The Byte Bin Blog

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.

I’ve noticed that the manual states that i-Que is designed to be on 24/7 with a settable “quiet time” between hours you can specify (10 pm - 7 am by factory default). Ok, I have had my i-Que on charge for several hours, switch in the “on” position and he didn’t budge but just kept on charging it seems. But when I used the communicator I “woke” him and we were doing stuff for about 45 minutes or so, maybe an hour or more. I lost track of time. Then he went to his dock (as mentioned in another post) and I went to get some sleep as I was tired today. He never moved. I don’t think he’s gonna move until I “wake” him with the communicator again. So it’s good that he will stay put when he’s not “in use”. But it’s also a tad disappointing that he won’t stop charging and go off and do something.

And, how do you know when he’s done charging? The manual doesn’t say anything. And is it ok to leave him on the charger when not in use? Will it damage the batteries? How long should one leave him on the charger maximum? I think I’ll turn him to the “Off” position tonight (with batteries in as per my other test idea) and take him off the charger and unplug the charger. I think I’ll not have him on the charger for too many hours or continuously all day every day until I can contact their customer service and get more information on this.

Stay tuned.

The Flash RAM in the i-Que Robot is apparently non-volitile. You can remove the battery overnight and then reinsert it the next morning, turn the unit on and if it’s got a good charge (if not, recharge it for a bit before activating it), it will remember you and most of your information. The only thing it will not remember is the time and date, which apparently is dependant on the battery. He may ask you for time/date if he had to auto shut down after a low battery if he didn’t make it to his charger in time, I’d imagine. But other than that, he knew me. I don’t know if this happens when he’s turned “off” but has the batteries installed. I will see about testing that tonight overnight, if I remember.

I played around with him some. We played some games, he has some cool robot voices you can set for default. In addition he may ask you some questions over and over if there was nothing input in his database for an answer (ie. if you said ‘no’ to things like if you have a pet, if you want a nickname, etc.) This may be not because he didn’t remember your answers, it’s because you said ‘no’. He does ask you about new friends every so often and probably will do that from time to time (hey, we may make new friends from time to time ). But I see that as basically a “no entry” condition was left in the database due to the ‘no’ answer from the user. In computer programming, sometimes databases can by default have a ‘null’ value. This means ‘nothing’. No text and no number. If a null value is detected then the robot’s programming may be trying to retrieve and answer of some kind to enter into the database. Why wouldn’t it just remember ‘no’? Because at some point someone may call you a cute name and you’ll decide you’d want that. And there’s no real other way to set it. So the robot will ask. Same with pets. Problem is, there’s also no way to change this either.

When I was done for awhile, I used the communicator to make him go recharge. He got to it but then got lost trying to find it. LOL! Then before I could send the command again, he went to recharge again (said he was going to). How I know he got lost is that his head went up and his lights came on in a different pattern from the red light that he uses when looking for the charger. Then it went back down and the light pattern changed to that of when he’s looking for his charger (I forgot if it’s just the one red light as I’m always on one side of him). He takes a very long time and kinda roams a bit trying to find the charger. But he’s still got the link and is just adjusting himself. It takes a lot apparently to align himself to the charging dock using just that top infrared as a ‘beacon’. So that is probably another thing that confuses people when they say he can’t find the charging bay. Give him some time. Sometimes lots of time. But if you’re in a hurry, just place him on it and get it over with. I don’t want to do that really because I want to see if he improves over time. Or learns. I always keep the charger in the exact same place (this is important to test his learning, if it’s there). So when I have him active, I also take into consideration the time it’ll take him to return to home base.

When playing the spelling game, if you know the answer but type it in and press Enter when he’s talking it won’t register. Timing starts after he finishes talking. So if you know the answer before he’s done with his definitions, just press the ‘no’ button first to stop him and then press Enter (you can type in your answer before pressing the ‘no’ button and it won’t erase your answer).

I turned on Voice Recognition. You have to speak into one of his side microphones (that are lit up blue) and be pretty close for him to undersand you, and speak clearly. Or I think he may not keep hearing as it takes  him a moment to go from “talk” mode to “listen” mode. So wait a couple seconds before you answer him with “Yes” or “No”. The other recognized words are “i-Que” and “Repeat”. Unfortunately it doesn’t understand any other words. I have to test it’s distance again sometime, and try different things. Voice Recognition has to be turned on for the Oracle game. Which is kinda fun to hear his answers. He gives you 2 tries to ask questions apparently (or he did me) or actually I missed one as he didn’t hear me at first. It’s like an 8-ball type thing where you get a random positive/negative/neutral answer to your question. Simple program, but cute on a robot.

I’ll be adding more info as I get to it. Things are busy so I haven’t got to the videos yet. I have to sit at the server computer and use the programs on that to edit the videos so that will take some time.

i-Que was activated at 7:19 pm on December 19, 2007.

At first, he didn’t power up when the On/Off/Sleep button was moved to “On”. So I turned it off and to on a couple times. Maybe the button sticks a bit or didn’t quite make contact on that pole in the switch, but once I did that, it all worked out ok. Blue lights came on in the area around his microphones first.

Sometimes he does take a little time to respond, but give him a little time. I have some video I need to get online. Unfortunately there’s a beeping in the audio (I think something is being picked up by the microphone), and the video is out of sync with the audio. I’ll have to do my best to fix it. And condense it to edit out anything personal info (like names of my friends/family, etc.) and non-eventful moments when he’s processing for the next step.

