The EZ-B acts as a gateway between all of your sensors, motors, devices and so on, and your computer or phone. "Nothing" gets compiled onto the board, and all logic is run from the computer or iphone/android. You connect via IP wireless network for V4 or bluetooth for V3. b. no c. It is a cloud based application. Because things are running via IP, the computer can be anywhere in the world. The phone has a wifi connection to the robot to control the robot.

BTW, when you stop to think about the above, you will come to the conclusion that the robot will be able to do much more than you could ever imagine with the other devices on the market.

Code is shared on EZ-Cloud and you can access it from ARC. Some people share a lot. Some dont, but let me assure you that you wont be reinventing the wheel. This is the beauty of ARC. It makes the simple things really simple, and the complex things simple. The really complex things like facial recognition and such can be programmed through EZ-SDK if they dont already exist. BTW, facial recognition already exists.

you control the device from the computer and a hand held controller. Download ARC and start using it. you will be amazed and you dont have to have an EZ-B to start using the software. This will help you understand a lot more.

I am not an employee so I cant answer #4

BTW, the V4 will blow away the V3, which blows away everything else available.

Download the software and play a bit. Download some of the projects off the cloud and learn and you will be hooked.

BTW, shipping on the V4 started a few months back. Their robots started shipping this month. Dev kits started shipping last month...

100 V4's were shipped out a few months back. They got rave reviews. It is like anything else. When you have a new product, you have to decide if you are going to do one of the following.

1. sell off most of the company to investors who gain control of your company
2. sell the old product while finishing up the new product and have upset customers that got the old product instead of the new product.
3. sell only the new product and deal with the short term complaints of people not having their items yet.

I think they did it right. They do not sell the old product anymore. They only sell the new product. Once the products are received, people quit complaining and be happy that they have an amazing product. In any of these 3, there is pain. The 3rd is the least amount of pain and provides a far more stable company going forward.

4. To be honest, I wouldn't worry about it. Check the forums, DJ and the EZ-Robot staff go above and beyond to help solve all problems and even have gone so far as to diagnose and send replacement components out for repairs to failed V3s (most, if not all failures have been due to user error).

I can't speak officially but I would be sure that should your EZ-B develop a fault EZ-Robot would be on hand to aid you diagnose the problem and fix the problem. There have been times where it's been said on the forum for the user to send the EZ-B to EZ-Robot and they will take a look at it and get it working again.

The V3 has been discontinued for around 12 months now. Any stock of them has since been bought. There may be some V3s for sale once the V4s are all shipped and in the hands of the customers, if you really wanted a V3 that is however the V4 is the better board of the two.

Well, there are advantages and disadvantages to the design of the board (remote processing). My only wish is that it is more clear, since I almost ordered the product before understanding that.

Of course, answering n00b questions only leads to more n00b questions

I asked HQ about the warranty and they said they need to update the page to change to a 90 day policy. Much more professional, but still kinda short. But given the hobby nature of this product line, I think that's good enough, if it's well documented, especially compared to "THERE SHALL BE NO SUCH THING AS A WARRANTY. wink wink".

Are there any provisions for autonomy? For example, if I wanted to bolt the remote processing PC/android device to the robot, could it operate with little to no contact/control? Voice command would be useful for remote control like this, so that might be good enough.

Where are these rave reviews? On YouTube I can only find official vids. I'd like to read/watch them.

I'm trying to wrap my head around the SDKs. The SDKs lets you add more software on the PC, in other languages that you are presumably more familiar with, to do other things? What would be an example, in English, of something implemented in one of the SDKs?

Speaking of software: someone said cloud based. Does ARC only work when connected to the 'Net? Will it work in an isolated LAN? Is the cloud component an optional feature to be taken advantage of, or is it a core component/requirement of the software?

If there are pages that go over these types/levels of questions, feel free to point me there. I couldn't find them when I was looking around over the weekend.

As for the autonomy you may be able to start an autonomous sketch from your device, if you know how to make our sketch autonomy. ARC does not require the internet, and I'm pretty sure the cloud thing is optional unless you want to transfer the sketch to the other device.

There are three primary options for autonomy

1. Have a on board x86 win 7 or win 8 pc. This can be a mini itx or even a tablet. Then link it to ezb V4

2. Have a stationary pc in your home and link it to your robot from wifi. This offers excellent range options. The pc does the heavy lifting and maintains voice control features.

3. Create a project , save to the cloud and load it onto a dual or quad core android 4.0 + device and run the mobile version of ARC. Certain things that are windows dependant like voice control won't be present on your mobile version right now.

To answer the question about shipping. The customers who starting investing in the V4 development in the form of pre-orders are obviously served first. Those pre-orders started around June of last year through the holidays then pricing jumped to a retail equivalent value.

It is a first order first ship situation. First are developer kits , then the six, Roli and JD kits will ship out to satisfy those orders. When you buy expect for your order to take 2 or 3 months to move forward while ez robot staff catches up on orders over the past few months.

The ez robot products have been featured in many publications and tv. Also there are educational shows for kids about robotics called scrapbot. This is on Gtv. Also see these other publications. The V4 is in limited hands as far as reviews. The few that showed up pre production were prototypes and it's not fair to review a preproduction prototype because development in software compatibility has substantially grown since the pre-order started.

I watched the YouTube video of the Android Tutorial, and based on a comment above, it looks like the Android app requires The Cloud, not just a network, to get the file across. Did I get the message right?

I am starting to think that maybe I understand too much of the underlying technology for this to be a good fit for me This is going to drive me crazy!

I work for an electronics manufacturer doing ~3rd echelon tech support. I've built an RC lawnmower https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151287412450498.511478.720010497&type=1&l=472e912c7d

a little something I call my development robot (a roomba with an OWI arm and an android phone) https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151661868295498.1073741827.720010497&type=1&l=6c35cae267

and a heavily modified Printrbot LC https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152262642650498.1073741831.720010497&type=1&l=ec287e8726

though most of those projects aren't really finished :-/

I stumbled across EZ-B in the hopes of getting my RoboPhilo up and running kind of like I see here: https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/2095&page=2

I'm thinking that I might buy the board anyways, and learn what can be done, and ease into robotics software. I haven't found any other kind of a suite with a UI yet. The "shortcomings" that would normally be dealbreakers for a production system would be fine for an educational system, so since my plan is to get educated, I think I'll take the plunge.

As soon as I can convince my checkbook it's a good idea, hahahaha