Looks Good ! I look forward to a Podcast.

Ron

Holy - this will be very cool! I'm excited to be a fan!

Wow, there's a whole lot of buttons and sliders on that desk. What an exciting thing to do. I bet you'er having a blast. This is going to be fun.

Good luck David on this endeavor! I too am looking forward to the podcast.

Tony

Wishing you luck on your endevour! I'll be watching by too!

I have made my first trip to the ranch that I mentioned earlier. It is going to be a great place for people who are looking for some help. I got the servers, wifi, firewall, public wifi and all of the good computer stuff setup in the main building. I spent some time with the owner and he is all in on the class structure and the classes for Robotics and Programming. Once they are up and going, there will be 2 classrooms ready for students to learn about robotics, programming, 3D modeling, 3D Fabrication and some other things.

I still need to setup sound and video in a very echoy auditorium. There is about 6 seconds of echo with a hand clap. This is going to be fun. I need to setup VPNs between the CEO's house and the office and the owners house and the office. I need to setup the computer equipment and 3D printers in the classrooms, and I need to get dedicated internet and firewall setup to the classrooms. I also need to setup a VPN between the main office and the classrooms.

This part of Texas is very hilly and has really no top soil to speak of so putting a wire under ground is very difficult at best. The land supports 1 cow per acre. This makes things very interesting and it is an environment that radio used extensively.

The ranch itself has a kitchen and class rooms, pool, river, 6 bunk houses, an activities center, auditorium, a few houses for workers to live in and a lot of livestock. The owner has about 10K acres in that area to expand as he wants to. It is a great area for deer, elk and a lot of animals that I have know clue of what they are. I am sure that there are also rattlesnakes and many other animals that I don't want to know about. Anyway, it is shaping up to be a great place for people who don't have great bearings due to not having a lot of good instruction about life to come and get good instruction and some direction. I really look forward to a long relationship with this ranch helping them where I can to provide what I can for their residents.

Here is a map of the location of the main office for the ranch (Map)

This is a satellite image of the area that the ranch is starting with.

Their website is here if anyone wants to checkout what they are doing.

On the class, I have been battling background hiss from my computers to the mixer and back. I got it all out of the feed unless at very high volumes, and we will all get together Thursday evening to run through a good test of everything class related and to introduce Stori and Tanner to the environment so that they will soon be able to run everything and make adjustments as needed during the show to things like audio levels and such. Things are progressing on all fronts and we will be broadcasting soon.

I will post all of the links before Thursday for anyone who wants to check things out with where we are with the classes. It will give you a good feel some of the overall ideas that we have and some things that still need the details ironed out.

We will be doing a lot of testing on our streaming and audio setup this evening. The only thing that won't be connected is the phone to the mixer, so phone calls wont be tested this evening. If you want to see the stream or test some of the things out with us, we will be starting at 6:30 PM CST publishing a live stream of all of the fun we are having to try to get everything set correctly.

Here is the connection information for our test shows.

IRC Chat Room: Server: irc.geekshed.net Port: 6667 Channel: #IntroToRobotics

YouTube Live: This will give you about a 12 second delay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQLE7-xSWe4

Twitch: This will give you about a 10 second delay https://player.twitch.tv/?volume=0.16&channel=cochranrobotics

Direct RTML stream (connected to from something like VLC): This will give you about a 5 second delay rtmp://162.243.127.251/live/IntroToRobotics

Skype : d.cochran AT cox.net

Mumble room: Server 162.243.127.251 Port 64738

The IP Address should stay the same throughout the tests but will change when going live. The only reason that I see that the IP address will change during the test is if there is a difficult thing to figure out that requires a server rebuild.

A note about video broadcast delay...
The video is being recorded and sent to a server in New York. From there, it is being broadcast to twitch and YouTube. From there it is being sent to your computer for viewing. By using the RTML url, you are hitting the server in New York instead of waiting for the broadcast to get to youtube and twitch before being sent to you. The stream is in 1080p. Even when going through Twitch or YouTube, this is about the same delay that you get from live TV through the air waves or through cable service providers. It is mind blowing what can be done with this type of broadcast now and how professional a home studio can be.

Nice! Let us know when you're launching the first episode and I'll make sure it's sent out through our social media

The 3 show intros. Still working on them, but I like 'em. Waiting on some music from my music guy and some graphics from my graphics guy.

Not far from being finished with these intros. We will be on again on Thursday night at 7 CST approximately. We are trying to find the time that works best with everyone's schedules and all.

Ooooooooooh! I like the clip with the TV trees! And the clip at the end. The TV tree effect is great - super impressed with your video work

Thanks DJ. Those two are templates, so I cant take credit for them. I figured it was well worth the money to have something nice without me having to focus on them much. I had other important things to focus on, so...

I am definately not a music or graphics guy. I have a young man that I mentor who did the music for these. He is a high school junior. His sister will be our on-screen student for our robotics class. She is a sophmore and is on the robotics team for school. They just competed at the state robotics competition so their season is over. This is one of the key pieces that just freed up for us to start some recording.

Web site have been completely redone. The student page is open right now so that people can see the early testing shows live.

Gear Up For Robotics site

for music, we use http://www.epidemicsound.com/ which has both music and sound for very affordable monthly subscription.

Been working on the store all day today. Waiting on my SSL cert to get finalized for the domain. Yesterday I got the last piece of audio equipment in and installed. I also setup an postfix emal server so I could setup email for the shows, show hosts, store, general info and others. I didnt feel like paying $45 per email account so now I pay $10 for DigitalOcean droplet. I also use them for the webserver and the media server. I am thinking about putting up another media server in San Francisco to load balance with the one in New York. I may wait on that one though.

I got permission from Ronald Jenkees today to use his music in the show. If you havent seen his stuff, it is pretty good. He is on youtube if you want to check his music out.

Wow...just saw your intro video and was wondering if you don't mind (private would be ok) telling me where you got the templates? This is really cool and you have done an awesome job so far. Its also kinda funny as my wife and I have had a dream of buying a small ranch and teaching those with high function Asperger's/Autism horse back riding, robotics (just playing around) and such. My son got his first Dev. kit (ez-robot) for Christmas so we've been playing a bit with it. So following what you are doing and hoping see some of the recordings would be awesome as my son is also home schooled. Good job so far. It's really coming together well.

Quote:

Been working on the store all day today. Waiting on my SSL cert to get finalized for the domain. Yesterday I got the last piece of audio equipment in and installed. I also setup an postfix emal server so I could setup email for the shows, show hosts, store, general info and others. I didnt feel like paying $45 per email account so now I pay $10 for DigitalOcean droplet. I also use them for the webserver and the media server. I am thinking about putting up another media server in San Francisco to load balance with the one in New York. I may wait on that one though.

I got permission from Ronald Jenkees today to use his music in the show. If you havent seen his stuff, it is pretty good. He is on youtube if you want to check his music out.

Pond5 is where I got the templates for Adobe After Effects. pond5

Also, thanks for the info on the email. I like controlling all of the domain including the DNS stuff so I think I will stick with what I have. It opens things up for me so that I can do a lot without someone else's stuff getting in the way.

On the ranch, that would be really cool. My grandson has autism and something like this would be cool for him as he got older.

On the homeschool front - Check out Our Site. It is geared toward providing technical classes for homeschool students.

Thanks for the encouragement. We are doing some pretty cool things. This week on the live stream (Thursday night at 6:30 PM CST) I will be going over the EZ-Robot platform with the hosts and in-studio student. We did a little bit of this last week but will do a lot more this week.

Also, just a quick thanks to Ron for all of the time he spent with me trying to get volumes under control the other day. Hopefully it will be evident that we worked on this quite a bit Monday morning.

Due to some scheduling difficulties, Stori (one of the hosts) wont be able to make it for the show tomorrow. We will do a test show with Tanner and I as hosts tomorrow and the one as Stori and I on Friday evening. This is good for us to test our ability to adapt and adjust. Its a also why I wanted multiple hosts.

I will cover a lot of intro stuff.

The SSL cert got put into the site, and artwork is being worked on that will be used for the website and other marketing material.

Anyway, test live streams will happen 2 days this week, Thursday and Friday from 6:30 pm CST until 8:30 pm CST.

Can i suggest making the schedule a priority on the website? took me a bit to find where it was. Maybe also shortening the homepage message to something more concise and adding the schedule there as well. Here's some suggestions...

No need to have a title "ABout Sm@rtClub" on teh home page when the logo is right there. The user knows where they are

Home page

Schedule

Thanks for the feedback DJ. I think I like it and will ponder on it when I am a bit more awake today.

Technology Today will be starting up this Saturday, 03/11/2017 at 9 AM CST. This will be a weekly show discussing tech topics and how they affect you. I anticipate that the show will run for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

In this show we will briefly discuss how the show is setup and how users can participate News from NASA A Discussion on Cell Phones and Security A new project that I am working on using an IOTiny

We have all of the technical issues worked out and things are progressing well. We won't be streaming Thursday night's Intro to Robotics classes until May 6th, but will still be recording for the hosts to see what they need to work on and to continue to get more experience.