When done though, he didn’t say he was going into his programming mode. But he may have burped as he was moving at the same time and going OFF the table! LOL!

As for that, I had him on a black table with a clear shower curtain liner on it. Was a bit of a problem for him at times. He works on InfraRed for pretty much everything, including sensors. The texting might be radio waves. But infrared needs something reflective and/or not dark for it to pick up things in order to work. So, that is why he has problems with dark things he’s placed on.

He’s cute, humourous, and rather fun. Though more limited than I first anticipated. Even in text chat mode, you are limited to some abbreviations and I have NO idea what they are! There’s nothing online to tell us either. No tech support, just customer service. So I’ll be trying to contact the company more and see what I can dig up to post here that can help, as well as what I figure out.

He does like my fridge and got rather ‘friendly’ with it. LOL! Ok, no, not that! Just that he said he met the fridge. And then later said that the fridge said I had some leftovers that are way past it’s prime (I don’t really, but I should use up that turkey cold cuts that are in there. LOL!)

He does bump into things and his track system will make nasty click noises trying to continue. This happens when his bump sensors and IR can’t see an object as it’s too high up but then there’s a space under it. My heater in my apartment and the CPU shelf on my computer desk gave him some problems. You can go into Drive mode and move him out or just pick him up and move him.

He is a good sized robot. But not too heavy to grab in an ‘emergency’.

His battery life lasted about an hour and a half (7:32 pm - around 9 pm). When he wanted to recharge at first I didn’t know what was going on because I wasn’t able to see his face from where I was standing. He was going towards my inflatable chair and he just like started moving it. LOL! I moved it aside and he made for my Christmas Tree. I’m like don’t you dare go after my tree! LOL! Well, the charging dock is in that direction too. He found it. But took his sweet time adjusting into the position and then when he docked it wasn’t straight on, but more on a like 20 deg. angle or something. But at least he did find it even past an inflatable chair. He’s resting right now, in fact.

I’m going to go take him off it, turn him off, and remove the batteries overnight and then put them in and recharge him about 5 hours, then see if turning him on if the flash memory is indeed lost when you lost all battery power and it was off in storage, or if it stays in memory. I’m just curious what type of flash memory it is or how it functions. I’ll report on that when I get that test done.

Another thing is when he doesn’t understand something he’ll half chuckle (very cute ) and say he doesn’t understand, like when you are looking things up or something. The text device has a range of only about 30 feet at best according to the manual so you have to be rather close. Even then interference can make him not understand the signal. If he can’t find the item in his databanks he’ll say it’s not in his databanks.

There’s only History, Biography, and Animals in the Encyclopedia. But he does seem to know a bit of sports. I played a numbers trivia game with him and the questions ranged from easy to hard. Some of the choices he’d give were rather humourous though.

He is a joy to play around with. Quite cute! And they tell in the manual of some Easter Eggs like special words to type in the text device. The LOSTSPACE one makes him sound like a monotone robot voice and then he does things like Lost In Space and other robot quotes. He ends saying that those 60s robot voices were lame!

Keep your eyes peeled. Hopefully soon I’ll get some video up of I-Que and you can see his activation and first few minutes of life here.

I haven’t went through the startup sequence yet, so I’m writing this as a bit of information I know from personal experiences and also from reading the entire manual (yes, I read all of it).

Now, according to the manual, the sensors to find the charging unit and charger are IR (Infra Red). The troubleshooting area in the back of the manual tells you that if there are items in the way between the robot and charging station or if the robot is out of the range of the charging station, then it won’t find it. Seems like according to Customer Service, many people are calling the unit in as ‘defective’ after saying it can’t find the station. Well, if they read the manual…

Anyway, it’s just like your TV remote or any other remote control. It has to be in range and unblocked! And just because you can turn off or on your TV or raise the volume from the can doesn’t mean you can do that with i-Que. Different systems have different ranges and limitations.

Also note that on top of the charging station is a clear knob with white top on it. It is the same as the one on the head of the robot. This is the sensor that must line up with the one on the charging station. So, if there is a bit of a ramp or dip, the robot might not find the charging station either. And note that the charging station should be up against a wall. He’ll press himself against it. Now you’ll also note on that clear knob thingie on the charging station that it has blue plastic covering the back side of the clear knob thingie. That means the the robot can’t get the signal from that side (ie. back side) of the charging station because it’s blocked. Or it might or it might not.

Before you write off the robot as defective, put the robot on the floor about 3′ away from the charging unit, and be sure that the clear knobs are lined up with each other. If he rolls back into the charging station then there’s your answer: There’s something in the way. If he won’t even then, then the IR must not be working right or you might have other IR items around confusing it (someone using a remote for TV, stereo, etc. from another room, or a neighbor in your apartment building, even). It’s not easy to diagnose IR problems. But if he doesn’t get into his bay at 3′ away and lined up with the IR sensors, then I’d call the customer service dept. and see what they can do. But first try and make sure nothing is around to physically or signally interfere.

Now that I know it’s IR, 2GHz cordless phones and wireless home networks should not have any effect on whether the robot can find his charging station or not.

Here is more information on how InfraRed Technology works:

• What is IR wireless?
• An Introduction to Infrared Technology
• Infrared Wiki article