Print

[j43]

hey guys,

i'm new to these forums, so first i'll introduce myself. i'm an engineering student from new jersey. lately, one of my professor and i have been working out a way we could get pleo to basically do whatever we want (solve puzzles, answer questions, etc.). we've come to the conclusion that pleos built in hardware is just not powerful enough to do what we want. so, we've decided to sync pleo up with a computer, have pleo send information back to the computer, and the computer send commands to pleo. so, my question is if anyone knows if there is any way to communicate indirectly with dino-mite, and thus pleo. for example, it would be great to have a batch file or something that made pleo walk. then, i could just use the batch file whenever i wanted, and out of any programming language i wanted.

does anyone have any idea how this would even be possible? the end goal is to have a set of functions in matlab (my favorite programming language), that would basically control pleo. i would have a couple of functions for movement, one to take a picture, and one to read a picture off of an sd card.

any help would be really great, i didn't get any information on this kind of thing out of the dino-mite .pdf. thanks!

-j

[degers]

j43, take a look at the Pleo Development Kit.  It provides help with communicating with the Pleo Monitor over a serial-over-usb interface, I think this would be the best way to interface Pleo to Matlab.

http://pleoworld.com/downloads/pdk.aspx

[Getorix]

j43, I am trying to do the same for a couple of month. Theoretically it is possible, practically - not due to poor API amount in PDK and hardware architecture. I can suggest only one way - surgery for Pleo with including your own camera, microphones and additional processor (or interface to desktop computer) connected to Pleo via COM or USB under its belly.

Here is the scheme:
[Your sensors] -> [Your processor/desktop] <--> [Pleo's COM/USB]

Otherwise there is no way for pleo even understand your question/puzzle, I am not talking about answering.

Anyway, we (you, me and your professor) could discuss this in detail and may be create something

So, write in PM if you are interested.

[j43]

thanks for your help guys!

we were actually trying to avoid any serious hardware modification. i was thinking pleo would do none of the real processing, he would basically just follow orders given to him by the computer. anyway, i read through the pdk and found some useful info on connecting to pleo via usb. i was able to read what commands pleo is capable of, as well as diagnostics, but i seem unable to actually tell pleo to do anything. i mean (if anyone has ever used this) pleo i supposed to be able to execute his built in motions on command. if i type 'motion show' i get a list of pleos motions. then, if i type 'motion run <motion name>,' pleo does nothing! has anyone had success with this? i'm using puTTy. i found the info in te pdk document dubbed 'pleo monitor.pdf.'

getorix- have you already done that stuff? any success? that's really impressive.

-j43

[InmemoryofRomeo]

Dinomite can move Pleo via USB so perhaps you could see if there is anything useful you can find out from there?

[degers]

j43,

motion run is the wrong command.  That command manipulates a motion which has been loaded into a motion handle (using the motion load command).

Try motion play instead.

e.g.

motion play 8446

That should make Pleo raise his head and honk.



I am using Putty over serial connection and this works for me.

Hope this helps,
degers

[j43]

thanks degers! motion run seems to work...sometimes. the motions i am really interested in are 8326-8336, which i believe are supposed to make pleo actually walk in specified direction. none of them seem to work at all with motion run xxxx. i wonder if it's a problem that i'm running puTTy through a virtual machine on a mac?? what do you guys think?

-j43

[j43]

or...is there any way I could send fake stimulations to Pleos sensors? then I could just put some simple movement programs on an sd card. any ideas or successes?

[Getorix]

What do you mean "fake stimulations"? Usually sensors work like event generator, one way only - from hardware to software.
However, some Pleo 'sensors' supports data writing using sensor_write();. For example Beam or packet subsystems. So try to play with this function.

[degers]

or...is there any way I could send fake stimulations to Pleos sensors?

You can indeed j43.

This is accomplished by the command sensor setlevel



For example:


The sensor for the Mouth interrupt sensor is 24 I think, but you will have to check the id using the sensor show command.

Usually the level of this sensor is 0, meaning nothing is in the mouth, but when something is put in the mouth the sensor changes to 1.

So to make Pleo think that there is something in it's mouth use the command sensor setlevel 24 1



If you want to look at what activating a sensor does, so you can see what level to set sensors to in your script, use the command sensor watch 24 (change the ID to whatever sensor you want to watch.  This constantly updates the terminal with the sensor details.  Now you can play with the sensor and watch what the terminal shows.



I hope this helps,
degers