Asked — Edited

Threw In The Towel

Sorry to say I searched the forums and did some lessons, never did get it to work the way I wanted so I grab my UNO and ported the camera, ping sensor and servo and in about 15 minutes had it working with out having to be connected to a wifi setup. Just seems to clumsy for me, will ebay the controller and move on. Have fun Don


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#1  

That's great... now all you have to do is get your UNO to colour, object and face track.... respond to voice commands, run 24 servos, run multi-tasking scripts, connect to it over the internet, run real time debug and project updating, etc, etc then you'll be all set....:P

Seriously, I used to be an arduino guy, but got seriously frustrated with it's inherent limitations so I moved on to EZ Robot. Now I am able to build robots that were not possible unless you learned ROS... Ardunios are excellent for simple stuff, but EZ Robot is the choice if you want to make something truly impressive...

The basic micro controller is gradually going the way of the dinosaur... Robotics is rapidly moving towards PCs and ez robot bridges that gap right now...

EZ Robot is not for everyone....

Cheers Richard

Canada
#2  

Some people like to drive bicycles. But i prefer to drive my fancy sports car and get there quickly and in style. Ez b all the way to town. :D

#3  

Sorry to see you go Asterof. I do just want to make sure you got my email that I had sent to try to help you with the question that you had. Just in case you didn't, I am putting it here.

The way that I would program this in a script is as follows. I don’t know of any existing script that is available but there is so much posted that I don’t keep track of it all.

A master script which is monitoring the ping distance. When a ping is at the required distance or shorter call a tracking script which would turn on the camera and enable tracking in the camera control.

Tracking is done by color, motion, QR Code, Multi color, Face, Glyph, Custom or object. You wouldn’t necessarily know the color, have a QR code or glyph so I would say that your best options are motion or Face.

It the ping sensor then starts registering a distance that is greater than the value needed for say 60 seconds, the master script would then stop the tracking script and turn off the camera and tracking and go back to monitoring for the ping sensor to be tripped again.

I don’t have a V4 setup right now so this code will not be tested but it should give you a place to start.

Master_Script


$varTimer = 1
:MainLoop
#set your values here
Ping_Wait(d20,d21,HIGHER,50)
if($varCameraOn = "true")
  Ping_Wait(d20,d21,Lower,50)
  $varTimer = $varTimer + 1
  sleep(1000)
  if($varTimer > 60)
    $varTimer = 1
    ControlCommand("Tracking_Script", ScriptStop)
    ControlCommand("Camera", CameraMotionTrackingDisable)
    ControlCommand("Camera", CameraStop)
    $verCameraOn = "false"
  endif 
    
else
  ControlCommand("Tracking_Script", ScriptStart)
  $varCameraOn = "true"
endif
Goto(MainLoop)

Tracking_Script


ControlCommand("Camera", CameraStart)
ControlCommand("Camera", CameraMotionTrackingEnable)

That’s about it. This is off the top of my head, but should be able to get you started in what you want to do. You will need to have a Camera module, and these two script modules. A variable watcher module would also probably be beneficial but not absolutely necessary. This would allow you to see what the variables are changing to.

#4  

I understand, and appreciate your help While I think EZ-ROBOT products are cool items, I found it frustrating to try and figure out all the different code modules verses the scripting verses and how they get tied together. Also I did not like the idea of having to use wifi to control the controller Having the ability to use the wifi for development and testing is great, but needing to have a wireless tether attached limits the distance and versatility of the object you are creating. To full utilize the product you would need to sit down and learn a new programming language, and already knowing pascal and C makes using the other guy easier for me. I will keep an eye on this product in the long term and maybe someday take another look. Good luck I will be watching your work closely as it opens a lot more doors for this product

And in reply to the other comments IE "UNO to colour, object and face track respond to voice commands, run 24 servos, run multi-tasking scripts, connect to it over the internet, run real time debug and project updating

This is already done and I have done most of that listed above 24 servos how about 64 Completely stack able design: 5 address-select pins means up to 32 stackable shields: that's 64 steppers or 128 DC motors!

