Posting from EZ-AI to facebook is complete. It is a pretty cool method of getting help when someone can't make it to a phone for some reason. It is time that I make another video showing what all is going on now with EZ-AI.
This feature takes quite a bit to get setup on Facebooks side. For right now, I am going to just put the application out with this feature in it and will document the facebook setup in the near future. It involves allowing EZ-AI to have permissions to post to your wall, and requires your userid (a number that the facebook api uses) along with some other small bits of non password/user data. EZ-AI won't be able to log in as you to facebook but has certain rights that you give it to post to your wall.

I think I will put out a video tomorrow.

This with the GPS functions and your robot can help save your life when you are away from home. Someday a robot Lassie will be getting help for her owner.

@mcsdaver, you are correct. Social media is huge and if you want to get a message to your children, it seems like the fastest possible means of communication now. They ignore phone calls and texts, but put it on Facebook and they are sure to see it.

Here is a video of the Bible search, Driving Directions and Emergency Facebook post, along with a few ideas of what I would like to incorporate next.

I use JSON to query the sources of information that I am hitting on the internet. The main reason for this is that I wanted to have a very light network connection be able to work great with EZ-AI, so that I could tether a cell phone to my computer when away from the house, and still have great performance. This video shows how EZ-AI works using a tethered cell phone 4G internet connection. I was blown away by how fast this is. This makes EZ-AI a very viable solution for traveling robots.

I just "completed" a portion of EZ-AI that will allow you to use a GPS attached to a computer with EZ-AI and pass the Lat and Long back to ARC in the $RobotAnswer variable. This is intended for use by those who use an onboard computer with their robots. It says Latitude: [Lat in deg min sec] Longitude: [lon in deg min sec] which is updated every 10 seconds. It also queries Google Maps to show your position on a map every 10 seconds. I don't have GPS devices laying around my house, so testing becomes difficult. I plan on ordering another one tomorrow and will test it out when it gets in.

Your GPS could be anything that supports NMEA 0183. I specifically grab the GPGGA (fix) data (which only happens when you have a fix or good point) of this layout and convert it to deg min sec format. NMEA 0183 is a common format but not every vendor supplies the data the same. If you are in the market for a GPS for this, it was programmed using a Garmin. I can't promise that it will work with every GPS. Yours would need to be able to be seen as a com port which sometimes requires a driver, and sometimes requires a special cable.

The data is updatable at specifiable intervals. EZ-AI queries the data from the GPS every second no matter what. How often the map and how often the data is sent back to ARC is configurable in the EZ-AI.app.config file.

This will be in release 1.0.0.5. It is the first step toward outdoor navigation.

There are some that have asked for a similar thing in the use of robotic lawn mowers and the like. The data that is passed back can be used by ARC to tell how close you are to your property line and then make the robot turn to a new direction.

If the com port can't be communicated with, there will be no data passed back to ARC at this time. If your robot quits getting updates, its probably because the batteries in your GPS have died. I would take this into account in your script that is checking for the variable so that the robot won't go rogue.

Using this method for GPS coords allows you to use a device that has a good GPS antenna and could (if your GPS has an external antenna port) allow you to place the antenna in a location that is optimal to see GPS satellites. This would improve the level of accuracy of the GPS and would probably be more likely to experience less interference from other robot components. It could also allow you to see more satellites and thus get a more accurate determination of your robots location.

The GPS that I am ordering also comes with compass and Barometric pressure to measure altitude. I dont know if I will worry much about altitude but getting the data from the compass could be useful.

I am planning on adding features to the Emergency Social media post and the Map Directions parts to allow them to get the current location of the robot. This should be useful with future endeavors including navigation and allowing your location to be pinpointed if the event of an emergency. These features will also be available in the 1.0.0.5 release of EZ-AI.

BigOven.com just issued me an API key. They have over 350,000 recipes and grocery lists and allow 100 searches an hour. Guess it looks like that is the next thing to be added to EZ-AI. I will wait to release the next version (1.0.0.5) until this is complete. I estimate that it will be released next weekend.

So, version 1.0.0.5 will have:

The beginnings of the Outdoor module (GPS navigation). Currently it will track where you are and update a map. It also passes this information back to ARC.

The ability to say "Current Location" for the address in the directions module if the GPS can get a fix on your location

The ability to say "Current Location" for the emergency facebook notify to post your lat long coords at the time that you request help. I will look at geocoding this to try to get an address as people are not familiar with lat long coords as a rule.

And possibly the ability to search for recipes and ingredients, along with making shopping lists. I haven't started this one yet so, I don't know how difficult it is going to be. You will be able to print these like you can print map directions or Bible verses.

I haven't tried this yet but I will be soon. It looks pretty darn impressive!

I would wait until I get 1.0.0.5 out. it has some pretty cool features. I am working on the recipe module now. This will be really cool. The outdoor mapping module is pretty cool to.

I should be getting my parts for the internal computer early next week. I will record the setup again while setting up that computer. There are a couple of other pieces that you will need to do that are not in the current video. Following the current video will get you about 99% of the way there, but wont tell you where to go get your API keys for some of the web based stuff.