Okay here's a bit of a tangent but if you follow my thinking for a bit you'll see where I'm coming from and hopefully going to.
I am currently trying to make "Lawrence" - a combination Viki/Jarvis from the movies I-Robot / Jarvis & Ironman.
I have been trying to do this for years but always came up against the brick wall of needing more time and having to learn more code... time mostly (I am a technology teacher in New Zealand.)
Well this year I completely revamped my teaching programme and brought my neglected hobby into the classroom... and the students and I got hooked.
We tried Arduino but this was amazingly simple compared to where I had come from 30 years earlier but still too complicated for most of the kids. Then I discovered the EZ-Robot.... watched a number of DJ Sures videos and then saved like mad... for the EZ-Robot kit.
Now I have done more in three weeks tan I have done in the last 30 years of tinkering.
So here is a bit about my journey and how I hope to bring it to reality starting with automating my workshop and then building my robot fleet (with the help of Lawrence of course!)
Other robots from Synthiam community
Jstarne1's Security Cam Robot, This Droid Is Watching For...
Toymaker's When The Altair Ez:1 Met Pepper
Actually tameion I'm taking donations for my ideas. All donations can be PayPal ed to [email protected] : 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).