I have built, or rather attempted to build, three robots.

The first was so heavy it sat there and twitched and did nothing else as I could not get past the controlling of stepper motors.

The second was incinerated in a garage fire just before it's first roll off the assembly line. All that remains are a few melted planetary gear setts.

The third was from a magazine series. It cost a small fortune but I managed to make someone elses day... progress but not the best start.

The fourth is attached here... I started with an old PC motherboard, added a laptop power system, USB mic, wireless nic, speakers and camera... then some nice little student shorted out the battery and blew the motherboard.

I used an old ATX mini, cut down its case and then hacked two put it onto Skill electric drills for the motor...

It remains ... heavily dust covered in the corner... just put on the work bench for a cameo appearance.

He may be resurrected at a later date... when the new EZ-B minis arrive and I get a Raspberry Pi !

Here's another shot!

Here are a couple of the Cybots I mentioned earlier... I'm on the lookout for these to create a little fleet of beetles that run around the place at full speed like the little one that Chewy from star wars scared in the Death Star walkway back in the 80's when I was a kid.

I've already pulled the old PIC out and put an Arduino in but then gave up for the hassle of coding...

Then I came across the EX-B. I've already had one in and pulled it out again for my Lawrence project... Just waiting for the new compact boards to put one back in and leave it in.

I've got half a mind to work towards going to the next Sci-Fi conference in 2013, dressed in black and red, with a robot cat in my arms and my little blue robot minions intentionally following me in a semi cloud formation...

Lol... and lol some more!

I've just got my third one and my goal for these little creatures is to have them scurry around under foot... cockroach like but able to seek and find their own re-charger stations... and explore that robot herd instinct like at the end of i-Robot.

Around about 6 months ago I started pulling apart my old Tomy 2000 robot to put an Arduino into it... the project was intended to teach my students the desig n process... Here is a link to the project (now stalled while I save for another ARC)

Here is the digital portfolio showing the project Tomy Hack demonstrating the Design Process

Anyway along the way I wondered if anyone else in the world is trying to do the same and started looking on youtube ... that's when I saw DJ Sure's video clip.

He had done exactly what I had been trying to do - only 100 times better.

Today I did some more work on Lawrence. I paid for a good quality Voice file from Cepstral a couple of yours ago and it works just great with ARC.

I can walk into my office in a little granny flat outside and say "Hello Lawrence - please Skype ...." or "Please open a new Word document...". While I know this was already possible with Speech Recognition it did not give me the opportunity to script together several commands, replies, etc.

I also use a very old copy of BMS music station player that plays sound files at set times. I use this for anouncing times of the day and other recurring notices.

Using the same voice adds to the impression that Lawrence is 'everywhere' and sounds awesome. Especially when it says "Thank you Master Wayne" ... lol.

Only drag is I want to do the same in the workshop so keep pulling the board out of the office and taking it to the workshop.

This weekend I wired up one of those 4 channel relays to an old multi board. It took a bit of working cause when the EZ-B connection is dropped because of a bit of bad programming on my part (Eg. Calling a connect when already connected) all the data lines go high and turn on everything.

I had to put a fifth relay in the loop to enable/disable power to the grid so that when things got confused the initial state of the data lines would be off. In other words if the power fails or my EZ-B fails due to power loss everything turns off in stead of on.

I can now say stuff like "Lawrence power up the workshop " and the workshop starts up.

I can also say: Lawrence - turn on/off the workshop lights Lawrence - turn on/off the sodering iron Lawrence - turn on/off the extractor fan Lawrence - turn on/off the dramil Lawrence - turn disable/enable the workshop power grid.

When I say "Lawrence shut down the workshop" the data lines are set low and I am given 30 seconds to leave the room before the lights turn off.

Here's a shot of today's multi-board hack

Welcome to EZ-B! It is a great product that has truly brought robotics to the rest of us. I love what you are doing with it. And your project(s) are really cool.

