Laser cannon purchased.

It's not this exact model but it looks very similar.



The robot's LEDs usually send light through decorative "fiber optic" tubes that run throughout the torso and arms, but with those removed I can glue a photosensor over one of the LEDs and have it act as a switch to activate the laser without having to open up the robot and do any soldering. The laser is a different story as I'll need to wire the photosensor in place of the button it uses to toggle the beam on and off.

Anyway, it's in the mail, and I'd like to thank a certain Irish supporter for the most recent donation. Doing stuff like this on a slim budget is very difficult and I rely on donations to move the project forward. I still need the mifi and the solar panels, but there's plenty of time to save up for those as it's not exactly sunny out right now and won't be for a few months. Updates might be sparse (as I can only work as fast as I can afford to buy new parts) but keep checking back, I'll update every time there's something worth telling you guys about.

Battery pack arrives!

The extended battery pack (30% more power!) arrived today and I wasted no time installing it:It came with enough of a charge that I was able to test the robot's functions. Worryingly, I could sign into the robot but not make him move or see video from his camera. So I popped the base back open:After unplugging and replugging the motor cables (which I must've inadvertently pulled loose while installing the battery) the motors responded perfectly to commands from the user interface program. However, still no video. The culrpit? A rusted, corroded USB plug that connects the base of the robot to the camera head. I'm soaking it in cleaning solvent now with the hopes that it's salvageable, if not I've heard certain webcams are compatible when plugged in via adapter as the Spykee's camera is basically just a standard QVGA webcam. More updates to come.

Laser cannon?

The Spykee permits remote control of the motors, but also of two LED lit "fiber optic cable" decorations (which I've removed). This leaves two control channels open that can be used by any sort of powered accessory you might want in place of the nonfunctional (and recently removed) arms. I've heard suggestions ranging from grappling hooks to spear guns, miniature shotguns for hunting, flare guns, weapons seem to be a popular choice but I hesitate to put anything on the robot that would get me in trouble. One of the top suggestions by email was a laser, and it seems compact handheld lasers exist that could be mounted perfectly where one arm used to be and tied into the control circuit that used to turn the decorative LEDs on and off. This would permit remote firing of the laser. As it's really too cold and wet out for the laser to set anything on fire I don't expect there's real danger involved, but even so I would probably leave the laser turned off during public sessions and reserve its use for those who donate. This seems like the most reasonable option, no?

Meet your robotic avatar.

Finally got the robot. The battery's bad, but I've ordered a higher capacity replacement. It should permit nearly four hours of use between charges. I didn't bother to assemble the arms because they're non-functional. Perhaps you can think of some devices to install in their place? A machine that sprays out squirrel feed? A 1 watt laser? A power drill?


Still need money for the solar panels and 4G mifi, but the docking station battery could be the same battery pack I used to power Hampture's air pump so as to save funds. This project might take shape faster than anticipated if I can work out ways to reuse stuff.

The raison d'etre

Still waiting on donations so I can buy components. In the meantime, here's a look at a similar endeavor, the senior project of a group of students at the University of Houston.

There are actually a lot of videos of similar internet controlled robots on Youtube, the original inspiration for the project.

I thought to myself, what if robots like these became a commonplace extension of the internet? What if for every location you can click on for info in Google Earth, you could also click "drive robot" and personally check it out?

The biggest obstacle to this is cost. The components for building custom telepresence robots make it something only hobbyists with a lot of disposable income can consider. The second biggest obstacle is technical expertise. Public access telepresence robots will never become commonplace so long as they have to be custom built by someone at every participating location.

Rather than give up on the idea, having owned a Rovio for some time, and having played with a Spykee I bought for my Nephew last Christmas, I thought "these may be toys, but aren't they good enough? With a few other off the shelf components anyone can afford and put together, couldn't a shop owner, or a hotel manager, or a principal, or anyone interested in having a telepresence robot available for public use set one up?"

So I compiled a list of the necessary capabilities the robot and support station would need to have, and set out looking for products that fit the bill, and that would play nicely together. The result was a design that wouldn't be very pretty and certainly not as efficient as a custom built robot, but one that everyone and their dog is capable of reproducing at home.

It's my hope that once I do this, and show how entertaining/interesting it can be, copycats will spring up. Using the same products or similar, people who ordinarily aren't interested in robotics because of the learning curve or the cost, each making a physical location accessible by telepresence that wasn't before. And who knows? Maybe the next time you want to check out a theater, hotel, restaurant or even nature park before you get there, you'll do it via robot.

This might seem a little suspect

....But it does work.Since winter's coming, solar panels won't work that well. But an Earth battery might. I'd charge the robot pretty slowly as you need to drive a lot of stakes into the ground before you get a useful current, but if you can deal with 12 hour recharging periods, this would do the trick. It also keeps supplying power for several months before the soil is depleted. Good idea? Yes? No?

Robot batteries, and Mifi.

So, I've been in email correspondence with a gentleman who sells Spykee batteries. Not standard, stock batteries as shown here:...but rather, similar packs with the same voltage but vastly greater amp hours. As Spykee uses a pack format common to most RC cars, it's possible to swap in higher-end batteries provided they either fit in the same recess, or can be made to fit with minor modifications.

According to this guy, the standard upgrade is from 1.8ah to 2.5ah. That gives you a driving time of around 3 hours. However he's looking to get his hands on some 13ah (yes, that's 13,000mah) batteries that will fit in the same spot with a small amount of case modification. Nothing drastic, just sawing away at part of the battery enclosure. Assuming the operating time doesn't scale perfectly with battery capacity, a conservative estimate of how long you could operate the robot on a single charge using a 13ah battery is 15 hours.

Of course it would also take much longer to fully charge. These are NiCD batteries, which have to be fully discharged before recharging or you get the dreaded "memory effect", but the robots will be in such demand that I don't anticipate that will be a problem. With the stock charger we'd be looking at perhaps 8 hour charging times. Why is this preferable to 3 hour charging times, you ask?

Well, because provided people are courteous and don't use the robot for too long, there'd be a bigger 'buffer'; you wouldn't have to worry about logging on to find the robot's out of juice, simply because it'd be awfully hard for anyone to use up the robot's entire charge before it got dark. And it'd have just enough time to fully recharge overnight. This means less time spent sitting inactive in the charging dock during the day, and more time being driven around.

Coincidentally, it's also possible to buy an extended use battery for the mifi. It ups the usable time from 5 hours to 15 hours, essentially the same as the robot's battery life. Unfortunately I can't work out any way for the mifi to recharge when the robot is docked, or I could mount the mifi on the robot itself and it would effectively have no range. It could stray as far from the dock as it's batteries would take it. This is a tantalizing prospect and I may do it once just to see how far a journey I can take the robot on before it's batteries die, but for everyday use I'll probably keep the mifi on the docking station so that people can't get too far from it.

The area I've chosen has 4G coverage, and as I've heard Spykee is somewhat laggy over 3G, I'll be buying a 4G mifi. The best deal I can find has a $60 monthly fee, which I can't really afford, so while I rejected earlier suggestions that I monetize this project, I may have to require some small form of payment for the robot's use just to keep the connection operational. It will most likely just be a "seriously, please donate" button at the upper righthand corner of the robot's website though.