This will be the official kickoff show for Technology today. Swing by and check us out at Technology Today's page

I decided to add a new section called "On the Horizon" to the Technology Today show. This weeks "On the Horizon" segment will be discussing some new things that could possibly be coming to the Amazon Echo that make it even a better option for embedding into a robot platform.

News from NASA A Discussion on Cell Phones and Security A new project that I am working on using an IOTiny Rumors about the Echo and Google home

Tune in Saturday morning at 9AM CST if you want to participate in the show. The best way to do so is to go to our Technology Today's page.

Because it is the first show, we will only have participation via IRC. You can participate by using the IRC chat window on the Technology Today page. This keeps everything in one nice, neat location. Flash does need to be installed in order to see the video from this page. You can also view the live stream on youtube at some funky number or on Twitch at the CochranRobotics channel.

As shows go on, we will add in the other participation avenues. I will probably add in one type of participation channel a month or so, so that I can get pretty comfortable with what I have in the show.

After the show is complete, I will add in all of the show notes (on Twitch and YouTube) and provide links to the topics that are discussed and what others are saying about them on the internet.

I am looking for people who would like to be guests via skype on upcomming shows. I think that this would be a decent way to show off some of the work that people have done here. If you want to be a guest, please contact me at the email address that is in my profile.

Hi David,

Great job on Technology Today's first show. Great coverage of the information discussed. I look forward to more shows.

Ron

Thanks Ron. Editing out a couple of mistakes and then will post the final to youtube. Thanks for watching the show. I am glad you enjoyed it. Also, thanks for the email with some suggestions. Its a work in progress for sure

Our first Technology Today show has been viewed over 1,100 times in a week. Our next show will be starting at 9 AM CST TODAY!. Come hang out with us and discuss technology. In this show we will show an interview that I had with Will Huff (fxrtst on this forum), the CEO and Creative Director of Robomodix. We talk about Will, EZ-Robot and why Will picked the EZ-Robot platform for his robot controller.

To watch and participate in the live stream visit http://www.gearupforrobotics.com/techtoday.php

Come a little early to hear some great music by Ronald Jenkees and stay a little late to participate in the After Show where we will go more in depth on the topics that are covered in the show.

Look forward to seeing you there!

I'm watching you now David. Great show! Your guest Will Huff was Dynamite. He's such a polished and passionate speaker!

Thanks Dave. I will have the edited show out tomorrow probably. It takes some time to clean things up a bit. Show notes will also be published tomorrow.

David,

Another GREAT show. Will's interview was great, and the subjects covered very informative. Looking forward to next week's show.

Thanks,

Ron

David just got the chance to watch the show. Thanks so much for the opportunity to be on! I had a blast! I love how this week was you hosting and last week was the two other hosts. You're really mixing it up and keeping it interesting and dishing out a ton of great information and resources. I think you have a hit on your hands! Where was this show when I was a kid?!

@fxrtst,

Thank you for the interview! I enjoyed it. I just put out the edited version. It can be watched here...

The show with two host that you saw was a test show for the "Intro to Robotics" class. We are putting the finishing touches on it and will start broadcasting shows on August 1st of this year.

The other show that is just me is going now and is called "Technology Today". We cover a lot more than robots, but obviously robots and EZ-Robot are topics on the show quite often.

Thanks again for the opportunity to interview you. It made it easy to figure out what I was going to use for the title

David, fantastic show! It was also great seeing Will's interview.

Tony

Thank you Tony! I appreciate it.

Dave, Your link to the show isn't working. You can see it here in the meantime:

www.gearupforrobotics.com/techtoday.php

Thank you Dave. I have it updated to work.

Finally got around to watching this @David.... Awesome work man! @Will great interview...

Thanks Richard. new show starts live at 9 AM CST today.

Nice show today David! You make this stuff very interesting and enjoyable to watch. I tuned in late and didn't see a guest interview. Did I miss it? If I did, who was it?

Also watched about half the show ( late start) , very informative on a lot of great topics! Glad to see the show is picking up momentum! 2000 views is a great achievement for last weeks show!

Ya! Great start! I loved the segment about the CNC and 3D printed built houses.

@Dave, I didn't get a chance to edit the interview that I did last night yet. The next 4 or 5 weeks will have interviews with people from this community.

Both Will and Dave, thank you for the complements! It hopefully will take off and the 2000 mark will be very low

Thanks for watching!

The 3D printed house is very interesting to me. I have a friend who told me that automation wont affect the home building industry anytime soon. I told him to watch the show. I hope that he did. I will see him tomorrow.

What is funny is that everyone thinks that automation won't affect their job. Honestly, I cant think of any job that is safe from being impacted by automation. Programmers, lawyers, artists and really everything that is a mental process is also going to be replaced eventually. Its not a matter of how it is going to happen but when it will happen. Computers became popular when they became general purpose. Robots will be the same way. Its simply a matter of time.

I am going to have to adjust the day/time for this weeks broadcast. It will be Friday evening starting at 7 PM CST. My family is going to go walk in the MDA walk to support my daughter Saturday morning.

This week, we will have an interview with Richard (Richard R) Ryerson.
4/8 we will have an interview with Dave Schulpius. 4/15 we should broadcast an interview with DJ Sures. 4/22 we should broadcast an interview with Tony (Toymaker) Ellis. 4/29 we should broadcast an interview with Marc (DoomBot) Bertone. and 5/6 we will be broadcasting live from the Homeschool conference in Oklahoma City.

Check out the shows to learn more about these community members and their past and future projects.

The show will start in just a little under 2 hours at 7 PM CST tonight. Swing by and watch the interview with Richard R and learn a little bit about the future of online activity in the US.

Cool!

Well, the hosting company I use with my broadcast server is doing maintenance, so it was a rather abrupt ending to the show this week. Sorry. I didn't think about that when I decided to move the show to Friday night. Just goes along with the rest of my week so far...

Oh well

LOL .... Sometimes Life just wants to mess with You ...

David, another great show and interview with Richard.

Its really neat to see the interviews with our forum friends, first Will and now Richard it is like actually meeting you guys!

Tony

Thanks @Tony.... Even though we have seen you in a few videos I am keenly looking forward to yours with David...

@David... Thanks man... very eye opening about "Big data" collection... Yes, something to be concerned about for sure...

Sue and I will eventually downsize... We really want to buy a motor home someday so you can bet Oklahoma will be our first destination... Ok, I lied maybe California first, but then your neck of the woods after that... We will meet for sure one day...

Another great show! I'm with Tony, it's great to meet people I've conversed with over the years on this forum, on the show. Great job Richard.

Looking forward to the upcoming interviews.

Coming from @Holly-Will, that's a compliment, thanks... Your interview is hard to top man...

I enjoyed this show. RR was great in his interview.

As usual Richard, you show a lot of personality and talent. You have a face made for radio. LOL. Sorry, Just kidding. However you do have a great voice for radio. Nice timber. It was a very easy and fun interview to watch. You're going to be a hard act to follow for the next weeks guest interview.

I hope you will show more of your new robot you had in the background. He's awesome looking.

Also Richard, congrats to you on your marriage and wishes of happiness to you and your bride. I didn't know you had tied the knot.

@Dave... Thanks... Hmmm, I guess I could have at least shaved for the interview... LOL. Will set the benchmark so we're all following him...

P.S. LOL, Sue and are aren't married... yet. Been together 5 years now so were not rushing things

OK, in that case, you're my hero! Sorry to have rushed you down the aisle. I clued in on a little misinformation from the host. LOL.

Ya, Will set that mark very high. Kinda freaked me out a little when I saw his interview. They say you should never follow someone better. Poor Dave C, I bothered him to death with few little things. He probably thinks I'm a Deva now.

This Friday night's show we will double down on the interviews. The first will be Dave Schulpius' and the second will be DJ Sures' interview.

I am doing this to give myself a bit more time to get ready for the conference on 5/6. It is coming up more quickly than I realized. A lot to get together still for it, and these two will work good together for a couple of reasons, plus give me time this week to get everything ordered that needs to be for the show in a month.

Anyway, this week won't have the standard "Pull your pants up man!" message that has been in the first 4 shows. It will focus solely on the EZ-Robot community and EZ-Robot as a company.

Now, to finish those business cards...

Hi David,

Same time as last week?

That will be the show too see, unfortunately I'll be onset, so have to watch it on the weekend! Good luck!

Yea, Friday at 7 PM CST works best for me. It lets me finish the show and edit it and then get the edited version posted to YouTube before going to bed. It frees up my weekend also and lets me go watch my granddaughter play softball.

Friday at 7 PM I think is going to be the normal time going forward.

Sounds good ! Looking forward to the show.

