I am asking the community for some help. I dont know anything about programming or writing code etc. But, I can get almost anything to move or animate. My back ground is Make up effects for films and television, but I started out as an R/C animatronic mechanic, (back in the day when there was animatronics (now its all CGI). Anyways, I have a full sized B9 Robot from Lost in Space that I am building for fun (5 years in the making and counting), and I want to be done with it so I can move on to other robots and other endevours.

Here is my quandry. Coming from animatronics, I use the VSA and RAPU from Brookshire. This allows me record and animate with upto 128 servos, and to sync audio to the animations. So, I am creating animations for say the arms, adding that to a library of animations, then adding that to a time line, like non-linear editting. So lets say on time frame 120, he moves forward, extends his arm and says "howdy". Its all in the can, prerecorded motions.

What I'd like to do, is control the animations (called routines in VSA and the recorder flash called RAPU) with the EZB. Now here is where it gets fuzzy for a non programmer like me. The RAPU uses IR controller to just cycle through the routines, but it also can be controlled via this description using Visual Basic and even Macromedia Director:

The Console

And this is the version of the RAPU I have: My RAPU

I believe there is some serial control as well in there (see page 8 at the bottom' serial control'), but again I have no idea how to get EZB to send serial commands to play the Routines etc. Or maybe none of this will work the way I think it might?! I'd like both the RAPU and EZB to work together, EZB giving it autonomous operation and the RAPU for the library of motions and audio.

So any help, in laymens terms, I would be grateful. Egads thats alot of writing I hope it makes since.

Thanks,

Will