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Inside Tankbot

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Desk Pet Tankbots are small rechargable 'bots that can operate in 3 modes- Obstacle Detection (best for maze running), Light and Sound, or Controlled. The first two modes are autonomous, with Tankbot roving around and avoiding obstacles, or moving randomly and emitting various sounds. In Controlled mode, a smartphone can be used (with the included IR transmitter attached to the audio out) to drive the Tankbot. Each color of Tankbot is controlled on a separate channel, so up to four can be controlled individually in the same arena. The Deskpet app is available for iPhone or Android, and can also be used to control additional Deskpets such as Skitterbot and Trekbot . In this article we'll open up Tankbots from the current ToysRUs version and the Battle-enabled Brookstone version (currently available in Red and Blue only). For some images from the Tankbot production line, see Desk Pet's Facebook album . Part 1. Inside Green ToysRUs Tankbot To open the Tankbot, you'll need a 3-blade screwdriver. I got mine on Amazon, the better one was under dollarsignr5. These babies are also good for opening Wiis and other Nintendo devices, should you get the urge! Remove the two bottom screws, and the...

Pleo rb Dissected By FCC, See Horrifying Photos of Non-Jurassic Dino Innards

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When Innvo Labs adopted the widely known (but poorly sold) Pleo robotic dinosaur from Ugobe, they've made several appearances at trade shows with an improved version of the adorable baby Camarasaurus. Dubbed "Pleo rb (re-born)", the new Pleo offers more and improved sensors, voice recognition, and an RFID reader for learning new commands. According to the user manual, the new Pleo rb "is an autonomous creature with a complex software architecture that enables him/her to: • Learn and understand your verbal commands • Express moods and emotions • React to various kinds of PLEO rb foods and food stuffs • Know your time, day and night • Sense hot and cold; could get sick • Better skin sensation • Better sense of orientation and motion • Respond to you and the environment" All good news for robo-dino lovers, it looks like Innvo is gearing up to start breeding Pleo's en' masse. The curtain lifted on Innvo Labs' FCC filing, which is required to legally sell the product in the United States since it packs a whole lot of wireless tech. The filing reveals many interesting details, including the user manual and loads of horrifying images of Pleo rb's robotic innards....

Basic Electronics and Robotics Training Course: Part 2

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In this chapter, we will continue learning about resistors and how they are used in the following settings and laws: Resistors in Series Resistors in Parallel How resistors are used Capacitor Basic Before proceeding, please remember that working with electronics can be dangerous. Make sure to be careful and follow all safety precautions when working on your project. Also, make sure you read through part 1! Before we get started, let’s look at how the resistors are coded with color bands and what it means. Print out this chart for your bench for a quick reference when calculating resistor values. Try to remember these colors and their color value; this will help you identify the ratings of any standard carbon resistor more quickly. If you look at a resistor, you will see 4 bands of color. The first 2 colors are the numeric number for the value and the 3rd is a multiplier of the first 2 numbers and then the 4th color is it's tolerance. Meaning that the measured value of the resistors ohm will be in-between this percentage. Example: RED BLACK YELLOW GOLD 2 0 4 5% 204 = 20 x 10,000 = 200,000 ohm or 200K ohm...

Basic Electronics and Robotics Training Course Part 1

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Basic Electronics and Robotics Training Course Chapter 1 Welcome again to another one of my articles. This article is part 1 of many and I will be teaching you basic electronics for robotics and hacks, plus mods for your own robots. There will be projects to do in almost every article to help you understand the material that is provided. Please rank these articles so we can see how you like them and also leave comments or questions about the related material that you are having trouble with and I’ll do my best to help you understand the information. PLEASE NOTE : Please feel free to share any information that you think would help out other members as long as the information you provide is on topic and any other article pertaining to the Basic Electronics and Robotics Training Course articles. For all of you that are new to robotics and electronics, I truly hope you enjoy these lessons. As with anything it takes time and practice to build, mod or make your own circuits and robots. There will be a lot of math involved for those who want to design circuits but in general basic algebra and basic math...

Review of the WowWee FlyTech Skyhopper (Europe Only)

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For FlyTech lovers in Europe, the Skyhopper is a worthy successor to the incredibly popular Dragonfly.

Review of RovioDirect Freeware App for WowWee Rovio

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Another new application for controlling your WowWee Rovio has hit the scene. Developer and community member Andreas , of ewe-software , has created his own application called RovioDirect. RovioDirect is designed to be used on Windows based PC's, and is an excellent substitute for the web-based application - it even adds several features. Getting Started with RovioDirect First, you'll have to download the application from here , then install it on your PC. Once installed, double click the icon to run the application. The first time the app runs, you'll be met with a configuration file editor. This might look a little daunting if you're not used to editing configuration files directly, but don't sweat it. All you really have to do here is change the IP address of the Rovio, and potentially the port (if you changed it in your original configuration.) If you need to brush up on configuring Rovio, check out this article. One more thing before you get going. You'll have to set Rovio to use VLC encoding for its stream, which is not the default setting. Head to the Rovio setup menu and change the setting shown above before continuing. Using RovioDirect Using RovioDirect is...

Introductory Guide to Customizing WowWee's Mr. Personality Robot

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Mr. Personality sadly came off the scene as quickly as he came on after he was announced at CES 2008 . I've seen quite a few people on our forums here who were quite passionate about this new jokester robot, but then disappointed, as no additional "official" personalities were released. In addition, it didn't seem that there was any "official" way to edit the robot, either. I'm happy to report that actually, customizing Mr. Personality's sounds and facial expressions is easy, at least on a basic (undocumented) level. This really does open up a lot of opportunities for hacking and customization; although it is a bit tedious, even a simple change is pretty entertaining. Best of all, it DOES NOT involve any extra complicated software beyond the WowWee personality installer. (Kudos to Grandlarseny37 and android78 for their work on customizing Mr. Personality, which contributes heavily to the content in this article.) Getting Started First, you've got to install the Mr. Personality software from WowWee , which will enable you to download the Max_Simon personality. This happens to be the default (and only) official personality from WowWee, and you'll want to have a backup to edit. You'll need to install Adobe...

Quick Review of WowWee's Retro Series: The Classics Revived

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New generations and old fans alike are bound to be thrilled by WowWee's retro re-releases of some classic favorites.