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
Mickey666maus's Face Mask Detection With ARC
Wallekid1's Wall-E Made From Scratch
18,000 views now! That's 3,000 views in an hour. Geezus Steve, you're killing it!
well done
I wonder if those two blog posts are really the same person using a pseudonym. Their sentiments are so similar. I know a professional writer who has done paid posts for blogs using pseudonyms before (not tech blogs, but others that wanted to get their page hits up by having good quality writing), so it is not unheard of.
Alan
Thank you guys very much, just moving a little slow with a cold, I am fine. EZ Robot and it's community are both great. I haven't quit laughing, especially the feature from newscult. This abomination is designated Elvia, a disembodied mechanical head that uses Amazon’s Alexa API (Application Programming Interface) to achieve a level of creepiness once thought unreachable by modern science. Steve Studnicki, the mad scientist who created Elvia, says he used a USB sound card and a software called EZ robot to bring this thing to life (though I suspect he may have also strapped it to a metal table and harnessed the power of lightning). Uncanny valley doesn’t adequately convey the terror of watching this horrible machine in action. More accurately, watching this sends one into the canyon of Oh God, get it the Hell away from me! Not to get too real, but we now exist in a political climate that seems to discourage and discredit scientific progress. The last thing that the powers that be need is a repulsive example like this to point to and say Look, we told you so!
The Discovery Channel called me yesterday and will air something in Canada sometimes, they promised to send me a copy. Here are some of the News Links. Thanks again.
edit: Thanks for fixing the links
Seattletimes
Daily mail
winsupersite
blog hackster
journalugeek
frenzygeek
mirror
roboticgizmos newscult motherboard the verge komando ? videobloggers youtuberocks NEWS 7 PAPER chaifeed
Congrats! this is so cool!
Great design and great Job ! You are showing the first step of the future robots which will be helpful in daily life.
Ron
Ron, I had been working and trying to create more realistic natural eye movements and blinking, but your Alexa thread inspired me into action to create the video. There are so many great people here (smarter then me) that have been an inspiration, and D.J. helped with the SoundServo PC speaker that allowed me to build my idea of using Alexa the way I wanted. Thank You Steve S
I'm very proud to know you Steve. Couldn't happen to a nicer and deserving guy.
25,000 views buddy! Cheers Steve and congrats!