Arduino's and micro controllers are good at doing tasks repetitively. For example, if condition x, y or z is met do a, b or c. They are good at say transforming information from something unusable to something meaningful so that something else can use that data. They are not good at handling a lot of different things at one time.

By using the PC to control a robot (as Richard R mentioned above) you are able to do many things at the same time with a robot. This also allows your robot to have access to all of the data that is available to your computer including the internet. This is the reason that all really usable robots run in a tethered mode. Tethered doesn't mean attached by a wire, but means that the robot controller is connected to something else that is driving it.

You can use a combination of approaches to robotics by using arduinos or micro controllers as subsystems. These subsystems would handle one part of your robot and pass that information back to the main robot controller and thus the PC. This allows the load of monitoring specific devices to be done off of the main PC and thus reduce the load on the main processor or communications paths used to communicate to the PC from the main controller. If your son is accepted to MIT, this would probably be the approach that they would take in teaching him about robotics. This allows a level of abstraction which allows the programmer to make sure that a particular system is working correctly prior to integrating it into the entire robot solution.

This is also how JD works in some areas. The camera module gathers information in its own subsystem and returns that data to the EZ-B. The eyes manage themselves and receive data from the EZ-B. The EZ-B simply sends the commands to tell the eye subsystem what to do. It then does it. The EZ-B sends commands to the camera and receives data. It doesn't need to handle the load of converting the data to an image, but instead receives the image and sends it to the PC to do something with it. It is also how Servos work. There is a controller board in each of the servos that receives a command from the EZ-B which allows it to then move the motor until the potentiometer reaches the location specified by the command. This is handled inside of each servo motor. Each servo motor is its own subsystem. The camera is its own subsystem and the lights in the eyes are their own subsystems. These are all already coded to handle what they are meant to handle so you don't have to do any of that. They are complete and ready to use so they are just devices.

If you wanted to combine some of these devices to work together automatically without having to worry about how they will interact with other things, you could setup a subsystem that would stop the motors on the robot if something was withing say 12 inches of the robot. This could be done through ARC or through a custom subsystem that takes the load off of the PC running ARC. This could also be handled through C# and the SDK or a number of other ways. If you chose to do this through a custom developed subsystem you would be using an arduino or micro controller. If this is all that you are doing with this subsystem, it would be silly not to just use ARC to handle this function.

This is the reason that the product is not a toy but could be used as one. This product allows the user to get as advanced or simple as they want to get with robotics. It also allows the user to have an extreme amount of untapped power through the use of the PC/Iphone/Android or whatever is used to control the robot. It allows the user of the product to grow in robotics and take the product wherever they want to take it.

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Now what would be the difference between running windows 8.1 and running an Ipad with ARC

The capabilities of ARC Mobile (on iOS or Android) are significantly less than those on a PC. You can make the robot move and make sounds, and you can see through its camera, but it can't do speech recognition and I believe the camera tracking functions are also not available yet.

If you want to develop your own capabilities for JD, you need to create them on the PC, but you can then upload to the EZ-Cloud and download to an iPad or other supported mobile device and use them. Without a PC, you are limited to the JD sample app, or any apps that others have marked public when they uploaded them.

Alan

All you guys are great including Richard R for putting up with me.

A lot of MY old memory refreshed! Years ago I worked with ER1 which carried a laptop on his mainframe. It really was fun but the company folded and most of us went out of it due to lack of parts. This seems like its going to be great if Santa ever gives me JD. I did get the computer early to work with ARC so I'm learning from all of you and reading a lot. I'm also able to try some stuff that you guys are sharing with me to try Like the speech recognition tutorial from yesterday. Thanks All!

@darticus LOL, no, not an Engilsh major (thank goodness). Just that certain punctuation and annotations go a long way towards understanding one another when all you have is the written word.

So, where do you stand now? I've noticed you have asked several questions in various posts but I have no real idea as to whether you still need them answered or not. Perhaps you could write another post listing the questions you still have that you feel you need help with. I realize that without the robot you are limited, nonetheless there are still many things you can do and see (and hear) results.

As you said, the sheer volume of tutorials is overwhelming. It can be especially frustrating when all you want to do is write programs without having to wade through all the introductory stuff first. You're impatient to see something happen. I can certainly understand that. As you have seen, you don't have to know everything about the Speech Recognition control to use it. It's doubly bad when you don't even have your robot yet. Same thing happened to me. I had to wait for a month to get mine because of delays in manufacturing. So I played around with the software and used the designer to put together robot parts to see how they would look as a whole. Learned a lot during that time so I could hit the ground running when my JD showed up.

With all that in mind, I can write posts for things you can try out, assuming the last one I did was helpful. Of course, you may already be past the elementary things I did in that post, but, again, I don't know.

WBS00001 I am an inpatient brat at my old age! I did do some examples with speech recognition that were shared with me and that really said a lot on how you do this programing thing. Just wondered if there was another project I could try to reinforce the writing of programming that someone can share that would demo another capability without having freakin' JD. This could keep me busy for several minutes. Than I just read for 20 days! WOW! PS I need a custom Santa suit to fit JD! LOL

I got my computer 2 weeks ago and just found out, I think, Its not the right one. Here is what I bought Dell Laptop Latitude Windows 8.1 Core 2 Duo 4GB Ram DVDRW WIFI Computer Win 8 HD Here is a screen shot of what the computer says is in it. Unless I'm reading it wrong its only 2 GB RAM NOT THE 4GB Can anyone confirm its wrong or am I reading something wrong. Thanks Ron

that definitely only has 2 gig installed.

Alan

It indeed is only 2gb, but do not worry - ARC software will still work. There may be difficulties with 3D designer, as the files are quite large. But you should have no trouble, outside of the software being a little slow at times.

If you wish, some local computer repair shops can upgrade the ram for you. I wouldn't trust Best Buy prices, although it won't hurt to check comparison