I am definitely going to have to try something similar with my Mindstorms once I get the crazy battery/firmware issues worked out. It has a bluetooth link which will be handy.

Keep up the cool projects!

The thickness of the carpet pile near the walls doesn’t help the motors, and it *may* have something to do with battery drain and getting the odd reset on the cpu.

Bot being out of the direct line-of-site of the UIRT (the usb broadcaster I had attached to the USB port of the laptop) and under a bright light was also either stopping the IR codes getting through or maybe even generating a few wrong ones.

Anyway, the IR codes were selected to correspond to some of the buttons on a universal remote that came with the Viper kit. So I can just use that remote (if I remember to pick it up!) in “emergencies” to force it to move back to the centre of the room.

Is I said, take #27/8. Whew! It was hard to control all the things that could go wrong. Since the bot had no autonomy — not even a bump sensor — it kept missing some command or other and end getting wedged under the laptop, some piece of furniture, or even between a wall and (pile) carpet.

I had *nearly* got a clean run — the lighting was also a lot better than the final clip turned out to be — when I noticed on playback the mike I was using to make the commentry had died and there was just a loud buzzing noise. I think that was take #10 or so… only another 20 to get back to that position… :{

You can hear even in this clip “stop listening” as I noticed my laptop’s standard VR had somehow turned itself on and was doing something to my voice, too.

Just after the start of the demo there was a M/S “clunk” noice which I initially ignored. But it turned out some things I was saying were opening and closing aps and popping up “please explain” menus. I’m lucky my whole desktop didn’t end up in the rubbishbin…

(It was also funy to play back clips and sometimes a “start listening” accidentally on the vid started up the VR on the laptop after which it started executing all vid voice commands!)

I’ve kept many of the out-takes (those where something didn’t go wrong inside just the first 10-15 seconds!) and some of these are hilarious. But they contain quite a bit of swearing…

This exercise was a bit of a multi-tasking nightmare.

Sitting on the floor, remembering to steer the laptop (webcam), watching the s/w running on the laptop and a nearby PC, controlling the movie program, positioning of the mike, remembering to talk and — sometimes — remembering to use a remote control to get the bot back into the frame; it was all a bit too much.

Still, when it works it is the best thing ever…

I personally am going to have a small explosive charge mounted in the brain of all of my household robots. I have seen them go wrong way to many times to be able to sleep soundly with a Honda Asimo walking silently around my house at night!! hehe