I like that you are using ezb in connections with relays on power sources to turn things on and off, I might steal that lol , I would probably use it for air conditioning and turning lights on and off. Come to think of it maybe you can hack a universal remote control and program your robot to change channels or, pause or start a movie , maybe record something while you are away. =) welcome to ezb! IM josh from the Jarvis project

check out the LEAF project ,it can give something close to VIKI from irobot movie ,CAN ADD A INTERFACE easy to it,since it has the code already made called X10 controller it controls everything in the house,from security,to AC outlets,lights,A/C and heating,to a very longer list then another interface is USB-UIRT module to control every electronic item,TV,STEREO, and lot more have both on my robot design but best is the LEAF AI software its a longer list,face recognition,emoptions about 26,tell jokes,look up on the internet,spell,chat,robochat AND CONTROL WITH OTHER ROBOTS, and still a longer list my new project is my omnibot project called 6 million dollar omnibot,not because of the cost but the strength of it and speed i am electronic engineer,and builder of robots for a very long long time so if you need any help in electronic designs or sensors with is my main field,besides making my own servo's it all free help

Hi Tameion,

Welcome to this community and congratz with the robots you've made! Post some video, it looks very interesting !

Greetz,

Phg

Here's a little Ironman type workshop script I have running now that the multiboard is wired up...

Very simple but created quite a stir with my mates when I invited them over for a coffee and spoke out loud...

"Lawrence" (Enabling voice recognition)

"Initialise the workshop"

Initialising workshop

Say("Implimenting Workshop initialisation Script.") sleep(3000) ControlCommand("Connection", Connect0) Set(d1,on) Set(d2,on) Set(d3,on) Set(d4,on) Say("Enabling Power Grid.") sleep(3000) Set(d0,off) Say("Turning lights on.") sleep(2000) set(d1,off) Say("Starting air conditioning.") sleep(2000) set (d2,off) Say("Opening Web Browser to E Z Robot web page.") Exec ("C:\Documents and Settings\Lawrence\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe", "http://www.ez-robot.com";) sleep (6000) Say("Will there be anything else, sir?")

My reply "No, that will be all thank you Lawrence." (Disabling voice recognition)

I was going for touch panels throughout the house and X10's but not anymore... it's all going to be EZ-B's !

Thanks heaps DJ Sures... I can't wait for the new smaller boards.

Welcome to the community! Looks good so far. I think that's great you are getting your students involved. EZ-Robot is really a wonderful platform.

Samantha

Great to see someone in the robot "Can do" zone. You are an inspiration to those of us getting our Robots - to be robots, that is to say, complete tasks and help us in our environment. A video of your creations in action would be great -

Cheers

Finished making the 4 relay unit safe and secure... packed full of glue to keep kids fingers out.

You can just see the reset button ... oh and I added a personalised nameplate for the top of the box to remind me it is my first EZ-related project... Made the label with our schools new Makerbot 3D printer.

The perspex PC is mine... I'll bring it home at the end of the year and give it a heart transplant to become the home server that hosts by EX-Builder software...

A bit like Orac from the Blake 7 days

Then it will be back to the bots!

Here I am starting on the 8 relay switching unit for the other side of the workshop.

Honestly I can't wait to get the server up and running and these things out of the way so I can get onto the robots again.... but there needs to be order.

Order and a cleaner workshop so I can go mad making... he he he.

Will post video when I have this part of 'the great scheme' working.