I am going to start plugging this weeks show because you don't want to miss these two great interviews. The first will be with Dave Schulpius who will talk a bit about his passion for pinball machines and robots. After that interview, we will show another interview with DJ Sures where he talks about EZ-Robot's past, present and future. He shows the EZ-B V5 controller and talks about it. He also talks about the importance of robot education over the next few years.

This is a show that you definitely will not want to miss out on. Friday at 7PM CST at https://www.gearupforrobotics.com/techtoday.php

I'm really looking forward to seeing DJ's interview. This is going to be a real treat.

As far as my opening interview, I feel like the local high school band opening the show for a rock star. The contrast will be fun to watch.

Without spoiling anything, these two interviews go great together for a couple of different reasons. I can't write another sentence without spoiling it. It will be a really fun episode.

Just a reminder - We will be showing two great interviews tonight at 7 PM CST from Dave Schulpius and DJ Sures. Watch online and participate in the show at https://www.gearupforrobotics.com/techtoday.php

We will start the preshow at 6:30 PM CST or so to do all of the checks and tests prior to the start of the show. We will have an after show that will allow you to discuss the show with us or ask questions to us via IRC.

David,

Great Show ! ! I really enjoyed the interviews. Thank you Dave S and DJ.

Dj, thanks for letting us view the past, present and future of EZ-Robot ..

David, keep them coming.... Looking forward to the next one

Ron

David, another fantastic show, I really look forward to watching them!

Great interview with Dave and DJ, both so very interesting.

It was funny about the names - I live on the Ashdown Forest and we get lots of Owls at night (these are my favorite birds), so I got the nickname Tawny OWLess! (from Tony Ellis). The Tawny owl or brown owl is a stocky, medium-sized owl commonly found in woodlands across much of Eurasia and is extremely majestic.

I hope my forthcoming interview are as good as these great ones so far and I am looking forward to seeing the neat stuff that DoomBot is doing.

Tony

Edited version of EP-05

I absolutely loved this show. Watching DJ's interview was the high point of my week. Each time I listen to him muse I realize more and more that this guy is a true renascence man and visionary. I truly think his concepts and work are going to help shape the way we use robotics and computers.

I was laughing so hard I almost fell off the couch when I heard DJ mention the nickname he and his crew has for me around the shop. I'm honored and amused. However I'm not surprised. You should hear some of the nicknames I've been called over the years. eek LOL! I actually had to change my username to reflect my new nickname.

I'm really, really looking forward to the review you don on the LattePanda you plan to do soon. I hope you'll take some time to really show it off and what it can do.

Like the others here have said; I'm also looking forward to your upcoming interviews with DoomBot and Toymaker. These are going to be great!

I know Rich hasn't been posting on this forum lately but I think he'd be a great interview for your show. Also, there are so many other interesting people I could suggest. Just a couple that come to mind: jstarne1, thetechguru, Cardboard Hacker, Robot Doc. The list goes on and on.............

I agree that there are a lot more people in this community that I should interview. Right now, my time is being spent to make a good showing at the homeschool show in early may. It takes a lot of time to get things ready. I am debating on whether or not to do a workshop about technical education and the need for these students to have STEM education. It would be about a 30 minute presentation and I am not sure that I want to be taken away from the booth to do this. Anyway, this is consuming my time. I hope to do more interviews after May.

One of the main reasons that I did the interviews that I did is to take parts of them and have a video showing in our booth at this convention. The reason that I choose the people that I did is simply because all of you come from different backgrounds and had different experiences growing up. Some of you focus on the mechanical aspects, others on the programming aspects and others on the micro controller and electronics aspects. Doombot is great at taking junk and making it desirable (his words). It just goes to demonstrate that pretty much everyone can find something about robotics that suites them. This will be a focus of the video.

The other thing is that EZ-Robot is the common controller and this demonstrates that you can focus on what you want to focus on knowing that in the end, you will have a functioning robot. The stairs up the mountain of robot knowledge are already in place.

I will try to schedule more interviews after the show in May. I have a vacation in June, and then it is getting ready for the other two shows starting in August. I'm about to get really busy again.

Thanks for the kind words from everyone. I am really enjoying doing the shows. I am even more excited about what the Technology Today show turns into over time.

Thanks everyone! And specifically thanks dcochrane for the opportunity to babble. Looking forward to watching more interviews with all of you - that's the exciting part for me

Dave - I love your new username! The gang will get a kick out of it!

Great show Dave. In the airport and managed to catch it before my flight. Dave you did great! I knew you would. And nice to see you too DJ. I really liked hearing about EZ Robots path and look forward to the tour of the facility.

Diito (what Will said)... Dave Snuffleupagus did an awesome job... @Dave you still need to install the electrified claws in your B9

LOL, thanks guys. @RR, the claws are coming. We have the technology, today.

This weeks show should contain an interview with Tony Ellis and the first of two videos showing the Latte Panda. I plan to do everything from an unboxing to setup to installing Windows and ARC along with running a project in ARC on the Latte Panda. I will use one of the example projects so that people can see how this board compares to the device that they are currently using.

It should be a good show Friday Night.

Looking forward to see the show...the last On The Horizon episode was revealing!

I am still wondering what the benefit of the Latte Panda within ARC would be, as it still needs to be connected via Wifi...so let's see what your unboxing/first run evaluation will end up with!

Also over at another thread some community members, including myself were wondering if you could help setting up api.ai within ARC...would this be a topic for a show, or is this too specific?

@CochranRobotics Dave looking forward to your review on the latte panda... I have had my eye on one for a while now... I assume with the 4g version you need to buy a lic for windows 10 right?

Are you considering more hands on stuff during the "after show" ? It might be cool seeing something like a application load as @Mickey666Maus mentioned or a teardown brief of an Amazon Echo ? It could be done in installments. Open discussions via IRC would be cool too.

Good idea @AndyRoid... I just hope I can join in for the after show, it is kind of tricky because im at GMT +1, so if you guys are doing something like this a recap would be appreciated!

If done with a follow up during the next show or after show, it would allow people not in the US to reply or ask questions. which will be answered. ....LOL.... David, some people sleep, unlike you and Dj.

Ah cool, I guess I missunderstood in thinking it is a live event...we could probably also put our questions as Comments up in YouTube?

Maybe David should let us know...

It is a live event. He edits it and puts it out again on youtube for the next day. If you are up you can send messages during the show, or the after show.

The show is live and people can participate in the show via IRC from the webpage to ask questions or make comments during the show.

I plan on doing more shows like the one coming up. They are enjoyable but are time consuming. I have 5 hours of video on the latte panda so far but most of it is me figuring things out on it like 1 hour on putting the case together. It took about an hour and thirty minutes to install the windows updates and so on. This stuff will be edited down so the show wont be amazingly boring

The advantage that I see to a small board like are

1. Power consumption
2. arduino onboard which then lets you use a subcontroller for some things like reading sensors, normalizing the output, and then passing this data back to the EZ-B without having to have another subcontroller in place to do this.
3. It is a dedicated machine which lets you keep things light.
4. It is about as close to what DJ is doing with the EZ-B V5 as is available right now.
5. it can be onboard a robot build fairly easily.
6. it runs ARC pretty well so far. I plan to do more of the cloud related stuff before calling it good but so far it is pretty good.
7. Low heat so far
8. If you want really fast and stable communication to the board with low latency, you would connect to the EZ-B through the USB to the camera port. This would make the connection about as rock solid as you are going to get. You would then use a USB camera instead of the EZ-Robot camera. I plan to show this for the second show on this board. Fitting it all into one isn't possible.

It would be best if I could get my son on sometime to discuss api.ai. He has more experience than I with it. I will see what his availability is.

With the 4G version, it comes installed with Windows but it isnt activated. I discuss this in the show some more, but yes, you will need to buy a license for Windows 10 when you activate Windows 10.

I should also say, Tony's interview is a real delight. It gives you a greater appreciation for Tony and his passion for pushing forward robot technology. He is a genius in my book and is always willing to help people.

Thanks David, it was a pleasure to do the interview - and we all appreciate your hard work bringing this great show together!

Tony

Really looking forward to the show!

Me too...all the above mentioned made it clear why the Latte Panda is perfekt for the little space available in a robot, I was just thinking if you would need to hook up a keyboard and screen to run ARC, while the EZ-B will be connected via Wifi anyways it would make little sense to get it! The Arduino is kind of a nice extra for having the COM port hardwired and safes space which is kind of cool, but hooking up the EZ-B via USB would be really something awesome...we all experienced latency due to polluted Wifi channels, or the EZ-B dropping out and loosing its connection...so any info on how this can be done would be highly appreciated and would make me order a Latte Panda right away!

In the video I show remote connecting the Latte Panda so that you dont have to have a keyboard, mouse and monitor connected. I used Team Viewer for this but VNC is a free option that works well.

I am seriously considering buying one of these for myself. It is working good so far once you get past the hour and a half of installing Windows Updates and doing a scan with Windows Defender. Both of these consume quite a bit of processor while running.

