From RS to RN - Hello everyone

[JavaRN]

Hello,

My name is Charles and I've been following this Forum for a couple of months now but never participated since I don't have a robonova. I am a complete beginner as regards electronics but I have good knowledge of programming especially Java and C#

For the past 6 months I've been working with a Robosapien V2 and I must admit I did quite nice things with it - object following path finding etc. however I found that it has very limited moves and so I decided to switch over to robonova. But before actually commiting myself to buy I would like to ask some questions:

With robosapien I managed to get a one-way link through infrared and feedback through a webcam using Java . With robonova I read that you can get a two-way link through bluetooth (that's is really what I ever wanted from a robot), but I am a little worried with the wireless cameras that are available, are they JMF (Java media framework) compatible?

How difficult it is to assemble a Robonova for one that has very little knowledge of electronics?

One last thing. As I told you in the introduction I know very little (almost nothing) about electronics but at the same time I do understand all the posts involving some mods and I find them really interesting and simple to do, but are they really so simple?

Sorry for the long post, but I promise that the other posts won't be this long. Thanks for your help.

[tinman1]

Hi JavaRN,
don't let the electronics or the assembly portion of the RN worry you. I didn't have much, if any experience either at first but the best way to start is just dive in!
The assembly is actually pretty straight forward with the few exceptions in the manual, however the documentation is covered here on the Robosavvy site. (see main menu bar on the left of screen and select the Robonova file.)
I come from an aerospace background specifically composite engineering and fabrication. So I had really no experience in electronics or programming but with the help of some great folks here on the forum and just plain ole determination it has been a fun learning experience!
Welome to the forum and hope you decide to just "go for it!"
Tinman

[RN1_Humanoid]

Hi Charles,

Im also from an IT background, and have little electronics knowledge (apart from a couple of radio controlled cars), as long as you follow the instructions carefully and take your time you will have no problems with this at all.

The biggest piece of advice I can give to you it get hold of some good screw drivers, I started off with some pc screw drivers which really slowed down the build, and make sure you take a look at the RN1 articles on Robosavvy as there are one or two errors in the manual.

I'm yet to make any modifications to my RN1 so I cant really comment on modifications just yet.

Best of luck,

Phil.

[JavaRN]

Thanks. What about JMF compatible wireless cameras?

[Humanoido]

I have some electronics experience but didn't need it when assembling RN. The most important bit of advice, for me, was to keep track of the cables polarity, looking for the very faint gray side for identification. Also, you may want to check and double check the positions of the servos, and cross reference with the controller board figures. All in all, it was a wonderful experience assembling Robonova. I wish there was a second one for assembly.

BTW, is anyone having trouble logging in or posting on Robosavvy? Since the new upgrade, the site is in a login loop most of the time, and does constant redirects back to the main menu. This is the first post I could get in for the last several days.

Humanoido

[brindy]

Hi Charles,

I also have a background in IT, specifically Java development and am expecting my Robonova to arrive tomorrow.

I have no experience with Robots at all really and was just hoping that I would be able to do something Java-ish with the robot when it arrives.

I haven't seen the software for Robonova yet, but was wondering if there had been any Java implementations?

Anyway, I would love to hear how you get on and perhaps collaborate with you on any Java type projects you have if you'd like?

Cheers,
Brindy

[JavaRN]

Unfortunately there is nothing Java-ish in robonova, it has its own language which is similar to the traditional BASIC, what you can do is to buy a bluetooth module and through java you can interact with the robot, unfortunately I haven't found any open source libraries that can deal with bluetooth in java so probably I will switch to C# and try to use the SerialPort class to communicate through the serial port using bluetooth (since bluetooth is assigned a serial port number) and also use a wireless camera - which is on the way - to get visual input as well. I still have to test whether the camera I bought is JMF compatible if not then I definitely will have to switch to c#. Anyway my personal project with RN is this - to be able to have a two way communication with my laptop through a wireless camera and a bluetooth connection.

[brindy]

Sounds like an interesting project, certainly the kind of thing I'd be interested in doing myself.

I didn't realise that bluetooth got assigned a serial port. We use http://www.rxtx.org/ to access parallel and serial ports where I work. I will most definitely be interested in using bluetooth to control my robot =)

Cheers,
Chris

[DirtyRoboto]

Its a sad fact but Hitec cannot reveal the coding as it would be ripped off big time if every asian plant made their own Robo-bot at a cut price off the back of Hitec.

It is up too people like you and me to solve this puzzle. Interested?

[brindy]

Its a sad fact but Hitec cannot reveal the coding as it would be ripped off big time if every asian plant made their own Robo-bot at a cut price off the back of Hitec.

It is up too people like you and me to solve this puzzle. Interested?

Excuse my inexperience, but I'm not sure what you mean. Everything I've read about robonova seems pretty open to me.

Are you talking about reverse engineering the software on the microprocessor? And if so, to what end?

[i-Bot]

Control of the RN1 over a bluetooth serial port from an application is pretty straight forward. Maybe the best example comes from the work of Pev on the PPC. There is Robobasic generated code loaded into the RN1 and then a VB application. You could do the same in Java of C#.
http://www.bipedrobots.co.uk/index.aspx?id=316

Handling of the ETX/ERX serial port in Robobasic is not very flexible or fast, but may well meet your needs.

To actually program the RN using Java is more of a challenge, and nobody has yet made or published a replacement for Robobasic. Detail of the PC to RN interface over the serial cable as is the internal format of the C3024 code in the RN. Let me know if this is what you needed. A Robobasic replacement would be good, since it could be adapted to better graphics even CAD) and to the growing number of RN mutations.

There are also limitations here. The serial speed of 9600 and ping pong data transfer on this interface for basic real time control is too slow, also this does not get over the general limitation of the speed of the internal RN interpreter. This has led to the development of solutions to program the C3024 directly in assembler or C, or to replace the C3024.

So lots of opportunities for you in Java, C# or VB.

[DirtyRoboto]

Its a sad fact but Hitec cannot reveal the coding as it would be ripped off big time if every asian plant made their own Robo-bot at a cut price off the back of Hitec.

It is up too people like you and me to solve this puzzle. Interested?

Excuse my inexperience, but I'm not sure what you mean. Everything I've read about robonova seems pretty open to me.

Are you talking about reverse engineering the software on the microprocessor? And if so, to what end?

I am talking about the software on the chip. They have designed humanoid servo control software that executes the instructions created in robobasic after they have been converted, and controls the servos.

If this could be copied and used, then a 3rd party could make a toy robot (or better) based on Hitec's code and profit from it.

If I had a formula that makes you rich, I would be foolish to give you the formula as opposed to letting you use the formula without knowing its design.

Marcus.