Probably won't be this weekend though.... my turn on the sound desk at Alive Church in Whangarei....

lol

@tameion why are you using relays,first they draw a lot of current,there are mosfets that are very low current and can be made into like a relay ,like SPDT or DPDT or 4 poles of contacts

i see what you are using the relays for AC CONTROL ok on that should use a MOC3011 OR IF 220 volts MOC2011 and the correct traic very low current drive about 1 ma or more to turn it off or on and its isolated traics have high current out,and can use a pwm signal for dimming relays are very old school and not used much

Yeah I know... but a local online trader was spinning them off oh so cheap... besides it was something big and chunky that my students could see and hear switching.... (A very audible clicking sound)

I would not go this direction normally because of the heavy current drain, and certainally have not in my robot projects, but as this is part of my workshop upgrade and AC power being readily available on one of the data lines in the cable grid I have set up I was being lazy... lol

I'm just in a hurry to get some of the dreamed automation in place in the workshop so I can say, "Lawrence, turn on the soldering iron on please... oh and while you're at it turn on the extractor fan as well."

I deliberately maintained the ability to plug things directly into a manufactured multi-board but had initially started taking the plugs off the ends of my tools and was wiring them directly in but then changed my mind and put them back on again so that I could still take the soldering iron to school, etc.

I came across this but it was more expensive and on the other side of the world!

Besides it only allowed me to switch 1.5A in total.

Running the 25W & 40W soldering iron, glue gun, and extractor fan + computer in the workshop comes close to that alone. The relay option let me forget about the amperage of the load being switched.

Have you seen a pre-made module anywhere on the market that I could use instead?

yes i have a few SOLIDSTATE RELAYS OR SSR,i mostly sell them on ebay alot my main robot working on does what your does and a lot lot more,it uses AI SOFTWARE plus has emotions,face and object recognition,plays movies and music look up the internet list is so very very long,plus it controls everything in my house,from spa control to A/C control,dimming lights,alarm system,any thing electric,X10 SYSTEM plus anything video and audio with USB-UIRT module,i can bring up the name of the software since DJ said no

email me jamericanfreddy@yahoo.com i am electronics engineer and need any help in designing anything my help is free mostty know about sensors,i have or know every sensor made

next on my robot is to have him cook

I have to laugh...

I purchased Cepstral Voices Lawrence a couple of years back for this project, a british butler voice file. It is very authentic and beats the old SAM voice I had on the origional Atari 600XL (Gives my age away a bit)

It is so good as a voice file that the ARC recognised its own replies and started talking to itself!

I said "Hello Lawrence." and it said "Hello Sir, how are you this evening?" back.

Upon hearing the "How are you this evening?" bit, which is also a voice command, it replied to itself "I'm fine thank you? And how are you?"

And then hearing the words "I'm fine thank you", it said to itself, "Good to hear Sir".

I was completely left out of the conversation!

I'll have to build in some sort of check for last statement made by Lawrence so that it isn't repeated.... kind of like DJ Sures Time Date example file...

DJ Sures this thing rocks my world!

LOL

LOL thats funny

(robot) Whats funny ? (robot) politicians are funny ! (robot) dont talk to me about politicians ! (robot) why cant i talk to you

NOooo You'v got me doing it now.

Steve_C.

Ha ha a robot like a crazy girlfriend

Oh that made me smile. :o)

I def do not need someone else leaving me out of a conversation.

Hahahahahaha

Samantha

could i use your idea dont worry i wont be taking credit of it or anything its just it would be cool to have a bunch od beetle like robots like the ones you are making oh and i was wondering what grade do you teach?

and where do you get the cybots , i googled some for sale and all that shows up a a game and some other stuff

Sometimes you get these for very cheap here on german ebay (ebay.de) -these things had to be self-assembled. you had to buy a magazine that came with one part for each issue. at some point, parents stopped from buying these magazines for their kids cause the whole thing got too expensive. same thing every time, the very first issue is severly promoted, then once you hvae started it you want to finish it - bad thing is, the first magazine cost basically nothing whereas all the following issue were to buy for way more than the first issue price. so there is cybots fully assembled, cybots missing some parts, cybots...., you name it....

Hey Robotdude11

Ideas posted to the forums are free for all to use so go for it... we post because we love to share.... just do the same so we can all benefit.

