castlephelps
USA
Asked
— Edited
Resolved by thetechguru!
Hi,
Now that I have the proper power plug and have my EZ-B powered up I am confused as to how to begin. I have read the lessons on the EZ-B, the Developer Kit and ARC software. I don't have any of the robots that the other tutorials seem to address - so how do I just do something like hook up a servo and have it move or make the camera display an image?
I connected my laptop to the EZ-B wirelessly and created a project, opened the camera but am getting a message that the camera is not active or something like that.
Yes, I'm really new to this stuff so any guidance to playing with the Developer Kit would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Castle
Bottom line is to get ARC connected to your ezb (yes, sorry tutorials again LOL) then we can load some easy sample projects to get you started...
Just a few ideas.. hope that helps..
The project examples Richard is talking can be loaded right from inside ARC. There's tons of them covering all sorts of robots that both EZ Robot has built through a bunch that regular folks like me and you have made.
Go to the File tab then look to the right for the EZ Cloud section. Clink on the Download button and play around in there looking through all the projects. Download any of them to ARC.
You can also click the Browse button and it will hook you up. Read the introduction then click on the Robot Apps title on the left. Look through the list and pick one to download then open it in ARC.
Online here there are also tutorials explaining what all the controls and script commands do... Here is information on ez robot controls for example... Control tutorials
First, take your EZ-B and connect the camera to the camera port. Make sure the plug is well seated.
Then take one of your servos and plug it into port D0 (the top left port. make sure the black wire is to the inside, on the black pin. Hook it up backwards and it will burn out).
I will assume you are still in AP mode (ie, your computer is connected to the EZ-B's WiFi rather than the EZ-B on your home network in client mode. Makes knowing the IP address easier. If not, you will need to modify the IP address in the connection and camera object boxes).
Power up your EZ-B, and after it has started, connect your computer to the EZ-B's WiFi.
Open ARC.
In the Connection object, there are 5 lines for connecting up to 5 EZ-B's. The first one (labeled 0) should have 192.168.1.1:23 in the box next to the connect button. (this is what you would change if you put the EZ-B on your home network).
Click the Connect button, and you should hear your EZ-B beep once, and see a few lines of information pop up in the debug window.
Assuming that was successful, lets get a servo working.
Click on the Project tab, then the Add button (top left button)
In the window that opens, click on the blue servo button for a list of servo controls.
Select Click on Horizontal Servo.
this will put a horizontal servo control in your project. It will default to an undefined port and the minimum and maximum values will be 90.
Click the Gear icon to define the servo.
Leave the board index at 0.
Press the Port button and select the D0 port on the picture of the EZ-B that pops up (make sure now to verify that your servo is plugged into D0 by comparing it to the picture).
Close the select port dialog.
Move your mouse over the Min. setting, You can either left click and drag the mouse down until you get to 0 (the servo will be moving while you do this) or you can right click and a drop-down menu will appear to allow a bit faster scrolling but the servo won't move until you select a value. Choose value of 1.
Do the same for the Max. value, but choose 180.
Click on Save.
Now when you click your mouse and scroll left and right over the number in the middle of the servo control, your servo will move left and right.
Clicking on Center will set it to position 90 (or the mid point between your min and max settings). Clicking Release will stop sending position information to the servo. In general, you need to restart the EZ-B after a release for that servo to take commands again. Release is used as an "emergency stop" when you have gotten into a position that is straining a servo and risking burn out.
Assuming you get this far, move onto the next post for starting the camera control.
Alan
Building on the last overview, assuming you are still connected...
On the project tab, click Add, then the blue Camera button.
Then click on Camera Device (may need to double click..)
This will add a camera device to your project. On the left is the camera window and on the right, a series of tabs for different controls. The device tab is the default.
In the video device window, the default device should be EZB://192.168.1.1
If it is, simply press the "Start" button and the left window should display what your camera sees.
if it isn't, hit the refresh list button, then click in the video device window. A drop down will list every camera your computer can see, plus some defaults including:
USB Camera
Brookstone Rover V1 (doesn't currently work)
AR Parrot Drone
EZB://192.168.1.1
Choose EZB://192.168.1.1 and click on start.
(if you have put your EZ-B on your home network, enter its IP address here instead of choosing from the list. Easiest way is to choose EZB://192.169.1.1 and then edit it).
Assuming that works, follow the various tutorials for the various camera functions.
Note: many of the tutorial videos were done with the V3 version of EZ B and a wireless USB camera that EZ-Robot used to sell, and the dialogs may look a bit different, but the concepts are the same.
Everything else is pretty much the same. Plug the device in, add a control, follow the tutorials and example projects, ask questions here when you get stuck.
Alan
download Floor Simple Examples from EZ-Cloud.
Delete the custom Movement Panel from the project.
Add a Modified servo Movement Panel and configure with the ports you plugged your continuous rotation servos into.
Test and adjust the Movement Panel as needed to get the direction and speed of each wheel right.
Run the circle, star, or box script from the script manager (you can delete the forward, reverse, left, and right scripts. they are superfluous, and 2 of the 3 are empty, and the other two don't actually do anything...).
Alan
I click on Browse Online in ARC which opens a browser where I click on the title and Save File - but it downloads into my download folder - how do I get it to open in ARC?
There is the way you learned, which is to browse online, which opens a browser and allows you to download the .EZB file which you can then open locally (either like you did, but clicking on the project itself, or through the file open dialog within ARC).
The other way is directly within ARC. On teh file tab, on the right, is the EZ-Cloud section. It has Open, Save, and Browse buttons.
If you click the Open button, you get a search window that allows you to narrow your search by project type and person, or select to show "Your" files.
Once you find the file you want, just click on it, and it will download and open in ARC. You can then save it locally using the save or save_as buttons on the left side of the file tab.
If you want to save one of your files to EZ-Cloud, you use the SAVE button. You can then define the type of file and other properties so others can search for it, or you can make it private so only you can see it.
There are 3 reasons you want to do this.
1) it is a great way to have a backup of your file. It is rare, but ARC has been known to save corrupted files. EZ-Cloud automatically keeps several revisions of backups when you save a new file there, so you can go back to a known good copy.
2) You can easily move a project between your own computers by saving to the cloud on one and downloading on the other. I do this regularly. I do most of my design on a desktop computer but then download to a laptop or tablet when running the robot.
3) This is the only way to use the Android (or soon iOS and Windows Phone) apps. You design the app on a PC and upload it to the cloud, then from your mobile device, you download it from the cloud and run it from the device.
Alan