Hi Nink,

wow! This is a lot more complex than my Use Case of an elederly parent living alone with a remote family caregiver controlling the Roomba for FaceTime visits

I have a couple of questions about your work environment: Will they let you put a non-company PC on their network? Will they let you connect a non-company device(EZB Controller) to your wireless network?

Also, do you have plans to add some type of camera to help you drive the Roomba around? I guess if you added a control gimbal for the monitor you could be running Skype as your camera.

Have you considered using a Windows tablet mounted on the tripod? That could handle the ARC programs and Skype

Its great to have have these different ideas as there is no single solution

Frank

Hi Frank, We have a "guest network" but it is behind a firewall and no inbound traffic. I think if I schedule my PC to make an outbound call say once a minute I should be fine, but I should test.

did not think about tablet, on a budget. I have an old acer aspire one laptop with windows but it is noisy and slow. maybe?

I started on the head assembly. Yep that’s my wife’s favourite popcorn bowl. I put a rotate servo for head in case I add arms and don’t want them swinging about and a tilt forward and backwards. I am not sure if I want a 3 DOF to tilt left and right. I think with a telepresence bot we are going to need to be as expressive as possible and tilting head side to side maybe helpful.

Also started work on a base to mount things. Odd shape as you still need bumper to work and accesss to remove dirt container. All good telepresence bot should also be able to clean up after themselves.

Man, you move fast...

Frank

@Frank "Man, you move fast..." Nothing is bolted together all I did was cut a hole in a bowl and stick it on top and take a photo :-)

Turns out the guest WIFI is fun. DHCP server issued a new address every time I connected and I had to play guess the segment before scanning. That won't work in production.

I think I will have to put 2 WIFI adapters on Windows PC 1 to connect to internet the other to EZ-B in Adhoc mode or worse case throw a router into robot as well. More Power, weight, cost....

Great examples.

I am using my Surface to skype and run Ezb. I have replaced my battery inside the Roomba with a 4500 mAh Roomba replacement battery.

I have not added the Surface to it yet. I will need to go direct to the battery if I do.

I am planning on plugging Surface into power until I get it figured out. I could make the auto power connection on the Dock as you did Nink. I could then charge the Surface battery automatically off of the Dock.

I forgot. I am going to look into VPN to do secure internet control. It would even then allow me to take control of my surface remotely and make calls and even operate any program on the computer.

@Nink, What battery and charger are you using?

Thanks, Frank