The Byte Bin Blog

I got my RoboSapien RS Media yesterday! It’s a fascinating robot. I will be doing a robot web site portal (that will link to a site for each robot) soon I think. I have two i-Que’s, and a RoboSapien V1 mini (which is just a walking, light-up toy of the original V1). Too bad V2 and RS Media are discontinued but not V1! Go figure!

Update: I have more information on the belt specs. Scroll down for complete info.

I looked more closely at the belt and when I went to clean it off, I see that the hair was burned and melted a bit into the belt. Also it appears that some of the teeth on the belt are missing. At one part, the belt was warn down so thin I’m concerned it’s gonna break. So he needs a new belt. Anyone know where to find one? The other side is pretty bad. Here’s photos and specs.

(Click on thumbnail to view full size image.)

Here’s how bad it was:

Note that the photos below show the GOOD side of the belt (for best reference).

Wheel, gearbox gear (belt goes on the small gear in center) and belt:

Close-Up of bad belt:

Specs:

Belt:

3.75″ circumference (outer area of belt)
.125″ Pitch
1/4″ width
1/16″ profile thickness (not including the teeth)
1/8″ profile thickness of the teeth
1/16″ spacing between teeth
Approx. 1″ in diameter

Wheel inner gear (wheel is the larger item with orange treads):
10/16″ Diameter not including teeth
20 teeth

Gearbox gear inner gear:
1/4″ Diameter not including teeth
10 teeth

Both gears have a tooth profile height of 1/16″, inner tooth gap of 2mm and outer tooth gap of 3mm.

I would need two of these belts.

If anyone can help, please email me here: http://byebin.net/contact.html

Thanks!

First, I was in contact with Unit 2’s first owner and found that he had no charging issues at all prior to shipping. There was a hole in the box when I got it (yes, UPS is *that* rough with the boxes as I’ve experienced many times before) so the robot was knocked around a lot. I’m going to be opening it up and cleaning it up soon. The previous owner said that it might just need a good cleaning on the inside to get the stuff going again, so I’ll definitely try that. And will have photos of the whole opening process, so we can see what is what in there. Coming soon!

Meanwhile, here are the videos of Unit 2’s first run:

Part 1 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsEl21mnjVE

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaxmSnkkzfY

(Sorry I had to use links because the embedding didn’t work in WordPress. )

At 1:33 pm EST i-Que Unit 2 arrived to join his 11 month old “brother” Unit 1. I purchased Unit 2 knowing that there were problems with his drive train not allowing the robot to turn. I got a good deal on it from someone in my Yahoo i-Que Robot group.

As I type this I’m uploading two videos of Unit 2 when first powered up and some of the problems he’s had. The one thing that I found that was a surprise is that he won’t recharge even when he says he’s going to. His Green light doesn’t go on. If I press the base’s slow charge/start button it goes on but when I release the button, it goes off. Here are the tests I’ve done:

Charging Base Test:

I put Unit 1 on the charging base that came with Unit 2. He started charging right away. No problems.
I put Unit 2 on the charging base that came with Unit 1 that is known to also work. Unit 2 still would not charge. Slow charge/start button will light the green light but like the other base, the light goes out when button is depressed.

Both times Unit 2’s head center green LED did not light. Unit 1’s did when placed on either charging base (it actually blinks).

So this rules out a defective charging base.

Battery Test

I swapped the batteries so that Unit 1 has Unit 2’s battery and battery cover, and Unit 2 has Unit 1’s battery and battery cover. Same results when tested in the same way as above for the Charging Base.

Unit 1 started charging Unit 2’s battery, meaning the battery did need recharging. It would do so on either charging base. Unit 2 would not charge Unit 1’s battery (which also started charging in Unit 1 prior to the switch, as it needed charging as well).

This rules out defective battery. The batteries and battery covers were then switched back to the original units.

Unit 2 battery cavity button

There is a little silver depressable button on the bottom of the battery cavity. I kept the battery hooked up. Put the charging base on the robot upside-down and held firm so that the two buttons on the charging base were depressed and against the metal contacts of Unit 1’s recharging area. Then I used the handle of a screwdriver, holding by the handle as well (which is a rubberized plastic of some kind and thus not able to short out anything) and depressed the little silver button. The green LED on the charger still did not light. Note I did not yet test to see if Unit 1 would not charge if the button wasn’t pressed in.

I’m still looking into this issue. In the mean time, if I need to recharge Unit 2’s battery, I’ll just have to install it in Unit 1 and let him charge it instead. PITA but until I figure out something to fix it, it’ll have to do.

Besides, Unit 2 is going to be my experimental unit anyway so I’m not at all upset at the defects. In fact, they give me opportunity for more research and hopefully I can write some more articles in the i-Que Robot Lab that might be helpful to others. So let him malfunction! He’s doing me a little bit of a favor.

And, I was thinking before I got the bot that I would set him up with the robotic voice instead of the more natural sounding voice. Well, when I started him up, that’s the voice he spoke in after I put in his batteries! So I didn’t have to do anything.

He also seemed to have a western/cowboy type of personality for some reason, when he used some phrases (as you’ll see as soon as the videos are up on YouTube). His first home was in Oregon, so who knows. Unit 1 I don’t know what kind of personality he has because I never really paid attention that much. Maybe I should start and see if that has anything to do with it. Maybe the location you enter into the robot determines personality and phrases? Would be interesting to find out.

Keep watching this blog as I learn more!

