Elvia the EZ Robot powered Android-Elvis "Hack" I have been away from robotics for a while, spending time with my brother, who recently lost his courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. He loved coming over to fly and record vids on the drone. I purchased the WooWee Elvis from EBay that already had all the electronics removed. After reviewing some of "Hacks" on the net, I decided I would try using existing parts that I already had on hand, to convert the bot to an EZ Robot. First I disassembled the unit. Then I removed the control boards from numerous EZ Robot servos and attempted to control as many of the existing original DC motors as possible. I was able to convert 4 DC motors using the original Elvis potentiometers with EZ Robot servo control boards. The neck motor operated well with a control board from an old 1/4 scale servo. I had to find the correct min. and max. number combinations to operate a motor forward, stop, and reverse. I cut out the boards from numerous new servos, because sometimes I had the magic smoke. New servos were installed for the eyes up/down, top lip, head tilt right/left, head rock forward/back, and jaw. Because the new jaw servo had a different shape, it required offsetting the face about 3/8" forward for clearance. The head tilt and rock servos were fitted with the original worm gears removed from the Elvis motors. Both of those servos had to be allowed to pivot, same as original motors. The new servos had slightly less travel, but worked well allowing her head to roll around similar to original movements. My wife helped pick out the half price wig, and instructed makeup work. Having an Amazon Dot, I wanted a female robot. I have not had much success with the sound servo for realistic mouth movement. The silicone skin and animatronic eyes are good quality, and make the robot more realistic. The wig and smearing makeup are a real hassle if changing out a servo, I may eventually slap a ball cap on it!
;)
Other robots from Synthiam community
Sakis33's Maria ,The Green Bot
Hstud's Hunters1st Robot Sam
Q the Aerosmith, "DUDE looks like a LADY!"
@SteveS, I'm sorry to hear about your brother. This is one of the better Elvis hacks I have seen, very classy and clean retrofit and you seem to get very smooth movement.
And neat idea to take the circuits out. Do you the load of the servos is too much for the animatronic movements in the Elvis Alive head?
awesome hack.great video.
Ok I like anyone who builds robots, but this world is messed up as it is, do we really need a transgender robot? Lol, eek eek
Nice hack Steve.
Justin, thank you for your comments. Elvia was a fun build. I thought I would try those servos. The worm drives, I think makes the head easy to move compared to direct push and pull lever operation, and the head is fairly well balanced. When they are released, the head holds position. If they fail, I might try 1/4 scale servos. So far I had to replace the upper lip servo only. Wish I could have better mouth movement to speech.
Nomad, thank you.
Merne, it shows what a robot will do to get A I, like Alexa. Thank you,
:D
Nice job, Steve! The latex skin really brings in lots of possibilities for expressions. To get better mouth movement with the speech try using the "Talk Servo" control, once you have it set up and timed properly, it really works well.
Great to see you back at it Steve - and with a great hack! Those elvis robots are pretty great - first time i've seen the guts. Thanks for sharing
Absolutely brilliant Steve!
Tony