The power plug is a 5v 2A plug so power consumption isn't crazy high at all. The power port is a micro usb port, so it would be good to use a breakout board for this and then supply power from a voltage regulator that can handle 2 Amps. It is the same config as what I have in place in Rafiki for the tablet. It makes for an easy install for me personally.

I also want one to have a small linux computer that I can pack with me very easily. I already have a mini keyboard/mouse bluetooth device that works great on linux. I would just need a small monitor of some sort. It gives me options anyway, but I would probably just connect this to the flatscreen that we use when doing shows.

They sell a 7 inch screen and also even one with touch on their products page...

http://www.lattepanda.com/products/

And I totally agree that this little device is a gem! Good that you can confirm that all the stuff they promise really works the way it should! And yes, even though Windows 10 is by far the best OS they managed to put together any type of less consumptive operating system would be far better for a device like this...sadly enough my knowledge of Linux is painfully limited!

So lets see where this will take us all...thanks for sharing and going thru the effort of putting the show together David!

Talk your son into doing an interview.. It would be great to get his input on the api.ai.

Maybe he could do something on his programming podcast regarding ai. He could maybe do a teaser instruction class about the api.ai. Do you know the cost?

I am surprised the case was such a pain. I thought coming from the company it would be a piece of cake to build and install the board.

7 PM US Central time zone - Part 1 of the review of LattePanda and an interview with Tony Ellis who has been building robots for 47 years. Learn more about him and his robots, along with his experiences with EZ-Robot.

https://www.gearupforrobotics.com/techtoday.php

Another GREAT show! The best yet.... Thanks David

Just published the review with Tony Ellis and part 1 of the review of the Latte Panda board.

David, another great show, thank you so much for letting me participate, it was great fun! The Latte Panda review was very informative and so interesting that I am checking this neat little PC out myself, so looking forward to part 2 next week.

Fantastic to hear that your video views are reaching 20K - you deserve this with all your hard work.

Tony

Thank you Tony for the interview. It was a pleasure. This show was long for sure. I plan on doing a more extensive review of the Latte Panda now and how it runs when connecting via usb vs wifi, along with using a usb camera vs EZ-Robot's camera, along with using the Arduino that is built in more. It is interesting to see what this little board can do when attached to the EZ-B. Hopefully that segment of the next show won't be as long now that the Latte Panda is built and running ARC well.

Dave, From what I saw it was a great show! I was working and just caught a snippet here and there when I had time. What a tease that was. I'm going to sit down this weekend and watch the whole thing. This is going to be a treat after a crazy week.

When you again discuss thePanda and how to connect to it could you lend a few thoughts on what you think the best way to connect multiple EZB's and the Panda would be? I understand that it wold be a snap to connect through WiFi just like on a Windows laptop but how about connecting several EZB's using the V4/2's USB feature?

Hey Dave,

Each of the V4 1/2 boards would be setup with their own comport. You would just connect to each board using the comp port (COM7 COM8 and so on) instead of searching for them.

There is an interesting thing about connecting this way. In my scenario the comm port connection is slower than the Wifi connection even with a baud rate of 921600. They are more stable though from the standpoint of tests under different conditions have a 20% variance unlike the 48% variance that the wifi connected devices have. These have all been used from within my office, so I haven't tried these benchmarks from greater distances than about 20 feet and through a wall from my Wifi Access point.

Anyway, I have tested the pandora bot, microsoft speech, microsoft vision and Omron plugins, along with a few other things. If put in with specific considerations for power and not using max resolution on the camera, I can keep things pretty stable. Low resolution keeps it the most stable. Higher resolutions become unstable from what I suspect is a lot of traffic going across the wifi and slowing things down.

Anyway, these are all recorded and I will show them in the next show.

Awsome show. I think Tony's interview was the best yet. Very informative and professional! What a great guy. He's right we have an amazing forum and community with a passion for robots.

I am really excited about the Latte Panda and ordered one to test with. I'm sure the next round will be even more powerful. Thanks David for walking us through the setup. I'm looking forward to part 2!

20,000 views, now you're cooking with gas as my grandmother used to say!

Hey guys, I could not agree more...this was a great show! Suddenly people from the forum turn into real human beings!

I really enjoyed @Toymaker talking about the Omron sensor, it is still sitting in my shelf awaiting further testing!

And yes I guess I will order my Latte Panda today, so when the show progresses I can also try out the features being explored!

Awesome show @CochranRobotics thanks for the effort this is a great thing for the community!

Latte Panda should send you a sample next version free so you can review it !

I am now powering the LattePanda from a power supply and limiting the current to 5V 10A using a Castle UBEC. This seems to have made the LattePanda more stable. The devices connected to the LattePanda (Omron HVC-P, Logitech 920C, Microphone and the FTDI for the com port connection to the EZ-B) are all being run through a powered USB hub connected to the USB3 port on the LattePanda. The keyboard and mouse are connected to a USB hub that isn't powered but is connected to one of the two USB2 ports.

This seems to have brought greater stability to the LattePanda. I still can't run the camera at 640x480 but at the lowest setting of 160x120 the LattePanda is performing pretty well with the project that I created.

The project includes the following Speech Recognition component Speech Settings component Camera component connecting to the Logitech 920C camera Variable Watcher component Script manager component with a script to fire off the Omron HVC-P plugin Omron HVC-P plugin Microphone component Benchmark component Bing Speech Recognition component Microsoft Cognative Vision component PandoraBot component

I have tested the controls in the sample JD project as well.

The Camera Component is configured to track an object (me).

LattePanda config Windows 10 Pro (would work with Windows 10 Home) - I will discuss this more in the next show. Pretty much all of the enhancing features of Windows turned off including Cortana. When I say Cortana is removed, I mean it isn't running at all on this computer even in the background. I do have Windows Defender and the firewall for windows turned on. I have also uninstalled all of the bloatware that comes with Windows on this computer.

With all of this running, CPU is at about 60% with memory at about 44%

I ran a benchmark tool on the board and on my PC that I broadcast the show from. The PC I use and broadcast the show from rates in the top 20% of computers tested and is a 4 year old computer. The LattePanda rates in the bottom 5% of all of the computers tested on these benchmarks.

With that said, it does work pretty well with ARC for simple projects and works OK so far with more advanced projects. I wouldn't use this as a daily driver type of computer, but for a robot build, it is pretty good, especially if you take time to evaluate how you power all of your devices and the LattePanda.

There is another board that is being crowd funded now by UDOO. It looks pretty promissing for this type of device also. It is a quad core running up to 2.56 GHz with up to 8GB RAM and a 32 GB eMMC. With those specs it comes in at $259.00. It also has an Arduino 101-Compatible board onboard. Some other things it has is a M.2 Key B SSD slot, M.2 Key E slot for wifi and bt module, SATA connector and a gigabit ethernet port. The Wifi module is an additional $15. This board does have a built in 6-axis combo sensor with accelerometer and gyroscope. The size of this board comes in at 120mm x85mm (4.72" x 3.35"). It is a higher end board coming in at about twice the cost of the LattePanda.

http://shop.udoo.org/usa/preorder-x86/udoo-x86-ultra-power-supply-us.html

Thats interesting news! I can't wait for the next show...

Doombot will be on this week's show. His video is about 15 minutes long. Along with this we will continue the review of the Latte Panda computer. This video is about 15 minutes long and shows the Latta Panda running the Omron HVC-P along with being connected to the EZ-B V4 1/2 via usb. I review the performance of the EZ-B V4 when connected this way vs via Wifi. I also show some of the cloud services that are available from Microsoft via ARC skill plugins. I will also discuss the most stable method that I have found for running ARC on the Latte Panda.

The overall show will be short. I am still prepping for the convention that I will be attending next week so time has been a bit short for me. Swing by at 7:00 Central for the show at https://www.gearupforrobotics.com/techtoday.php .

Has this show been uploaded to YouTube?

nope. I had a technical difficulty when recording with my ISP and I didnt record it locally. Yesterday I didnt have time to re-record the show. I hope to have time today but I dont know if I will.

There is no way that I will have time to do that show again this week. I will have to do this show from the convention that I am going to this weekend. Expect the show to air Friday afternoon sometime hopefully.

The first of the month is a horrible time for me at work, and getting ready for the convention this week and getting the homeschool co-op all setup is another added thing that I have to prep for so fitting a show in won't happen unfortunately until this weekend.

You sound overwhelmed David. I hope you find some time to take a few deep breaths and have a little fun.

Hey David...don't worry!

I was curious on how things got rolling with the Latte Panda, and was also looking forward to hear what what Doombot will have to say, but as Mr Schulpius said...it should all still be fun!

I will appreciate it if the show will be available soon, but if it is just too much effort, you could also just skip that one and have a recap of the interview in your own words plus a little talk on what you found out on the technical side of things!

I know that editing a show is time consumptive...especially if it is a long one!

