Finally — one of the Robotis kits has turned up.

As I told ash, I think I’m in love. Doggies, kiddies and even ladies are not going to get any sense out of me for at least a week.

I’m trying not to get drool on any of the delicate parts.

Probably worth the 900 usd I paid for it (through Tribotix), I have to admit everything fits together with high precision. It makes a shocking difference from some of the things I’ve played with in the past.

I’m presently working my way through the manual — yes, that have a 100+ page manual in the box! — starting with the very simple examples. The first problem was — none of my 2mm screwdrivers had a long and thin-enough shaft (the bolts take either blade or phillips) to get down into the holes in the CM-5 controller box to reach the bolts needed to fasten the box to other parts.

All very impressive — and I haven’t even started programming stuff. There’s plenty of pre-built "behaviour programs" on the CD.

And to get the s/w going I’ve finally broken down and bought a slow out-of-date wintox2kbox. Not only does it get all the accumulated robot s/w going (relatively!) smoothly — I’ve been previously running it on Linux boxes under wine emulation, and sometimes this is not very successful — my good webcam is now supported. I can also take my to-be-announced act on the road.