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!
;)
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@SteveS, I'm sorry to hear about your brother. This is one of the better Elvis hacks I have seen, very classy and clean retrofit and you seem to get very smooth movement.
And neat idea to take the circuits out. Do you the load of the servos is too much for the animatronic movements in the Elvis Alive head?
awesome hack.great video.
Ok I like anyone who builds robots, but this world is messed up as it is, do we really need a transgender robot? Lol, eek eek
Nice hack Steve.
Justin, thank you for your comments. Elvia was a fun build. I thought I would try those servos. The worm drives, I think makes the head easy to move compared to direct push and pull lever operation, and the head is fairly well balanced. When they are released, the head holds position. If they fail, I might try 1/4 scale servos. So far I had to replace the upper lip servo only. Wish I could have better mouth movement to speech.
Nomad, thank you.
Merne, it shows what a robot will do to get A I, like Alexa. Thank you,
:D
Nice job, Steve! The latex skin really brings in lots of possibilities for expressions. To get better mouth movement with the speech try using the "Talk Servo" control, once you have it set up and timed properly, it really works well.
Great to see you back at it Steve - and with a great hack! Those elvis robots are pretty great - first time i've seen the guts. Thanks for sharing
Absolutely brilliant Steve!
Tony
I love it Steve. I almost fell off my chair when it curled it's lip.
Great to see you are back building again. I'm so very sorry to hear about your brother. So sad.
Bob, D.J., Tony, and Dave, thank you for the kind words. Bob, I revisited the "Talk Servo" and made some progress. You are right, it performs better when it is tweaked for each individual application. Have it pretty good on short phrases, but still needs timing adjustment for longer phrases. Thanks
my old terminator version :D
Elvia is a little bit more "sexy" haha
Smarty, Your video is great. Did you utilize a common servo control board? Do you have plans to use the jaw and neck mechanism? Thanks for sharing. Steve S ;)
Elvia has a few updates including a new hat, and new digital servo for top lip. The wig was too much of a hassle, hard to service her. She is interacting with an Echo Dot and displaying her emotions. Elvia uses the PCSpeaker Sound servo for mouth movement which allows Alexa voice through the USB Sabrent microphone input. She is not using it in this video.
I think that for the mouth you need two servos:
That lip curl is an impersonation of Elvis Presley. Back in the 60's, all over the world the girls fainted dead when he looked at them, sang a few words, girated the hips and curled his lip like that. It always creeped me out a little. sick However on Steve's bot it's hilarious. Maybe I just don't feel as threatened now as did from the real "King" of Rock and Roll. :D
Updates include removal of the jawbone, installing a new mouth lever with a longer folcrum point giving more realistic talking movement, a Sabrent USB audio card, and new servos. Installed 2 new HobbyKing Digital HV coreless servos for the mouth and upper lip. This application is very demanding on servos, and burned up many, even after much adjustment. These have operated fine so far, but are noisy. I am glad D.J. annouced a new replacement HD Servo, that is great news. Another update is a Sabrent USB audio card allows Alexa input directly into ARC. The audio card was not used in the last video. The input moves two mouth servos on my robot using Sound servo PC Speaker. The output can be sent to an amplied speaker, because my robot is noisy. Simple text Say("") commands also work with this setup, eliminating having a separate program file for TalkServo setup. The Sabrent USB audio input becomes your microphone, so I must remove it to use my default laptop microphone for VR. We have numerous Alexa controlled devices, light plugs, and switches in our home. I thought it only natural to bring Alexa into my robotoics. The skill used in the video is called "Word Master", a fast paced back and forth with Alexa that really forces you to think. New skills and options will only make robotics better. My Echo Dot just gave me an alarm reminder to use my Symbicort, that was my wife's idea. I need some custom Alexa commands to better integrate Alexa into my robotics. Thank You, Steve S
HobbyKing servo
Sabrent USB Audio
Very nice upgrades Steve. You've been busy.
You're robot has been featured on motherboard. Congrats for startling the world :)
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/robot-face-alexa
My favorite quote is
And the verge: http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/1/26/14398596/amazon-alexa-api-elvia-head
You're famous :)
I hope Steve is not discouraged by these articles saying it's soulless and terrifying. Some people are just creeped out by stuff like this. I think anyone that knows anything about the work and thought that goes into something like this really sees it as a very amazing achievement. There's nothing creepy or spooky about it other than looking at little like Elvis. Lol. Again, nice work Steve!
I agree with Dave, great work Steve!
Tony
The terrifying components that I beleive the authors are referring to is seeing how far robots have come. Both articles mention the robot uprising - Steve should be proud to be making an impact.
Stories like this will be important parts of history. People will remember. Steve should be proud! I am
Also, his video has 15,000 views and growing!
Yeah Steve, please don't read into any possible negativity! We love your work! We know how awesome you are and how talented you are! The positives are your work is receiving a lot of attention and you should be super proud of that!
I would say just let folks think what they want because there is a component to your work that is artful and art is always in the eye of the beholder, you know? Your role is to create the science/art, others that can't create it comment on it and yours is liked so much it is commented on a lot!
Plus, Black and Decker owes you a gift card or something at this point!
Steve the stealth marketing genius there....and we thought your talent was robotics! 
:)
I'm going to copy cat Steve and start making sure my tools are in the background, DeWalt, Fluke, Craftsmen ;)
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!
32,000 views!
DJ, Where can I find that view count?
@Dave View Steve's video in youtube... It will show you the hit counts...
And add to it :)
Alan