Just back from the convention. We made a lot of contacts with homeschool co-ops, students and robotics teams. The EZ-B was introduced to about 100 families in Oklahoma City this weekend. There was an extreme amount of wifi interference in the convention center so we passed on many demos. The robots would not act correct due to this so we just had them posed so people could touch them. We were able to show the video which contained sections of the interviews that I have done for the Technology Today show to demonstrate that the initial purchase of a robot could be expanded into so much more with time, effort and the use of our curriculum.

The robotics team is looking at using our robot and programming curriculum for class room education. One of the team instructors also owns a software company who is looking at using our programming curriculum to train future employees.

All in all, it was more about getting contacts than signing up students. I expect there to be between 25 and 50 students starting up in August with our classes. It is hard to tell simply because robot teams and co-ops contain multiple students.

We passed on broadcasting from the show due to feeling like it was more important to talk to people than to do the show. It was a difficult decision, but there was an audience available to us who wanted to know more about how the structure of the classes were than about seeing us podcast. In all, it was a great experience for my instructors to be able to communicate with their future students.

One thing that made this convention much more successful than the last for us was that there wasn't a question that we couldn't answer to everyone's satisfaction. I feel good about the show overall. I should have brought my inmoov and Rafiki but my truck was full of materials for the show and I didn't want to risk damaging them in transport to the show. The video seemed to do the trick though to show that the platform is as expandable as you wan to make it.

Now to get my office set back up...

I plan on showing another Technology Today show sometime this week. I have to see what the plans are for everything now that this convention is over.

Hey David any chance of getting the doombot episode up on you tube? Thanks for all you do!

Hi David,

I am happy to hear the show went well. Education needs to be a priority in todays technical world. The fact you were able to discuss and show people what you offer is great. Good luck and success with the fall classes.

It would be great to see a re-do of the Doombot show, if the original recording isn't available. I think everyone would be happy to wait until Friday to see the continued episode of Technology Today. Interviews and subjects covered are worth the wait.

Regards,

Ron

Sadly, the show didn't stream due to an issue with my ISP and I didn't click the record locally button. The day that I was filming was the same day that I had to go into high gear with the convention. I didn't have time to re-record the show.

My office is setup again, but it is an absolute mess. I plan on recording a show this week which will include the interview with Doombot and the second half of my review of the Latte Panda. I will also talk about the interesting things that I discovered from the show and talk about some of the people that I met and had conversations with. The great news is that all of us are in agreement that the current system isn't working and that some things need to change. Hopefully with the effort of all of us, we can make a very positive change.

All is good, just need to get that show out that is now starting its second week of being delayed. ugh.

Looking forward to see it...no rush though!

Good things are worth waiting for, even if it ends up two weeks later ,,,, LOL

Thanks for doing what you do !

Can see great things coming from this show, but yes it sounds as though you have too many others things going on to be able to put 100% creative input into your show along with everything else.

I'm looking forward to seeing the people here displaying their robots on your show and basically giving us a run down of how,why and when it all happened, etc.

It could turn out to be something great..before you know it you'll have people show casing their ez-robots from all over the world on your show.

Hey David...something off topic

I managed to get API.AI going, I am still working on it...but it seems to be a very good way to integrate your own personal assistant to drive an EZ-Robot! Once I get this done I will put a YouTube clip together!

But also I discovered something today which might be very interesting! I do not want to feature other companies hardware here on the forum, so I did not start a new topic, but this thing here seems to be very interesting!

https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/

There was some talk on how to integrate an always on mic to your robot project, also I guess API.AI could be integrated easy...

I look forward to seeing what you have done with API.AI. A really cool thing about API.AI is that you are able to save your work in a zip and then others can import that work preventing them from having to start from scratch.

I saw the aiyproject. It is pretty cool. It would be pretty simple to incorporate into a robot due to the button simply closing a loop which could be done by attaching an EZ-B controller to it via a digital pin. It is what I have been wanting to do with an echo dot for a while but haven't been able to find the time to focus on it yet.

I don't know that I would use an always on mic to trigger this device. I would use the speech recognition built into the ARC app to have a phrase that set a digital pin to high or low which duplicates the press of the button. From there you would be able to do something like "[Robot Name], I want to ask you something" as the phrase.

The largest issue that I see with the product is that linux doesn't have a great speech recognition engine. There are a couple of options, but none of them are great. This is what we ran into with the EZ-AI project. We ended up recording the text and passing it off to nuance and then sent the information to API.AI. API.AI does have a speech recognition engine that is fairly good. They were looking at ways to improve it while we were working with them which would have allowed us to bypass the nuance engine.

Another option is that Nuance is building an API.AI type application. This allows speech to be used by Nuance and things to happen on a single platform until you want detailed information like "What is Lisinopril?" For something like that you would be best converting the audio to text and then sending it to Wolfram|Alpha.

Anyway, for the cost of the aiyproject, it wouldn't be a bad first step.

All of our logic layer was written in Java. We haven't taken the time to convert it to C# yet. It is on my list of things to get to but it may be a while before this happens. Once there, it can be setup to run through plugins instead of through a central computer type device. I know that java works on windows and all, but it just doesn't make sense to leave it in Java instead of using ARCs plugin model.

great video's ,aldo i dont understand it i do learn a little,

@Mickey666Maus,

Related to the solution you mentioned: https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/10342

I got it mainly due to the Voice HAT.

The Kit has 2 MEMs microphone, amplifier circuit, GPIO (PWM) generated sound, and filter.

the price is cheaper than build a similar Voice HAT.

It's a good opportunity to study the google solution and possible integrations.

Pure curiosity.

@ptp Good to see you got this going already...I really try to keep up with all the stuff going on here at the forum, but I guess I missed that one! Awesome value!

@CochranRobotics I also tried to make a plugin for ARC but I am far from being good enough to script! The documentation provided in the tutprial is also fairly bad! I was able fix the error caused by the wrong .net framework but the could not compile even after I targeted ARC as reference for compiling! How to build a plugin would be a great thing for the Technology Today show!

My Api.Ai project is also briged to ARC by Java Script, and if we are using Google Chrome we are hands on a superior voice recognition...everyone has a browser in Windows and will be able to run Java, so maybe the plugin is obsolete anyways!

But a plugin for ARC would be welcome since all the handy stuff like voice commands is so EZ to integrate!

https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/demos/speech.html

Hey guys, this morning I realized it will take some time until I will be putting up a YouTube clip, since I am just too slow in getting this type of stuff done...I am also still kind of in the middle even getting my robot for the testing environment ready!

So I thought to pace things up a little I will just upload a working version of the script to my serverspace for you to test it out... it is just a simple bot with the native smalltalk agent, no training whatsoever!

The only thing I did to bridge it with ARC is to add a httpGet(theUrl) fuction after the respond(spokenResponse) funtion which sends the variable that is returned by the query within the action parameter, in this case it would be smalltalk.greetings or smalltalk.greetings.hello etc , over to the server to trigger a command for the robot!

I DO NOT claim any credits for the script, I found it on github, the link is provided over at the general discussion on api.ai here in the forum!

https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/10330

What I am still trying to accomplish would be getting data into api.ai...eg to store data lets say via IFTT MakerWebhooks to the server in a correct format so the fullfiment in api.ai will be able to read the data correctly. Any information on this would be highly appreciared!

I uploaded the code for testing, and could also leave it there if we would decide to collaborate in building and agent, or just as a testing enviroment!

http://www.downtown-tattoo.de/robotics/test123.html

edit same problem on the link...please remove https and put http to your browsers address bar...

Building a plugin is a part of our intermediate programming class. Now is as good of a time as any to outline our classes I suppose for everyone here. The classes are 5 months long for the first and second year. They move to 10 months long in the 3rd and 4th year. These classes are $25 per student per month per class and are available as long as the student is paying for the class. There is a Learning Management System for each class that tests the students on what they know and also gives us an idea of if the class as a whole is understanding the material. Most of our classes consist of 1 hour of lecture, 1 hour of Q&A, a homework assignment which is then reviewed and graded and a quiz per week.

Classes will be available online along with the LMS. We only speak English so everything is in English. Students can participate in the live classroom discussions or decide to watch the class on their schedule. Assignments will be assigned for that week at the end of the lecture. The student has five days to complete the assignment from the time that it is given an then take a quiz. The assignments are reviewed and discussed during the Q&A section of the lecture. This not only teaches the student in the lecture, but the skills are reinforced four times throughout the week. This is the best way to learn new things and is practiced by our classes.

I have these classes broken down into 4 years (matching high school years in the US). Some classes can be taken concurrently. For example, a student can take the Intro to Programming and Intro to Robotics classes concurrently and then the Intermediate Programming and Intermediate Robotics classes concurrently. This allows them to complete the first two years of education in one. A student may decide to take the 3D modeling and Printing class along with the Advanced Programming class, and then take both classes of the fourth year together. It is up to the abilities of the student. A student can have all of our classes taken in 30 months if they choose to do so. The classes are college level classes with the final classes being equal to graduate level classes. These classes are not limited to high school students. We have a 55 year old lady enrolled in our programming classes because it is something that she always wanted to learn.