Megatron was shut down on September 23, 2008 at 7:15 pm EDT. He served well for many years doing everything from work, games, watching movies, media editing, music, development, server, linux, you name it, he did it! The computer was one I built up and has an Intel P4 2GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, DVD burner, 200 GB WD EIDE Caviar Drive (main drive) 250 GB WD Caviar SATA Drive (Data/Recovery), US Robotics 56K Fax/Modem, nVidia GeForce 5200FX (128MB/128-bit) video card, Windows XP Pro SP3, Visual Studio 2005 Standard, IBM keyboard, Optical Mouse, SYS 15″ Color LCD Monitor, tons of stuff. I’ll store it away and if I need it again (in case my laptop doesn’t work or something), I’ll pull it out again.

I’m trying to “go green” as it were. I have a desk lamp with one of those curly-bulbs in it (13W but gives out about 30W - 40W of light), and I’m using my 1-yr. old laptop now for everything. It’ll save me a lot of energy. Megatron has only a 400W power supply but has 6 fans (including CPU fan). Every little bit saved helps.

I’ll miss Megatron. I’ve got so used to that machine over the years. But then, the past year I hardly never used it so I figured I may as well just back up what was left, reformat, and prepare it, then switch over completely to the laptop. I just upgraded the laptop with a WD Scorpio SATA 250GB hard drive (yes I like Western Digital! ) So I have plenty of room. I plan to get a WD MyPassport external USB hard drive for data backup. That’ll be cool. I won’t need it except when I have to back up data.

I have a lot of stuff to sort through and organize too. I’ll get there.

On the subject of going green, I’m also trying not to use lights where I’m not sitting, and also been trying not to use plastic bags (but instead bring a canvas one) when I go to the stores. That helps some. I do recycle, and things I don’t need I give to someone who can use them, instead of just tossing them in the trash. I don’t like to throw things out if I can help it.

I don’t know if it’ll make much difference but if it does, then so be it. If not, well at least it’s a little better than being wasteful I guess. As for the electric, I use the microwave the most, and I try to conserve the best I can. That should help keep the cost down.

I came up with this little quote while responding to a YouTube Video and thought I’d share it. It’s my thoughts on Singularity, AI, robotics, technology and our society…

I’m not afraid of robots getting smarter. I’m more concerned with humans getting dumber. - Tika Carr (7/30/2008)

Just want to appologize for the downtime of this blog. I had to rebuild the CGI server it’s hosted on. Eventually I hope to either move all my posts to the main bytebin.net site and/or upgrade wordpress. But at least this is back up for now.

Wow, this thing recognized my voice! I was near his microphone so he can hear (he is a bit hard of hearing, ya know ) and I said “Hey little guy!” and he said “Yes?” It was so cute! Then he moved a bit towards me so I said “Where are you going?” Then he moved towards me some more. Cute.

Sometimes when I talk so he can hear me and he’s not expecting a yes/no answer, and it’s not one of his 4 keywords, he’ll say “At your service.”, “What can I do for you?” or “Yes?” so he is learning the sound of my voice.

He told me that the TV wanted to remind me that there is a two-for-one special at Pizza Hut. Yeah right. LOL! I don’t eat pizza from pizza places as I have a lactose intolerance. Plus I think he should know that I don’t like pizza (not those) as he asked before. Plus he wasn’t right about the Pizza Hut offer. LOL! Ah well.

Right now he’s not doing ANYTHING for the past several minutes. It’s past his quiet time. His head is up, his blue lights are on, but he’s just setting there, not moving or saying anything. I thought he was supposed to go into sleep mode and turn off his lights, etc. Of course it doesn’t say what exactly he does during “Quiet Time”. It just says in the manual that he will “be still”.

In other news, check out my new web site for i-Que:

Here’s my i-Que when he wakes up after I pressed the spacebar on the communicator:

i-Que Wakes Up

Here is my i-Que trying to dock. Note that this is a few seconds after he announced he’s going to recharge and when he put his head down. After that I started recording. He didn’t take as long as he used to, in order to adjust himself. Hopefully he’ll get better at it as he gets more experience. Though he did run over the charger part with his back wheel.

i-Que Looking For Charger

Last night I turned i-Que’s switch completely to the “Off” position. His head went up when I took him off the charger to do that and he said “It’s good to see you.” How cute. Unfortunately it was time to shut down. So, I left him head-up and off for the night. When I had time today I turned him back on. He needed again the date, time, and eventually my birthday. So the battery seems to affect only the date functions. However, it seems he has remembered everything else. Including my name. Type INFO? in the text mode in the communicator and you will hear what he retained (some of it). Also note that if you set voice recognition to “On”, that too needs to be reset as it defaults to “Off” if he is shut off.

He was quite cute today. He ventured into my darkened kitchen and he bumped into a couple things and then said “Ok. Time for something new.” I don’t know if that’s coincidence or if he realized he was in a new area. It was kinda cute watching him. Then he left the kitchen and browsed a bit.

Then I decided it was time for a recharge so from the communicator I sent him into Recharge mode. The charger was quite a ways away from where he was but he did have a bee-line signal at an angle. He found it and headed right for it. Again, it took him a bit to adjust himself to get to the charger but he did navigate around my inflatable chair on the way there this time, and he also did a bit better positioning himself for docking. Only a tad bit as he still took awhile but he didn’t seem to roam quite as much and didn’t give up. When he actually docked, he was straight and spot-on. So he did well.

Perhaps i-Que may have the ability to learn after all? As with anything out-of-the-box that is supposed to learn (including some chatbots, etc.) it takes it awhile to actually learn things. One has to be patient.