay
    digitalWrite(2, low);
    delay(2000);
    digitalWrite(2, high);
    delay(5000);
  }

  delay(10000);
}

You can also look at the User Tutorials in the learn section for examples that ppl have - or use the search feature and find what others are doing.

I would recommend you start by comparing the power consumption between the IoT device that you're referring to, and the EZ-B. You can compare power consumption by using a multi-meter. If you don't have one, get one because they are useful in electronics - specifically what you're attempting to do.

Hello,

just wondering how I get a photo stored on my phone to show in my posts? Below I have tried to attach a photo file but when uploading it just shows the apparent link but no picture:

Not sure what the issue is. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks much...Rick B.

Hello,

It worked. Looks like once you hit reply it actually puts the photo in with the text. Yeah ! Here is another photo:

One more photo:

That is one decked out adventure bot He's pretty lucky to have all those attachments! The RGB LED Array is my favorite to play with.

Good idea with the elastics. We choose the version 2 wheels (which you have) to be a little slippery to assist with navigating and not leaving floor marks.. And most importantly, to be easy on the servos. The version 1 wheels were much stickier and caused servo failure and leaving marks on peoples floor. If the elastics are working for you, that's awesome