Year One The first year the student can take Intro to Robotics and Intro to Programming.
-The intro to robotics class covers from what is digital vs analog, Amps and Volts, Batteries and power sources, Regulating power, Building and fine tuning your robot, ARC controls and what is available in them, the example projects and how they work, Blocky and Scratch scripts and ends with an into to scripting.

• The Intro to Programming class uses python and instills good programming habits in students from the get go. We cover Fundamentals of Computer Architecture, Fundamentals of Software Architecture, Write and modify computer programs written in Python, Variables and Data Types, Numeric/Arithmetic operations, String operations, Data Input and Output through the console, Conditional Branching, Data Structures in the form of Lists, Dictionaries, and Tuples, Functions, Classes and Objects, Exception Handling, File Input and Output, How to use external packages and imports, How to Solve problems using programming, The industry standards in formatting programs, Reading and understanding existing programs and to be able to answer questions about them.

Year Two

• Intermediate programming which is where we switch to C#. In this class students use the information above and the ARC SDK to learn how to write plugins. There are more in-depth topics like multi-threading, interfacing with the EZ-B and other topics.

• Intermediate Robotics takes what has been learned from the above classes and goes indepth into scripting and building plugins for use with the ARC product.

Year Three The student can decide to break off and focus on programming or do the robotics classes, or both.

• For the robotics track, we spend time on 3D Modeling and Design using Autodesk products. We already have our trainer relationship setup with Autodesk. We also cover maintenance and use of a 3D printer.

• For the programming track we go into more advanced topics like socket programming, abstract data types, polymorphism, and many more higher order applicative techniques.

Year Four

• The robot track is about designing, building and programming a robot design that is designed and created by the student. The student will design and build a robot using the skills learned in the previous 3 years of instruction. We will be there to provide advice and council to help the students. Some students may partner with other students to build a team robot if there are others in their geographic location.

• We are working with Will Huff to also allow the building of an ALAN robot head during this class. It all just depends on timing and all with both of us. If that works out it would give the student the option to build and program something that isn't necessarily designed by them, but is a platform that the student can build on going forward.

• The programming track will dive into AI programming. We discuss many topics but focus mainly on TensorFlow. This is another reason that we start out with Python as it is the main language used with TensorFlow. This technology is changing a lot right now so the underlying libraries for machine intelligence may change drastically by the time that we have a student ready for this topic.

Technology Today will be broadcast also as a free show. We will cover devices that are being made and their use in robotics, technology in the area of robotics, and have interviews with people who are designing and using robots that are shaping the world that we live in. We will also use this podcast to advertise our classes listed above.

So the math comes out to $1,500 total for the instruction. I have been spending about $3000 per class for an entry level college course ($1000 per credit hour) for one of my sons. These classes also teach you things from a professionals perspective. For example, I hire people for the company that I work for. Very few people straight out of college understand what it takes to be a programmer. About 30% of the grade that we give for these classes are based on following good programming guidelines and standards. This is important and something few colleges do well.

Man that's tight! Good luck...education is the key! Smart move!

Amazing....so much to look forward to.

Forgot to add, i think the prices are fantastic, wealth of information to be had.

No show tonight. I have to make sure my team gets our 175 servers patched and rebooted. I doubt I will feel like doing this in the morning either.

Sorry but work takes priority.

Here is the "In The News"...

http://hothardware.com/news/microsoft-plugs-crazy-bad-zero-day-windows-exploit-emergency-patch

Oh man....always something right?

Good luck! stress

I will be live recording a show starting in about an hour. I am a bit scattered still, but it will be a fun one and you might even learn something! Swing by https://www.gearupforrobotics.com/techtoday.php and check it our, or catch the recording of the show on our youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-ROcXzNBboLRIdImbWQ5g

Looking forward to see the show!

@David.. watching the Youtube version now... Actually I am interested in the weather. Have been all my life... Being a contractor every morning started with coffee and a check of the weather. I even set up a wireless weather station in my back yard on a pole to monitor temp, wind speed/direction and barometer... My house backs on to a farmer's field so it is perfect for monitoring weather in my area... Where I live in Canada (Ontario) we don't need to worry too much about severe weather. We do get high winds that bring down trees and rip shingles off of roofs... and maybe the odd tornado. However our tornadoes pale in comparison to the ones you guys get... I guess bad snow storms that strand drivers are our worst weather event, but that really isn't much to complain about... Saying this though, I do get your concerns and I understand your passion for weather... Those tornado aftermath pictures look like those towns were leveled by a nuclear blast! Holy cow! Anyway nice show as usual...

I had told my son to stop in Ardmore Oklahoma last night due to the weather. He listened to me and did. Just about the time he got to Ardmore, there was a small tornado that crossed the highway just north of where he was (and where he would have been if he had kept driving). He waited for an hour and a half for the weather to clear up enough to drive on and made it safely.

@Richard, yea, when you work outdoors in the weather, it changes your perspective of how important knowing about the weather is.

I just want to be clear that I know that everyone has some sort of issue where they live, like wild fires, Earthquakes, Tornadoes, crazy snow, Hurricanes and so on. My goal last night was to show how technology is being used daily by people to have an impact on everyone's lives, even if we don't know that it is happening. My grandparents lived through the Homestead FL hurricane. I have lived in South Dakota and Washington DC area. I lived in Nebraska and now Oklahoma. Each place had its own weather and natural disaster issues. Technology in Oklahoma is simply amazing to me for severe storms. I wish I could show what is shown on TV during these storms but I don't think it would be allowed to stay up on Youtube. I just figured that a show about Technology would be a good place to bring up how technology is saving lives in a way that is taken for granted by a majority of the population and how I was able to use technology to assist people on a devastating day almost 20 years ago.

It is good to be back doing a show. I am also sorry for the piece where I forgot to switch over to the radar images but discussed them as if you could see what was going on.

Doombot, thanks for the interview! I hope everyone enjoyed it.

Thanks for a Great show. I am happy to hear your son made it home safely. A perfect example of the benefits of today's Technology.

Great job by Doombot.

Another great show! Thanks for the effort and time spent. Lots of great information for sure.

Mark (Doombot) was a gas! He's always been one of my favorite artists/engineers. Each guest you've had has been fun to watch but Mark is so colorful. I'm sure you had to do a little editing so the kiddies among us wouldn't have issues later in life. LOL eek My favorite quote from Mark and probably the robot quote of the year is "These Arduino guys love to stack stuff......... Before they know it they've spent $500 on a peace of c r a p that wont bump into the wall". Love it! DJ should add that into his sales pitch.

Thanks again David!

Any chance you could add time lines to your videos so i can skip straight to an interview?

Also could i add some constructive criticism..?

Being a robot show/channel, i see no robots in the back ground?

The back ground you currently have greatly distracts from the speaker, there's too much back ground if that makes sense?

Great looking pad you have, but without sounding rude, it's something i don't want to see...it would be great to see robots..with some kind of tech going on, etc.

I went to watch before, but after seeing a weather map and having to struggle to hear your voice i had to close the window, but i want to watch the interview when i have more time.

@NewAgeTomy,

Interview starts at 47:40.

You would hate to shop at some of the stores in America. There is a reason for all of the things above. This show isnt "Robotics Today", it is a much broader topic. Robotics is one of many technologies that are shaping our world. This show is called "Technology Today" for a reason.

Thanks for the input though

Look close, there is a Roomba under the table.

@CochranRobotics,

I greatly apologize, i thought it was all about robotics.

@AndyRoid,

:P

@Newagetomy,

I wish it were only about robotics, but unfortunately there is too small of an audience. We will have a robotics educational series along with a programming series that both start up in very early August.

Thanks and enjoy the interview!

David

@David... Your show is fantastic the way it is. Keep on doing what your doing...

Well, I kinda like the background. It's bright, clean and interesting. Your greenscreen skills are very cool and realistic. Sadly when I first saw your show I thought that was your home and was a little Jealous. "How dare him have a nicer home then me!" LOL. Just kidding, however there are a lot of petty people that first see something like that and these thoughts sit in their gut and eats away at them. I say let it eat them. You really don't want to associate with people like that anyway. Just to be clear I'm not saying NEWAGETOMY is one of these. He has a valid point he tries to share even though I don't agree. It's your show, make it look like you want.

It is a studio that I make the show in. The green screen helps to prevent people from having to see a closet behind me. It also allows different backgrounds to be used for different shows. This is important when students are enrolled in multiple shows.

I am sure that the background image will change at some point. It is just a bit more fun to be able to show something attractive than a closet that is full of wires and robot parts. I could make it any image but kind of like the one that I have right now.

I might show my workshop area in the garage at some point in a show. Right now it needs to be cleaned up some before I do this. I put up temp walls of sorts to prevent others from stacking things in front of my workbench. I put in padded flooring to help reduce sound and to also help with pains as I get older.

