Windows Release 2016.01.15.00

Your starting to make me think that the V4.2 will be something I have to buy! Darn!

Quote:

Soundboard STOP button stops the movement panel

That is handy. I was trying to figure out a way to automate it (although hitting the stop button or starting a different auto-position also works).

Alan

There will be an upgrade option to the 4.x/2. And trust me, it's something that you want. How about 400 ADC reads per second? Or super fast (practically instant) wifi connect times? Network IP Broadcasting so you do not need to "scan" for the ezb on your network. Configurable AP mode IP Address. So far, the best test i've seen has been with all these running at once for 12 hours straight...

1. A GetADC() EZ-Script loop with no Sleep() command in the loop
2. An mp3 playing
3. Camera streaming
4. Auto Position Action Repeating

yeah, that's right. It's pretty amazing... even though it's been a nightmare to design! Totally worth it when you experience it.

Is it an upgrade for the current board? Has it a microfone input? That would be cool.

I hope we here can get the first shot at buying the new ezb. I surly don't want to have to wait months if you sell out right away.

I noticed ez robot didn't do a preorder on this one. Things must be going well for the company.

pre-order was a good idea to introduce new products to test the interest level - but a bad idea for manufacturing schedule. The challenge is we're right in that middle area of growth... at the last peak before going big. The challenges we have solved over the last years has been significant, ranging from tutorials to product quality. If ez-robot would have exploded last year, neither the team or product was ready for mass adoption. It has taken thousands of man hours to get the product where it is today, and that doesn't mean we're done

Manufacturing of our existing product line takes up 100% of our facilities efforts. This hasn't left room for additional products, such as pre-order items. To get first article samples takes months due to existing schedule demands.

When we visit the stats on user feedback, what we see are three top topics in order of popularity.

1. tutorials
2. ez-b diy performance
3. accessories

Obviously we're trying to hit all three of those. However, they can't all be done at once. The tutorials are constantly evolving, and the learn section is a product of that effort. The tutorials also introduces the user tutorial section to engage the community to help. Outside of hiring a specific "content creator", we're on a good road there. It's nice when nearly all forum questions can be responded with "go to the tutorials", because it pretty much covers everything and is growing!

As for ez-b's diy performance... well, we built the product with the availability of components at the time in 2014. Now, 2016 introduces a whole new line of IoT specific components which we can use to leverage and introduce increased performance and stability. Although it sounds easy, it really wasn't. We evaluated dozens of chipsets and iot stacks with wifi capabilities. None of them were able to perform to ez-robot's requirements. This meant super low audio latency, super low video latency and a low latency command channel. When you really stop and think about ez-robot's capabilities and how fast the ez-b responds over wifi, there is nothing in the world that compares to it. So the closest module we could find that offered half of our capabilities was a broadcom wifi incorporating mx chip technology. We worked closely with the manufacturer over the last month and they were super supportive. They shook their heads at our performance demands, but accepted that it could be done. Numerous driver revisions from their team and hundreds of changes on ez-robot's side... and we created a module that is exponentially quicker. To be clear, this is an entirely new design that the world has never seen - nothing else exists like it. The tcp stack and firmware is 100% specific to ez-robot's requirements. Once you experience it, it will make sense. There's nothing else like it...

Finally the accessories. We get lots of requests for additional accessories. And they correspond to the first and second request as well, because performance and tutorials are necessary. The biggest delay in accessories is manufacturing. The second delay is programmers. The programmers problem has been plaguing ez-robot since day one. We interview and have hired and fired dozens of programmers over the years. When you compare ez-robot's capabilities to any other technology, there is nothing else that comes close. We touch on so many facets of technology, from custom compilers, custom real-time wifi video processing, realtime wifi audio codec, firmwares, communication protocols, etc.. and everything ez-robot uses (nearly everything) is home brew. ez-robot starts by attempting to use a product that already exists and build off it. However, since nothign meets our demands, we end up making our own or fixing theirs. This even includes microsoft's bloated TPL that we had to rewrite 2 weeks ago. Like come on, does no one else care it's 2016 and we're already supposed to have hover boards?!

Anyway, back on topic about the accessories. We need a firmware designer that can write code to my standard to meet our promised expectations. That would help us a great deal to get accessories out quicker. In the meantime, we're pushing hard and as you see on the cameras... there's no lack of effort from our team. Specifically when you see the lights on at the office until 2-3 am.

USB port? For us onboard computer junkies?

@DJ... I forgot to tell you that when I was playing with ROS (Xaxxon's ROV) the video lag was so intolerable the ROV would run into things even though I was careful on how I drove it. And even though it did SLAM pretty well I ended up tearing it apart and putting an ezb in it just for the video performance alone... Then I set out trying to duplicate their programming with ARC... I ended up achieving everything except of course for SLAM... However, I am actually happier the way the ROV performs with EZ Robot at the helm... Still, I really hope one day indoor (yeah I know, nag, nag) navigating will be an ez robot plugin or built in control in some form or another....

Here's to you hard work... Cheers Richard