@Ron.

If you want to remove and use the EZ-B out of the casing you will need to do a little bit of soldering, but not much.

Once you have removed the screws and removed the casing, for the speaker you will need to solder a couple of wires to the amplified SPK solder points or the non amplified points of the lower part of the PCB. You might want to take a look at the very well written sound breakout mod that Dave Schulpius wrote as it describes how he did this. You can solder the other ends of the wires to the EZ-B speaker removed from the lower casing, or use another speaker.

Non amplified way



Amplified way



As for the power input there are a couple of options. For one, you could solder a couple of wires to the power input solder ports on the lower part of the EZ-B, and a connector on the other end of the wires to connect to the battery. The second option is to get yourself a mini Deans connector (I think that's correct) that will plug in to the power pins on the bottom of the EZ-B.

I hope some of that helps Ron, and I look forward to seeing your progress with the minion doll . They crack me up.

Thanks Steve.

I hope I can get all the stuff inside. If not maybe an interface between the ezb and the minion.
I will pull the boards out of the case to see if it will fit and once I get my new stuff from the shop with a new ezb, I will start soldering.

Ron

@Ron.

No problem. Truth be told, with the EZ-B out of its protective casing (without the power shell) you won't save very much space compaired to it being in the casing. But the PCB's are easy to remove so it'll be easy to check. Let us know how you get on.

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the info..

You are right on how little space is really saved.

Any other ideas on how to get a lot of stuff into a little space?

I am still wanting a remote ezb with communications. I will then be able to also run more than one robot from 1 ezb with better interaction.
The robots are small. (Minions from the movie). The ezb in a case, and 1 servo with mechanics fills the body cavity, no room for battery.
I need 3 servos, a speaker, battery plus the communication unit.
I am running the minion now with an r/c receiver and all the above stuff plus a very small soundboard now with little room left. I sill want the ezb power.

Soon I may open a new thread to see if anyone has done a remote ezb like I need.

Any thoughts?

Ron

@ANDY ROID What do you mean by a remote ezb? Isn't it already remote from your PC?.... Do you mean wireless communication from the ezb to another device other than your PC? That isn't gonna' happen unless you slap some sort of wireless RF serial device through the ezb4's UART ports.... But it doesn't make sense to do even if you are short of electronics space.... You will lose 90% of the ezb4 functionality that way... Seems overly complicated...

You maybe should consider an Arduino Micro, Mini or Nano.... If I understand what you want to do correctly, there would be no point in using an ezb unless it is on board the robot itself....

Hi Richard,

I do mean a wireless communication from the ezb to the robot.

I have limited needs in the robot. (3 servos, and a sound system (mic and speaker which can be a separate unit). The speech processing power and servo operation from the ezb is what I need to run, but no room.

The almost 30 I/O, camera, UART ports and built in speaker are great for my larger bot, but way too large for my minions. A 90 percent loss in functionality still gives me more than enough for this project.

Any thoughts on a wireless communication to do the job?

Ron

I edited my last post ... Maybe you should consider an adruino mini, micro or nano?... You can't use any of the ezb's advanced features unless it is physically on board the robot, so what would be the point of even using an ezb?... With what you want to, you're still going to need some sort of wireless serial transceiver, a servo control board and/or a microcontroller on your robot anyway.... If the ezb won't fit then all of the latter surely won't fit either... You'll need a micro controller (like an arduino) to decode information sent from the remote EZB (which will also need a transceiver attached to the uart port) in order to make your robot do stuff... Seems a way too overcomplicated to me...

By the way... We have had discussions some while back about an ezb mini... DJ has confirmed that the current ezb is as small as it gets, there will no other ezb4 models... Maybe the ezb5 (if there ever is one) might be reduced in size, who knows...

Hi Richard,

The processing power of the ezb gives me everything I need. The interface ability between the voice and servos is key. With the EZB Software, it is easy to develop what I want to do. The robots I have are small and I understand your concerns, and appreciate you ideas. I will put these discussions and thoughts for a communication system aside for now, but I won't give up.

I will continue to develop the concept and develop the software. I will put it in a larger robot platform or maybe just a head like the one on my little girl above, for testing and see how it works out.

Thank you for getting back to me.
Ron

Hey Andy,
If you build a small stand with the EZ-B inside and the Minion on top you will have the room in the robot for the servos and speaker and the EZ-B and battery can be in the stand.
Hope this works for you.

The stand idea will work. I wanted to see if I could come up with a way to reduce the control size and still use the EZB power. I have two ideas which can use this mini control idea. I still want to consider and build a master/slave control using the ezb.

Thanks for the idea. The stand will help with the developing of the minion robot.

Ron

Glad to help anytime I can.
I have one of those Minions also.
He might need an EZ-B.
Hmmmmmmmmm
EZ-B can make a cool backpack on a Minion also.

A work hat camera too! LOL You got me thinking!

Thanks

Ron

A hat cam would work very well!
The minion attached to the base would keep him from falling over also.
Plus servos could make him dance!