I do plan to do a show on my studio and how it is setup in the near future. My current interest is in getting my InMoov setup so near future shows may be more about that. I have to fit in my hobby of building robots along with the show at some point, so it might become more about robotics. Right now it isn't too hard to do the show simply because I have about 5 more days of 3D printing before I have all of the parts printed that I will need. After that, the show may become more about building a robot than about other technologies. IDK, it kind of changes as time goes along and is more about what I am currently dealing with.

I will say that Microsoft is working toward allowing its Windows 10 platform to run on ARM based processors like the snap dragon. This is a very interesting topic for me. Also, I had some conversations with some people a few weeks back that are also trying to figure out how to educate students on robotics and we all agree that the current model is broken. I will discuss these conversations probably in the next show.

Anyway, robotics is one of my favorite subjects so it is very prevalent in the show. Computers have been a part of my life for the past 35ish years so that too has a pretty predominate portion of the show. I worked for a cell phone company when cell phones were first coming out and have participated in this trend like everyone else over the past 25 years so it too is a pretty predominate part of the show. I have spent a few years researching and digging into AI so it too is a part of the show.

If you think about the convergence of technology and about the principle of ephemeralization, all of this deals with robotics. All of it will affect our future societies. All of it will affect our future, our children's futures and our grandchildren's futures.

Stop and think about how different the world was to your grandparents vs what you grew up in. Now, stop and think about the future for your grandchildren vs you. Technology is moving at such an amazing rate that from your world to your grandchildren's world will be 100 time more changed vs your world vs your grandparent’s world. We are at a time of huge changes due to technology and it will affect each of our lives.

Also, think about the spread of technology. There are areas of the world where people are vaccinated against disease and still die from that disease because the vaccines didn't stay cold enough before the child was vaccinated. This problem is being addressed and these hundreds of thousands of children per year that would have died will now live. These hundreds of thousands of children will have children making the population boom in the world increase at an even faster rate. The internet is taken for granted by many cultures, but there are many parts of the world that don't have access to the internet. This is being addressed. Now, these same children who would have died will have access to the same information that you and I have. if 1 in 100,000 of these children (number is very low) is prone to robotic visionary knowledge and research, that means that we now have more people pushing robot technology forward. From what I have seen, children are fascinated by robotics and I would say that probably 5000 or so of these children would have a tenancy or desire to become robot engineers. If my number is correct, this affects how many people will be pushing for the replacement of jobs in order to benefit their societies, which then affects other societies.

Anyway, technology is changing things at a pace that will only get faster each year. I only hope that I can pass along something that helps someone and each week, whatever it is that is affecting me is what I discuss.

@CochranRobotics,

Ah thank you, will go to 47:40 and watch the interview.

Looking forward to hearing about AI, im greatly interested in that.

;)

@DaveSchulpius,

I know no one agrees with what i said, i apologize for offending anyone, its just that when i struggle to find an interview and cant hear the speaker, then it becomes a little frustrating, i merely added constructive criticism and thats all. Its a show i want to watch and am very interested in, thank you.

Hey @NEWAGETOMY, no need to apologize. you have a right to your opinion. I totally respect that. Nothing wrong with constructive criticism when it's offered in good faith like your appeared to be. I do agree that struggling to hear a speaker is very frustrating.

I am confused as to when it was difficult to hear something? Can someone let me know where this happened so that I can make adjustments? I am a bit confused as I watch these back and can't seem to find where in the video that this happened.

Thanks David

I would also like to mention that constructive criticism is a good thing, it is a way to keep things on track and to evolve!

The show is great, but also it is in it's early stages as @CochranRobotics mentioned there will be a lot of changes in style and subject!

I would also agree on that a calmer background image would add to the show visually and that the sound still needs to be tweaked...I am also having trouble with the volume, at least during the last shows!

It's is such a great show to have...we all agree on that right?

When it comes to spreading free information on the internet, this documentation on Aaron Swartz is an eyeopener...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpvcc9C8SbM

@CochranRobotics I made some progress with api.ai if you would like to take a look it would be highly appreciated since you seem to be an expert on this field!

@DJSures provided a great plugin but I was struggling to use the api.ai fulfillment to access data stored on an external server or in a database with api.ai! He says all this can be done using the ControlCommand() function but I could not figure out how to do it yet...

The bot can be asked about the height of different Star Wars characters and extracts the answer out of a Star Wars data base...eg how tall is Yoda, or how big is Han Solo. It is a bit buggy, but I works good enough to get the point I guess!

There is a live version of the bot here http://www.downtown-tattoo.de/robotics/StarsWars.html

and this is the scene.... StarWarsTest.EZB

@David... There is absolutely no issues with volume in this or any of your other videos... Not to state the obvious but PCs and mobile devices still come with volume adjustment last time I checked... I just don't understand... If you can't hear something, turn up the volume?...

Hey, I am just watching the newest episode right now and must agree, the volume is all good....plus it is a great show, Doombot is awesome and the Latte Panda review is revealing!

I had trouble on some previous shows, and yes I had them running on my phone volume all up....as it seems to be fixed right now it's all good to go!

Hi David, This is your off-site Production Critic.... LOL ... Sound seems good, Video is good, Production is good. ... .... Keep doing what you are doing ! Don't change anything !

Thank you guys for the feedback. After the conference that I went to a few weeks back, I setup everything and spent some more time on getting the volumes louder. This is a tricky thing because there are volume settings in applications, volume settings on youtube, volume settings on the device you are watching back on, volume settings on the amp that is going into the audio interface, volume settings on the audio interface, volume settings that are used by the app that I use to stream and record, a compressor which affects volume, the mixer which has a compressor and about 4 different volume settings (2 for each device plugged in and 2 for the overall volume). Setting any of these too high can blow out the audio and make it really poor quality. Sound is a delicate balance of all of these settings. Hopefully it was louder and still good quality with the last show. It seems to have been.

On the background, I tried to pick something that wasn't too busy. When I look at something technical, I start to evaluate it to see how it works or if it would work. This takes my focus off of where it is meant to be. I chose this background because it wasn't technical and was pleasant and calming to me. It doesn't have a lot of things going on and doesn't distract too much I don't think. It also works well with the green screen. If you look around my head and body, you don't notice that it is a green screen. This is because it isn't a flat color or short distance image. It has depth and because of this, people don't even think of it being a green screen. This is a technique that I picked up from a podcast that had run for 10 years and had a lot of success. He too made it clear that it was a green screen and switched it up sometimes. A couple of shows he used an image that looked like he was in a shack used to sell crack and the audience appreciated his humor. A lot of what I do is based on this show and its success. Sadly, the last podcast of this show aired and it is no longer being produced. They do have many other shows, and some of them use a green screen and some don't, but their success started and grew from this one show and spread into many more. Like them, I will switch it up from time to time. I had plans to switch it up on key episodes to celebrate those shows, like show number 10 or 50 or 100 and so on.

@Mickey666maus I want to get back to api.ai to see what can be done with the plugin that DJ wrote. In essence, all the plugin would be doing is taking text and sending it to API.AI (or it could be taking audio and sending it to API.AP for them to convert it to text to use but I doubt it). From there, JSON is returned and parsed placing it into variables. In API.AI you have the ability to do a lot of things. With the variables that are returned you have the ability to do a lot of things. The plugin would be just the part that takes what is sent and received from API.AI and makes it usable on both ends. We spent a lot of time in API.AI making things based on the text that is passed to it, and then making determinations based on what is returned from it as to what to do with the text. I plan on digging back into this in the future, but I really don't have a timeline on it right now. Getting the other two shows up and going will probably consume a majority of my free time that isn't already being consumed until August or so. I will gladly share what we have in API.AI at that point in time. It is a powerful tool but you have to understand the tool to use it effectively.

We had ours acting as the initial source of information for things like "What is the forecast for Tuesday?" When people asked a What Is type question, we would go to Wolfram Alpha with the request simply because we wanted the most thorough answer to be returned. This causes issues with questions that people understand but machines don't. Things like DJ pointed out in our trip to Canada last year of "What is the Weather?". This caused our engine to give him the definition of Weather and not the forecast. This would have to be handled differently as it is a valid question and the user wouldn't get the response back that they were expecting. This would have caused us to have to write something that would allow the user to then notify us that the question didn't return something in the right fashion so that we could then program for that.

Anyway, I am a little behind on API.AI right now but will be catching up by the end of the summer hopefully. Keep up the good work!

Thanks David

@CochranRobotics I totally agree...api.ai is such a powerful engine, it's great to have such a thing to use in our robots! Also the plugin is super simple to install and works like a charm!

You could also take the route of having api.ai return the entity variable results and build the logic in ARC...there are a lot of ways to get stuff done!

