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[mlbelanger]

Greetings Everyone,

I'm Michael from Long Beach, a newcomer to the world of Pleo (in fact my newly adopted Ugobe Pleo is still in transit).  My background is in electronics and computer programming so I'm looking forward to working with Pleo's software development tools and creating some tutorials on Pleo programming.

If there are any Pleo owners in the Los Angeles / Orange County area who are interested in Pleo software development and/or have a Pleo with hardware issues drop me a line.

I look forward to posting some cool videos and personality files once my Pleo arrives.

Michael.

[RedwoodsMama]

Hi Michael, welcome to the forums and congrats on your Pleo, in transit, I used to live in Long Beach, lived several places, including Long Beach Blvd, and on Vernon STreet, Also lived in Belmont Shores and SEal Beach. I do not live there anymore, moved in the early 80's. I would be very interested in what you can do with Pleos once you get yours. I live in Northern CAlifornia, but would love to talk to you about a Pleo that I have that did work, but does not now. I will be in contact once you get your programming going. I would love to have one of my Pleos be one of your "first victims",

            I rescue Pleos, having 25 of them, and all but 3 of them are Ugobe, or Innvo Pleo. Please be sure to post photos when your pleo arrives and let us know what type of progamming you get involved in.

                           RedwoodsMama, aka    RWM  and the Pleo Township of the REdwoods

[Kami]

Hi Michael!

I only just received my first Pleo (rb) and have been playing around with her while pondering interesting projects I might undertake. I'm a programmer myself and my boyfriend is a quite skilled electronics guy who has been teaching me a little of what he knows, so I'm very interested in hearing about what you end up doing.

I'm nowhere near you geographically, unfortunately, although I have visited the Orange County area in the past year while on the way to a certain small attraction they have there... 

[RickyD1979]

Welcome Michael

[mlbelanger]

I only just received my first Pleo (rb) and have been playing around with her while pondering interesting projects I might undertake.

Hi Kami,

I'm very interested in hearing about your programming experiences with your rb. I understand they've buried the USB and the card slot inside the battery compartment making things a bit more challenging, but on the other hand you get the RFID reader in the chin, voice/name recognition, etc so you have more toys to play with.

Do you know if anyone ever made a battery-plug power supply / USB cable that lets you run the rb with the USB tethered?

[mweed]

Innvo Labs did make a one-time offer to sell some of those, but there wasn't much interest at the time.

[mlbelanger]

Hey Mweed,

I'd seen that posting from a while back but wasn't sure if they'd actually made any of those for public consumption.  Since I'll be doing long sessions of programming with my "new" Ugobe I was thinking of 3D printing up a battery adaptor that would fit inside and allow me to run him off of a bench power supply.  I figure if I can get that to work then it would be trivial to do the same thing but with an access hole for the USB cable for all those rb owners who might want to try some programming/monitoring.

Innvo Labs did make a one-time offer to sell some of those, but there wasn't much interest at the time.

[Kami]

My time at the moment is mostly taken up with completing my Ph.D so I haven't had much of a chance to look into doing any custom work with Pleo, not least because it's been quite entertaining just running her with her default programming and seeing what she's capable of! I was thinking she'd be my leisure project for February, but if someone else is around doing work on theirs and sharing information about that I may just get jealous enough to switch around my timetable.

Something I'm really keen on doing is capturing the 'pheromones' Pleo is supposed to transmit to other Pleos through IR to see if there's anything interesting that can be done with that data once it's . My research topic has meant I've been spending a lot of time recently capturing data from Twitter and trying to interpret it, so something I thought would be fun and somewhat relevant to what I'm supposed to be doing is to have my Pleo 'livetweeting' her experiences somehow. I'm semi-casually involved in the local Python programmers' community and thought I could make a fun demo for the yearly conference out of some Python-based tools for Pleo.

Since I'll be doing long sessions of programming with my "new" Ugobe I was thinking of 3D printing up a battery adaptor that would fit inside and allow me to run him off of a bench power supply.  I figure if I can get that to work then it would be trivial to do the same thing but with an access hole for the USB cable for all those rb owners who might want to try some programming/monitoring.

