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Peaking Under The Hood Of My V4 Ezb

Hi all,

I just unpacked ny new V4 EZB and thought I'd shoot a video of what it looks loke up close and with all the plastic caseing taken off. I wanted to get ths posted last night but Youtube took forever to up load. Enjoy:


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#34  
@DJ... the long road to bringing Revolution to market is riddled with empty pizza boxes and late night candle burning.... Some of us whined about the long delays (myself included), but not once did I ever forget how much effort you and your team have put (and continue to put) into EZ Robot....Well gotta go, I am chowing down on my crow sandwich right now (as one of my orders has confirmed shipped):P
#35  
Last night I fially found the time to connect to the V4. What a dream come true. I'm blown away at the craftsmenship and tech that went into this little powerhouse. I'm so honored to have been one of the first few to take delevery of this amazing slice of history. This is where it all starts!

Thanks to all at EZ Robot, and most of all DJ to make sure these first boards were sent out to us in advance of the China shipment in a few weeks.
United Kingdom
#36  
One of my first questions to @Anthony when he offered to answer questions on the V4 way back when he got his was about the Benchmark. While they will all be different I thought I would at least check mine out and post my results so it gives an idea of the speed of communications...

ReadADC: 8.85 commands per second, took 33.89 seconds to read 300 times
SetServo: 37497.66 commands per second, took 0.008 seconds to set servo to 300 different positions on D0
SetServo&Speed: 1271.11 commands per second, took 0.472 seconds to execute 600 commands on D0
SetDigital: 42854.69 commands per second, took 0.007 seconds to set D0 to true 300 times.
ReadDigital: 9.07 commands per second, took 33.08 seconds to read 300 commands.

That's much faster than the V3!
#37  
@DJ... You should have signed those first 100 boards... One day they be worth a lot of money like a Bobby Orr or Wayne Gretzky rookie card... I can see one on eBay 10 years from now with a Buy it Now price of $1000....;)

@Rich... thanks for posting that... DJ did say he packed a lot of horse power into the little V4 board...
#38  
Was wondering if anyone else gets a lot of static from the speaker.
For some reason mine seems to have a little too much.
Even after turning the sound down, with the slider to zero, it still puts out what I feel is a little too much.
I have tried placing the unit on different surfaces but still with the same results.
I have nothing else plugged into it and even tried another power supply but the static is still there.

Any ideas what this could be or what I might try to get the static sound to stop.

Herr
United Kingdom
#39  
I did notice a little static while playing MP3s however that may have been the MP3. When using the SayEZB() command it was static free.
#40  
Guys, great job! and Rich, you ARE one of the reasons that I have not given up.

;)
South Africa
#41  
Richard R you are right on ebay I found the ezb v3 for 290 euros
Australia
#42  
@Herr Ball I also get static noise coming from from my speaker. It is much more noticeable now that I have wired the Ez-B directly to the original speaker that came with Wall-E. The sound produced is better but the static is more clearly there (in comparison to the Ez-B inbuilt speaker).
Significantly worst static occurs when starting the camera via the camera control panel. Stopping the camera reduces the static. Moving the camera around when it's on has no effect on the amount of static. Oddly there can be an occasional split second pause in the static, when doing nothing to bring this about.
Does the camera need to be shielded from the Ez-B?
#43  
The speaker connection on the ezb goes through it's own amp... simply wiring another speaker (did you check and see if the speaker you wired it to has the same ohm rating as the built in ezb's speaker? Because that could be your problem) will just produce the same distortion that existed before... there is another through hole speaker connection on the ezb4 board that bypasses the built in pre amp.... if you wire your own amplifier and speaker to that connection instead you should get clean (louder) output... Dave has done this with his B9 so there is a recent thread floating around here on how to do this... It only involves 2wires... ground connection and the other wire to the new speaker output
#45  
Looks like a great product. I only have one question why was the switch made from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi? Wi-Fi is not going to be available in every location and the robot can only be used at home?
Canada
#46  
@4R2D33700 - You can connect to the EZ-B v4 directly from your phone or computer so you can use it anywhere, not just somewhere that has wireless internet.
United Kingdom
#47  
Almost every portable PC made in the last decade has wifi too, which can be used to connect to the EZ-B. If it doesnt then a wifi dongle is actually cheaper than a bluetooth one.
#48  
Ok. So it connects directly just like the Bluetooth did with no data plan needed?
United Kingdom
#49  
Yes it can do.

There are two "modes" WiFi AP Mode and WiFi Client Mode.

In AP Mode (Access Point), the EZ-B will broadcast it's own WiFi network which the PC's WiFi will connect to.

In Client Mode the EZ-B will connect to an existing WiFi LAN.
#51  
One reason why they switched was because of the audio now coming from out of the EZB V4 board itself. Blue tooth didn't have enough bandwidth to support streaming audio along with all of the other data.
Australia
#52  
@Richard R and @d.cochran, thanks for the suggestions.
The original Wall-E speaker has no markings on it, so I could not check the ohm rating.
I did however connect another 8 ohm speaker and got the same results - continuous annoying static when the EZ-B Camera is turned on:(
I also tried using a different PC in another location of the house, with no change.

I think the HiFi (external Amp) solution is more suitable for a larger robot. There's not much room inside Wall-E once you put in the Ez-B with its power base and connect all the servos (check out the pics on my Wall-E thread). I do have a FiiO Amp that I could hack but would be reluctant to go down this path unless I was sure it would fix the problem of interference from the Camera

I wonder if any of the other 98 people (besides HerrBall & myself) who received hand-built Ez-Bs, have static noises coming from the inbuilt speaker system? Time will tell I suppose
I also wonder whether I have a faulty EZ-B?
#53  
@Tony1952,

I've been thinking about your sound problem and have a few ideas to throw your way.

First, I noticed a few things when I was struggling with the poor sound issue I was having when first setting up an external amp and speakers on my new V4. Sound quality varied greatly between different sound files and also types of files. I think this was because some of my files were not sampled lower than others. Also in my case I found that my .WAV files played much better than .MP3 files. Try to find higher quality files and see how they sound. Perhaps you can resample your sound files using a sound editor like Sound Forge (at $200 it costs a lot but there are other free programs that will do the same thing.
Sound Forge

Second; If that won't fix it maybe you can add a small external amp and use the breakout hole before V4's built in amp and an external speaker. I did did a tutorial on how to do this here:

Breaking Out The Sound From The V4 Ezb

If you don't use the power base, remove the little deans connector and solder wire in for a pigtail power connector you will have lots of extra room in your bot. If you're concerned about a fuse you can use a inline fuse in the positive wire. Here are a few examples of hardware you could use:

In-line AGC Fuse Holder

Mini 5V Audio Ampli Digital Amplifier Board

Hope this solves your problems. Let us know.:)
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