Asked
— Edited
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:
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.
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!
@Rich... thanks for posting that... DJ did say he packed a lot of horse power into the little V4 board...
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
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?
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.
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?
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.