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Hovis Eco Control

I am thinking of trying to hack a Hovis Eco and control it with an EZB4. The guestion I have is would it be possible to unplug the Eco's IR receiver from it's CPUs port and plug in a cable from the EZB4 to take over the IR commands to the Eco. This would let the Eco controller handle servo control, LED control, sensors and movement control. The EZB4 would handle speech recognition, speech generation and video funtions. Has anyone attempted such a thing.


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Synthiam
#1  
Yeah totally you could do part of it. You could not swap the ezb to respond to ir commands, however. You would connect the servos to the ezb v4 and use your phone to control it over wifi.

Throw that old school ir remote in the garbage:) use your phone or computer!

I don't know what servos that robot uses. Have any details about them?
#2  
DJ: Thanks for your response. The robot uses Herkules DRS-0101 servos. They are series together but instead of all 20 of them in a string there are 4 Strings hooked to the controller. I don't want the Ezb to respond to the IR commands I want it to generate the same command to the controller that the IR receiver would have possible though a serial port. This way the Ezb would do all the high level work and the original controller would do the low level work. I could tell the robot to go forward instead of pressing a bottom on th. Remote.

Thanks again for your reply, Dave
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Synthiam
#3  
Interesting - is the controller open source? If so, there might be a UART already setup to receive commands. Otherwise, something can easily be added I'm sure.

Do you have a link to the source code or controller specs?
#4  
DL: Again thanks for your time. I was at a football game on Saturday that delayed my response.

The controller specs are:

The DRC Controller is the main component and brain of the Hovis Humanoid Robot. The controller has variety of connectors and interfaces including 6 servo motor ports, 2 PSD sensor ports, Gyro sensor, and ZigBee interface. Light sensor and the sound sensor are built-in to the controller.

It supports DR-Visual Logic program - a visual robot programming language that uses DRC functions to program the robot. Various sensors and 1~32 motors can be programmed and tested.

FEATURES
CPU: ATMega 128
Size:108 x 58.5 x 33 (mm)
Weight: 82 g
Operating Voltage: Tolerance Range : 6,5V ~ 10V, Recommended Voltage : 7.4V
Serial Speed: 115,200 bps ~ 666,667 bps
Consumed Current When IDLE: 50mA, Overall Max Current : 3A (PTC Fuse)
Interface: Button : 6ea
MIC : 2ea
LED : 7ea

External I/O: servo Motor : 6ea
PSD Sensor : 2ea

Back Cover I/O: ZigBee : 1ea
Gyro Sensor : 1ea

Internal I/O: Sound Sensor : 2ea
Light Sensor : 1ea

It can be programed in several platforms including:

DR-Visual Logic - C language
Microsoft Robotics Studio - C#
Visual Studio - C##
AVR Studio - firmware programming

The IR receiver plugs into a serial port with 3 wires. This is where it would be great if you could plug the ezb into and have the ezb duplicate the code normally coming from the remote control.

PS: The Hovis Eco Plus reminds me of JD's big brother. If your company came out with a bigger bot like this I would buy it now.

Thanks again, Dave
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Synthiam
#5  
Excellent - I would need actual controller info, not the cut and paste from the product page. It's a good start for you to investigate the commands by looking at the source code for the robot.

As for a bigger jd, I suspect more servo joints is what you're looking for. If that's the case, simply add more servos to a jd and give him more joints.

Ezrobot doesn't actually have any robots. We pride ourselves on not having any robots, and instead provide parts that people can make robots with. Jd, six, roli, etc. are different configurations of the same parts. The parts clip together to make a variety of robots.

There's a great introduction video on the home page that explains ezrobot functions.

As for your question about duplicating the ir commands - the real question is duplicating the serial commands from the ir sensor. And yeah, you can do that instantly this second. Simply find out what commands are sent by looking at the manual or code and send them from your ezb v4.

There are plenty of UART examples to help you along the way. Download and install ARC to access the example library. A tutorial on ezscript explains how to access the examples. Here's a direct link: http://www.ez-robot.com/Tutorials/Lesson/22?courseId=6

The activities tutorial is here: http://www.ez-robot.com/Tutorials/Course/6
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