Your electronics can now see in dazzling color with this lovely color light sensor. We found the best color sensor on the market, the TCS34725, which has RGB and Clear light sensing elements.

Give your project a voice! Designed by Parallax in conjunction with Grand Idea Studio, the Emic 2 Text-to-Speech Module is a multi-language voice synthesizer that converts a stream of digital text into natural sounding speech.

EasyVR 3.0 is a multi-purpose speech recognition module designed to add versatile, robust and cost effective speech and voice recognition capabilities to virtually any application

PRO
Canada
#5  

@asterof I hail from the maker movement world myself and it's actually kind of humorous what a person would have to do to build an equivalent all-in-one robot control setup using off the shelf hobby electronic parts.

The cost alone would be a deterrent for me personally, but let me know what you think. Here are the features of the $80 ARC/ez-bv4 versus an embedded Arduino ecosystem.

Microcontroller - Arduino Uno [$24.95], most likely the Arduino Mega [$45.95] Speech synthesis - Emic 2 Text-to-Speech Module [$59.99] Music - MP3 Shield [$34.95] Music File storage - Micro SD Card [$5] Voice Recording - Greeting Card electronics (max 20 seconds) [$7.95] Audio output - Speaker [$1.50] Servo control/additional PWM - servo Shield [$17.50] Object/Color tracking Camera - Pixy [$74.95] 1A energy conserving digital switching regulator - [$3] Data Logging - OpenLog [$24.95] Data File Storage - Micro SD Card [$5] Graphical and touch Interface/Data feedback - Touch Screen Shield [$34.95] Voice recognition - I don't know of any embedded tech that can do this Joystick/mouse/keyboard Control - You would need either a bluetooth or Infrared receiver Personality generator - Not sure what exists out there Third party Robot control - You would need WiFi or bluetooth

I won't list the number of features tied to WiFi since this wasn't important to you.

Obviously the cost of a tethering to a device such as a laptop or smart phone boosts the cost of the ARC/ez-bv4 system much higher but these are items most of us already have so I wouldn't consider them a cost factor.

When it comes to I2C expandability you can't really compare the two systems as they can both interface to many different I2C products such as I/O expanders, color sensors, and motor controllers but they both max out at 127 different addresses. The ez-bv4 can also utilize other addressable electronics via a serial stream on every I/O pin.

If my math is correct, which it isn't lol, it would be at least $265 to clone the most basic ARC/ez-bv4 functionality with an embedded Arduino ecosystem.

Cost being ignored, the Arduino form factor alone would be a bit ridiculous. The shield stack + other electronic boards included would likely be about 6 inches high (likely higher).

The unfortunate part is that not all Arduino shields/libraries play nice together. Some use the exact same pins, so the Arduino ecosystem may not even work like this.

In terms of programming, as much as people like to say that programming an Arduino is just like writing 'C', their "wiring" language is still a learning curve when it comes to their custom syntax and commands. I would have no issues claiming that the learning curve is the same with ez-script. I have learned both.

Forgive me for the rant. I have been bottling this up for some time I guess hahaha.

Anyway, If you don't find any of this really useful to you, please take these these next words away from this post:

Something extra we offer here is a very supportive and friendly community of robot builders. I can't say the same for many other hobby forums out there. I won't name any names but there are some that are down right hostile. I take a great deal of pride in the people we have here and the support system that has formed. I'd encourage you to stay. I think you'll notice the difference.

*Edit: I guess the ez-bv4 + Camera combo is actually $134.99, my bad, I forgot about the camera price being a factor.

#6  

Thanks @Jeremie.... I am not and wasn't criticizing the guy, but I was going to say that the OP is going to need a crap load of extra hardware ($$$) to do what a $135 ezb and camera can do... We all know when you add a whole bunch of hardware from different manufactures chances are you are going to be looking at problems with compatibility...

@asterof If you were to spend a bit more time with the ezb4 I am sure you you would soon see why we here love the ezb4... Again, I am not criticizing because I too came from using the Arduino... so I know what it can do and what it can't do...