I guess they also changed a buch of things...the problem with solving logic that requires certain parameters to work could be to specify them to be required...so there will be a promt for each required parameter! Eg in the weather example the required parameter would be at least the context plus a geo location! If the geo location is missing it would then ask the user to define the location first!

Thank you for your advice and keep up the show, it's such a great thing.... I must say I really enjoy to see the faces of those people that I have been following around on this forum for a while!

This is such a great community! Thanks @all

edit I was reading this again, and realized you were already way past this and took the stuff that could not be handled that way one step further in addressing Wolfram Alpha...

Any previews of what' being discussed on this week's show?

I think I will start with a "Why do I do this show" segment. I think then I will go into articles about Microsoft working on porting Windows 10 to ARM processors by the end of the year maybe. Then I will go over my build of the InMoov so far and finish off with "How to use the Omron HCV-P within ARC".

There is a request from another InMoov builder for the last topic. I know that you too have this and there has been some other discussion on the forum on this topic.

Also, I think I will give my final thoughts on the Latte Panda before I mount it in my InMoov (and get yours shipped).

Maybe throw out some subjects your viewers can give feedback on for future shows or discussions ?

There is an email address that is used for questions. It is [email protected]. To date, there have been 0 emails hit that mailbox. It is used for suggestions, questions, feedback and so on. I will mention it in tomorrows video to remind people of it. I haven't done that in a few shows or about a month or so.

There will be a show this evening at 7PM US Central time. Swing by and enjoy the show. https://www.gearupforrobotics.com/techtoday.php

Today's show (starting in about 2 hours at 7 PM Central time) will focus on API.AI and how you can use its features inside of ARC with the plugin at https://synthiam.com/redirect/legacy?table=plugin&id=193.

You can find out more on this thread. I will discuss how to setup intents in API.AI and then how to use those in ARC using the example projects that I gave in the thread below. https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/10407

You can visit https://www.gearupforrobotics.com/techtoday.php to watch the show live or visit https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-ROcXzNBboLRIdImbWQ5g to catch the recorded show.

@CochranRobotics,

@3:43

Love the start of an InMoov in the background and the EZB4.

Best thing is we get to see it develop with future episode's.

Latte Panda sounds interesting, also the castle lubecs? (BECS?)

Adjustable voltage regulators will be the go. Its something i will be looking at for a future project.

Enjoyed the episode thanks DC.

Sweet...looking forward to it, especially to the api.ai part of it!

Hey @David... I would be interested in one of your inMoov control boards if you have any left... Another great show as usual... Thanks

Hi David,. Great show as usual. Thanks for the clarification and information on API.AI. I learned a lot. Looking forward to seeing more Imoov updates.

Just finished watching your Number 10...and it has been as always, highly interesting and entertaining! This is such a great thing for the community!

I really liked the whole walk thru, especially the detailed description on how to use system variables versus Entities plus the advice to take care in not cluttering api.ai with too much non sense Intents!

I did not dig in as deeply, but am getting the feeling that api.ai might be intended to be used in a different way than I thought in the first place. This came up in my mind while watching your show, and seeing the problems being caused when you tried to fire specific commands! A while ago I was checking some YouTube clip on how to build agents with api.ai using Actions On Google...the approach was to call the agent first and then it would execute what it was build for!

So in your example, you would not have the weather agent, the movement agent and the small talk agent all being fused together but you would call for the specific agent and then execute the action it is build for! This would eradicate the mess being caused by asking the robot to lift his arm and instead turning the heater on.

Each different agent would have a different token to be called for, so this approach would need the plugin to be changed a bit... Also it would need a trigger upfront, something like "Hey Rafiki" followed by something like "I would like to move your arms" and then the Movement Agent would kick in?

I might be wrong here...it just came into my mind when watching the show!

I really liked how you made a point that api.ai is so much more than a chatbot, but I must disagree a bit. The way I am planning to use it is to tie the returned small talk action eg smalltalk.agent.crazy to a specific movement of the robot, so it will use a corresponding gesture together with the spoken response!

Great show, let start leveraging these great tools within our projects! I am getting excited!

Btw this was the clip

Dave, the latest api.ai plugin populates variables with the list of returned parameters. It also adds 3 new functions in the EZ-Script engine for parsing the returned parameters. Take a look at the description in the API.AI plugin page here: https://synthiam.com/redirect/legacy?table=plugin&id=193

Thanks DJ, I will check it out tomorrow.

Just read the new functions. This looks perfect!

Thank you so much for implementing this so quickly @DJSures you are the best! This is great!

And sorry again that I was bragging too much about JSON and Webhooks over at the other thread....your were kind of like

:D

I just tested the update to the API.AI plugin. It seems to work very well and greatly reduces the amount of scripting needed. Thank you DJ.

I will post my sample project today, but won't be doing it for a while as I am away from the house for a while.

Fantastic video/tutorial on API.Ai, you have really helped me get a better understanding of the whole thing thanks!

Tony

Another great show. I'm really looking forward to implementing API.AI with Alan and ALENA. I look forward to your sample code today.

Episode 11 starts in 15 minutes. https://www.gearupforrobotics.com/techtoday.php

Today's episode will mainly be about my InMoov Build so far.

I am loving this episode just for you droppin it on the Mac guys!

Keep up the good work I really enjoy you robotic roundups!

Good to see SPOCK under construction. Great show!

I am taking the night off tonight. I know, I haven't done a show in a month. Here is what has been going on.

Some people on another team made some changes at work that drastically affected the performance (in a negative way) on the database servers that my team manages. Over the past month we have been working very long hours to make things run well for our business users. This got worse last weekend and consumed a lot of time. I am worn out but things are working well again.

While this has been happening, I have been trying to also complete my InMoov for a show on August 1st. This has taken me away from my wife and family a lot. I am taking tonight off to spend time with them. I will be back online next week and hopefully will have a built inmoov to show.

And work tonight. Ugh. This has got to give at some point.

Hey, don't worry....one show a week is a huge project! Its been a nice addition to the forum but you should not worry too much on the weekly thing, we will all be patient!

Hey, how about scaling back to a monthly show? Something to look forward to.

Or, you could do like NetFlex is doing and record a whole season and release at once, However if done that way some of your Technology tips would be surly out of date. You'd have to call it "Technology Yesterday".

Pre-record each 15 minute section as you can. Present it mid month or whenever, after the insanity of work passes.

Once a month would be nice.

Jeeze you guys get off his back... Let David decide what works best for him. If and when he decides to do another show should be totally up to him....

Hi Richard, I wasn't trying to jump on David at all. I truly hope he doesn't take it like that. sick I admire his talent, ambition and drive.

I was only trying to offer other options that would take some pressure off of David and keep the show alive. I know how much that show means to him. I consider David a friend and was only trying to help a friend out. Dave's posts have sounded like he's been a bit overwhelmed lately. Sometimes when you're butt deep in alligators it's hard to remember that your main objective was to drain the swamp. My intention was to offer a little perspective and support. However, sometimes the pathway to Hades is paved with good intentions.

My apologies to David and others if I offended.

No offence taken at all. Trying to figure out how to get everything done is all. Work isn't helping me out much.

Honestly, it wouldn't have even happened last night anyway. My ISP had issues which took down my internet connection until 1:11 AM.

All good. Once Spock is complete, I will have more time to focus on other things.

Just an update. I am going to change this to a monthly show I think. There are a couple of reasons for this, but this is largely due to my job role changing this week.

I had mentioned that since June 1st, things at work had not been running smoothly like they had for the previous 3 years or so. This was caused by a different group in IT making some changes without consulting my team on the impact that these changes would have. For about 1 1/2 months my team has been putting in long hours to try to get things back in order. Things got put back in order.

The work that my team does in a critical role to the business that I work for. We manage about 50 database servers of different types for a company that has a lot of federal regulatory requirements. If these databases are not performing well, these regulatory requirements can't be met and the company goes under.

Due to this issue and due to some other business restructuring, my roll has changed with the company to have more responsibilities covering a much larger area which requires a far more time consuming approach right now so I wont have near the time to prep for this weekly show. There were many job losses but the team that reported to me hasn't been affected by this restructuring. For this, I am thankful.

I managed one of those groups that was very quiet. People knew we were there but didn't really pay attention to us until something wasn't working. In the past 3 years, there have been a handful of issues that caused us to be noticed. All of these were caused by an outside vendor. This time the issue was caused internally and because of this, changes have been made to prevent it from happening as easily again. My team always said that nobody cares about what we do until something bad happens. Fortunately or unfortunately, they all care now.

While having been in a managerial role before, the role I am now taking is much more managerial and less hands on. As managerial roles go, at first there is a lot of work to get things structured as they should be and then hopefully things calm down more. My hope is that this happens sooner rather than later but we will see.

I have been in Dallas over much of the last week. I hope to make it back home by this evening to do a show.

Best of luck Dave. Sounds like you've some great decisions.

It looks like its time for me to shop for a new ISP. outage 3 weeks in a row on friday evening. Frustrating.

I would love a course in TensorFlow.