I'm 80 years old. I want to bu

This is amazing. Thanks Will. I need to figure out how to get Alexa downloaded to my laptop and channel it through my B9 like you did with Alena. He won't sound like my old friend but it would be cool to have this interaction with B9 like I can do with alexa. The neon flash would sync up nicely with the alexa voice.

This demonstration was the Alexa echo dot (hockey puck) and i used the new blue tooth speaker system i built into Alena  and Alan to connect her. Alexa connected to the speakers and away we went.

You can easily use the PC version to do this, except you have to push the icon on the screen to activate the mic every time you talk to her ...no wake word like "hey alexa". But once the social bot starts on alexa (on the PC version) you don't have to hit the icon continuously and its mostly automatic from there. You could also connect via bluetooth from the computer to the robot. I bought a cheap module on amazon and added an amp..works great.

Thanks Will for the explanation. I've got Alexa working on the PC just fine now. Much better the the other old lady. I have used the chatbots in Alexa that are being developed by different people. Some are great and some are weak. You did say above that Calstate Davis was amazing. However if you come across one in particular in the future that you recommend I would love to hear about it. I'm sure we all would. You do such great research on this kind of thing.

Ya, I kinda thought I'd need a seperate bluetooth receiver on the robot to get the Alexa response from the pc. But if your not running through ARC how did you get the servos to match the speech in the jaw? You probably have it documented in your project showcase. If so just say so and I'll dig it up if I can find it in this new forum format.

EDIT: Wow we can edit comments now! Nice. Things are coming along on this new forum nicely!  I see on a post above from you Will that the bots cant be chosen. You get what you get. I need to look into this more to understand it I guess. Must be a contest. I was playing around with Alexa a few weeks back and thought I was able to pick from a list available. :unsure:

Yes the two strong ones are Cal state davis and the one from above who were from Prague, who were the runner ups to the Alexa prize. The others are not good.

I use a seperate drop in card for the jaw sync for both robots. There are several on the market, I use Audio Control Board and the Scary Terry board, both do exactly the same thing. They convert the audio into PWM for the servo and there are several onboard pots to dial in the sound and the jaw movement. I did this so i can pump lots of different types of audio thru the robots.

Nice! That makes sense now. I had also had multiple ways to input sound into my B9 years ago. However I stripped a couple of the devices (Bluetooth receiver and an automatic A/B switch) to simplify things. Looks like it's working for you nicely though.

I've heard those Scary Terry board work great. I've always wondered if they could be adapted to work with the neon flash in a B9 but I'm not smart enough to figure that one out. LOL.