I would definitely be interested in a design for a 3D-printed adaptor with USB cable access. I'm not sure how much I can do even with that given everything I've read indicates the Ugobe Pleo is much better for custom tinkering around than the rb (an actual serial port would be nice!), but I'm willing to experiment. Incidentally, what 3D printer do you have access to/what tools do you use to design for it? My boyfriend has a MakerBot he built himself from a kit (with a tiny bit of help from me putting together the wooden casing) and has had no end of fun with it prototyping various devices he's been creating for his own research. I haven't done anything with it myself yet so I'm planning on spending my weekends and evenings for the rest of the month coming up with some designs and trying them out - under supervision, since I'm paranoid that I'll try to build something with illegal directions and break it.

[mlbelanger]

Kami,

There is a Pleo battery pack design on Thingiverse that I was going to try printing, but I think some basic re-design of it would make it much easier to print and assemble.  I'm thinking of a version that would have a 6-AA battery pack in the middle for rechargable batteries, then another that just passes through a voltage from an outside regulated power supply.  That version would just need a pathway for a usb cable to connect up inside the rbs (and I need to figure out if there is a difference in the contact positions, the shape of the battery-pack key-block, etc.

I have a VERY original Makerbot Cupcake that still prints very nicely.  I inherited it from a friend and re-built it's print heads, updated the firmware, etc.  It does great with ABS plastic.  I design in Google Sketch-up which is a surprisingly well designed 3d package for quick prototyping.

I wonder if the rbs have the UART serial interface hidden inside them somewhere?  On the Ugobes it's underneath the front door by the power switch I believe.  I've seen Pleos with xbee transmitters attached that can relay info to a laptop as they run.  very cool.

[mweed]

Here's the link to that battery pack: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:31721

It was designed by one of our long-time members Pintokitkat.  I believe he designed it for the classic (Ugobe/2009 Innvo) pleo, so you'd have to rotate the tab on the bottom plate for the RB.  Here's the old topic that led up to the creation of that. http://bobthepleo.com/forums/index.php?topic=610

[Kami]

That must be the design my boyfriend mentioned. He seems to have done a bit of research of his own into the hardware side of Pleo before ordering me one.

I really like the idea of a pack that connects to an external power supply. Might be some way of wrangling things so that the micro SD slot is more accessible on an rb.

I can tell I'm going to end up wanting to secure myself an Ugobe as well to play around with, not that I don't already want to buy more of these little guys...

[mlbelanger]

Yeah I'm thinking if I just print the contact plate of the battery without the two long supports I can flip that piece 180 degrees on the printer so it's easier to print. The long pieces would be replaced with long bolts and long nylon spacers. That should work fine for a power adapter.

If you could figure out a micro-sd adaptor that should be doable as well.

I have a feeling I won't be stopping at one Pleo either. Lol.

[mweed]

Just promise to share whatever you come up with us here on the forums!

I'm sure there are many other members who could benefit from anything both hardware and software you come up with . . .  we have a downloads section just for sharing that type of stuff!

[mlbelanger]

Oh absolutely. I'm involved with the L.A. Robotics Club here in Los Angeles and I do all of the micro controller training classes for new people just starting out so I'm all about sharing info and everyone learning from one another. You can expect lots of good training videos from me as time goes on.

Now if that Pleo would just arrive in the mail already. Lol.

[mweed]

Well, there's your first training video . . . "What to Do While Waiting for Your Pleo to Arrive"  I'm sure it would be a great hit!

[mlbelanger]

Ha! I don't think anyone wants to watch a video of me reading the entire programming guide from the PDK. Lol.

[GarethNelson]

I only just received my first Pleo (rb) and have been playing around with her while pondering interesting projects I might undertake.

Hi Kami,

I'm very interested in hearing about your programming experiences with your rb. I understand they've buried the USB and the card slot inside the battery compartment making things a bit more challenging, but on the other hand you get the RFID reader in the chin, voice/name recognition, etc so you have more toys to play with.

Do you know if anyone ever made a battery-plug power supply / USB cable that lets you run the rb with the USB tethered?

Use crocodile clips to connect up the power

[mlbelanger]

Good call Gareth. My only worry long-term is them coming loose as the Pleo moves around.