again, Download the software and experiment with it.

The advantages to this archatecture include

1. The world of the internet now at the disposal (along with all of its RSS feed and websites) of your robot.

2. You can place a computer in the bot like an acer W3 if you would like to make a self contained bot.

3. The internet is everywhere, including your cell phone. If you setup your firewall correctly, it wouldnt matter where in the world your computer was as long as you and your robot are both attached to the internet.

4. You have the processing power of the PC. For example I7 with 32 GB ram and SSD drives on a fast internet connection. Much more powerful than an arduino or really anything else for processing data.

5. You have the ability to connect to 5 of these and have them work together to build what you want.

6. you have the ability to have many of these communicate with each other over the internet or via database storage and retrieval.

7. you have many of the things that you are going to do already developed in a very easy to use interface.

8. you can write applications using EZ-SDK and a .net language, Python, Perl or C for that matter.

9. you can come here and get information quickly and easily when facing an issue from others who have already faced the issue you see.

10. you can use digital, analog, serial, i2c and video that is very fast

11. the board that is controlling all of your devices is not bogged down with processing the data.making a much more versatile bot.

I will stop there but could go on for hours.

Other platform advantages if you want to call them that.

1. you can run without a computer or iphone/android connected via the internet or local area wifi network.

2. Broad acceptance which has more users and more websites.

The rave reviews were on this website in this community. There are others who have reviewed the V3 and were blown away by it that have posts on the internet. The specs on the V3 are far weaker than the V4 and the connection via wifi is much faster than bluetooth.

Ultimately it is your choice. I just let you know the facts. I have a very technical background and have had very technical jobs for over 25 years. I have been in the robot hobby for 15 years. I have seen many solutions and this solution breaks down all of the barriers that I had faced before. Infact, spend some time looking into the truly advanced robots that are out now and you will find that they follow this model. I am not talking about the hobby, but am talking about Toyota, NASA, many Japanese companies, and pretty much anyone doing anything powerful with robotics now. I guess if you are building a MARS rover or an underwater type bot, I could see why you wouldnt want to use a wifi connection, but other than that, I really dont see it. Even with those, I am sure that they have an onboard computer.

We welcome you into this community. It is full of some of the best robot builders that there are. The platform will let you get years ahead of anything else out there quickly. I personally think it would be worth your time to download the ARC software to see what is possible out of the box without any programming. I think your perception will change quickly about which platform is superior for robotics programming. I have used many different controllers over the past 15 years and this one is the first one that I viewed as a real game changer.

Think about how Apple changed the world of computers 30 years ago and then look at an ipad or iphone and you will start to realize what EZ-Robot means to the world of robotics. I am by no means an apple fanboy. They realized what Zerox execs didn't about how much a pointing device and windowed OS would change the world of computers. That is the type of change that EZ-Robots is and some people never realize that history repeats itself.

What I did was download the software as it is free. I then loaded up some of the projects off of the cloud which are free and started experimenting. you will be able to get a very good feel for what is possible without spending a dime. It will help you to decide if you want to take the plunge or not. If you are a programmer, you could also download EZ-SDK. It would allow you to experiment with writing your own apps for the EZ-B. There are a lot of tutorials with the EZ-SDK. Again, all of this is free to do. Once you are done with that and you are comfortable, I believe you will definitely want to take the plunge.

The general concept of ez robot ezb V4 is that it is completely scalable. The software ARC is for those who are not proficient in coding c+ , python , .net framework applications ect. Of course if someone has truly "outgrown" ARC which is not likely then they would prefer the sdk sandbox in which they can write code for all their own controls and modules. I have seen many who thought ARC wasn't much until they started using it. Then the next thing you know the excitement kicks in and they start asking questions learning about how to use all the controls. Since it scales up and you can 5 boards networked together under one ARC instance. That could literally be 250 servos or 100 sensors ect. It far out scales things like raspberry pi, galileo , arduino , netduino , basic stamp ect.

"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?"

In looking through what you had asked to make sure that all questions were answered, I realized that these were not.

I have used the SDK 2 times. One was to add the ability to grab a variable from ARC and store it in a MSSQL or MySQL database, or retrieve a value from a MSSQL or MySQL database and store it in ARC as a variable. This could be used in many ways including communications between robots. The other was at the request of a member here who wanted to get email notification through their robot. I build an app that checks a POP3 server and returns if there are new emails or not since the last time it checked. These were not a native part of the ARC software, so I made them with EZ-SDK and C#. Facial Recognition is another package that has been developed using the EZ-SDK, along with other things. These are posted on the forums for people to download and use for free.

ARC works without a connection to anything. To control a robot, you need to connect the robot to the ARC software. This is via WIFI IP network for the V4 controller. It was via Bluetooth for the V3. In order to access the cloud, you would need a network connection on the computer running ARC. The connection to the robot can be any type of IP network as long as there is a clear path between the computer and robot(s) that it is controlling for the ports it needs to communicate with the robot(s). If there is a firewall blocking port 23 for example, it wont work. As I am sure you know, firewalls can be on the PC, switch/router, cable modem, service provider or really anywhere along the chain of connections. This includes a direct connection between the computer and EZ-B's, local area network, wide area network or internet. The most limiting factor is the distance that you are able to reach with the wifi router you are using, but there are ways to extend this range to miles also.