As for Cybots, you just have to keep an eye out... kids leave home and parents wanting to claim back some cash try to spin them off... I have managed to get 4 here in New Zealand as they were popular.They vary in price but as more people cotton on to EZ-bot toy hacking I am sure the price will go up.

In contrast there are very few Tomy robots in NZ compared to what I see in the forums in the US.

Actually tameion I'm taking donations for my ideas. All donations can be PayPal ed to kandyred@gmail.com : D lol The gold robot daily deals thread has lots of ideas under 100 dollars at can be shipped to you.

I had to laugh cause when I first played this video after uploading it to YouTube Lawrence heard my voice commands, reset everything ashe is programmed to as part of system startup. This plunged me into into darkness while he re-initialised the workshopand turned on the lights.... lol

Now that I have my equivalent of Vicky from iRobot / Tim from the Tomorrow People / Jarvis from Ironman I'm going to start on a docking station for my robots ... just as soon as I save enough for another EZ-B.

Anyone know when ther new boards are coming out?

Great work ! It's nice to see so many talented people over here ! Congratz !

Greetz,

PhG

Project update...

I had intended to use one master computer in a central location in the house to control everything but there were problems with my idea. Mainly the need to mic every room and set up speakers around the place as well. After a while it dawned on me that I could simply use the computers already scattered around my place and at work !

It seemed more sensible to me to to have a single EZ-B project running on all the different PC's that I have contact with than the other way around... the lounge media centre PC, each child's bedroom PC, my home office laptop, my school office laptop, my classroom, my personal laptop, ....

Always running, and all using the same speech synthesis voice file for consistency throughout.

So now my EZB project checks to see if it is up to date every 15 minutes by loading a global variable file from my Google drive. This file contains all the common variables for my project including a project version date written at the end of a programming session.

If the project, already running on any of the computers I mentioned earlier, at one of these 15min intervals happens to find itself to be out of date it writes its local variables to a file. This file includes the number of the new version.

The project then commits applacide (software suicide) by using the EXEC command to run a KILL process .bat file to stop EZB, waits a moment by pinging a non-existent IP address and then re-RUNs EZB with the Autostart active.

As the variables are lost in a reboot my project re-loads the Global and Local variables and compares itself over again.... this time noting that everything is up to date.

As my project file and the global variables file are all stored on a Google drive they are always available to all PC's at work or home...

All I have to do is tell one copy that it is out of date and all others will be reloaded to the new version. NICE!

The only concern I'd have is if the internet is down would it will have no access to the variables? Or is google drive like dropbox where it updates a local copy?

Just as "idea" but have you thought of pairing a Bluetooth audio device like earpiece to the computer. You could have one earpiece to keep with you or one in each major area of the house. That way regardless of if the physical robot is nearby to hear you the controlling computer will still hear your requests. -Josh S

@josh Have a bluetooth headset Only problem is you have to re-install after each boot up Researching how to have a number of Bluetooth Devices Permanently setup ,but don't think its possible at present

@Bravia, why would you need to re-install after each boot up? On my desktop in my home office I have a number of bluetooth devices permanently set-up. I was unaware that anything was only temporary.

The only issue I had with a bt headset is the drivers for Windows 7 were unavailable (don't try the tutlebeach PS3 headset, no drivers for PC which is a shame as it can connect to 2 devices at the same time).

@rich At present I just have Ez-b and a wii remote on bluetooth ,to get the wii to work I usually remove and re install otherwise it will not work after boot up on win 7

It may be his Bluetooth adapter ya think, giving him a limitation of Bluetooth profiles that can be active? That's strange I have not seen that problem at all.

Google Drive allows for offline work as does Dropbox. Dropbox is probably the better choice in this case as it keeps earlier copies for you 'just in case' ! With Google Drive once its gone, its gone!

Consequently I am using one for critical data and the other for ... well... non critical !

Both sync to the cloud and the local machine pulls down file changes so it becomes easy to update your projects that way.

What I have been trying to do is automate that project updates at this stage.

The Load Project function in EZ-B goes some way to doing this but doesn't yet let us autostart a script when switching or reloading a project. (That's why I had to resort to the batch file method... and EVENTGHOST is a little lacking on the programming manual side of things)

Trouble is I have EZ-B running on an XP at school for voice alarms, Vista in my workshop for play around, Win7 in the home office and Win8 in the school office.

I have not yet decided how I will manage application updates ....

On the Bluetooth subject - - - I am 40% deaf and while this is usually a disadvantage there are benefits like bluetooth hearing aids... I am currently connected to my house via this device:

The ICOM pairs first with my hearing aids and then with my computer running EZ-B and also my phone... I've often thought about making it look more Ironman-ish but .....

I can truely say I hear voices in my head.... and the hearing aids are almost invisible to others.... unfortunately when I talk back to the computer people think I am a bit on the strange side! LOL

It can pair with up to 7 devices at one time which solves the roaming issue and only cost around $150NZ.... mind you the hearing aids cost me $10,000!

Now you can see @RICH why I am interested in the EZ-B being informed when a device comes into range.... as I am the only one directly connected my BOT could be programmed to report to me via the bluetooth instead of the speakers...

Can you give me a pointer for how you did this in EVENTGHOST ? I have found this... but I admit to being a little reluctant - I don't want to kill my BT setup and loose connectivity with my EX-B all together

BTW That is not my chin.... I'm a little rounder and a little older - LOL

@Tameion

I'll have to check through my old files to see if I still have anything on it when I get home.

From memory, I think that when my phone was in range and paired with the PC, in eventghost an entry is added in the log for a device being attached, I used that as a trigger. Not 100% sure on that since it was a while ago I used it that way but I do something similar for when I turn on my TV (as it's on my HTPC), when turned on a device is attached which then triggers a macro and from there anything you want can happen.

My idea to have a number of robots each with their own mother boards but sharing common files has hit a snag with Google Drive.

Google is great for editing work online and having it pulled down to your local drive.... but not so much the reverse. Seems that if different computers are using the same Google Drive folder online any shared file updates will be duplicated and the second called for example Config[2].exe , and the next time config[3].exe and so on.

Thats a real problem if your looking in a specific folder....

This is a documented error with a log file going back to 2012 without apparent resolution from Google. Fortunately Drop-box is smarter than Google in this case and recognises that the files are intended to be updated.

So Google Drive is out and Drop Box is in for this one!

[Edit]

Just got it working across five PC's - all sync'ed their projects at roughly the same time. Those that were out of date automatically closed and re-opened their projects.

Now I can work anywhere and have my other PC's automatically load and update their projects...

• Nice

It's been a while since I posted about my Home A.I. project "Lawrence"

Well I've been saving for a bit now and last month had finally accumulated enough funds to buy a new motherboard for an older perspex PC case that I purchased four or five years ago. I purchased the economical B75M R2.0 ASRock motherboard, added 4GB memory and an Icore3 CPU...well it won't break any speed records but it is perfect as a home server and new home for my EZ-Robot installation - Nice.

So with school holidays in full swing I found a little time to replace my aged Vista laptop with a shiny new Win8 install....

So below is a photo of an LCD screen in portrait mode fastened to the wall in my workshop. The EZ-Robot logo is smiling happily at me... (Under house double car garage with workshop)

Opening the broom cupboard reveals the central server for the house... all nicely lit up...

I was very concerned about an initial performance drop in voice recognition, after having spent many hours training Lawrence, but have to admit that this was not the case. In fact I am more happy with the result and this combined with a good Logitech USB mic placed in the middle of the room means I can talk naturally anywhere in the workshop and have a good response from "Lawrence"

Next step will be to get my v3 EZ-Boards into the various devices around the workshop and in range of the bluetooth dongle ...

I was going to hard wire audio into each of the rooms but the new v4 board may mean I don't have too...can't wait!