Topic: Who wants to learn beginning Pleo programming? (Read 63272 times)

mlbelanger · « **on:** January 30, 2013, 02:16:42 PM »

Hi All,

I'm putting together a super-simplified version of the Pleo Developer's Kit designed for first-time Pleo Programmers. If you've ever looked at the PDK or tried to build a Pleo Application with it then you know it can be pretty confusing at first.

I'm making a download I'm calling myPleo which is the same PDK contents, just moved around and simplified so ANYONE can write a program, compile it by double-clicking a single file, then copy the resulting resource file to an SD card and run it on their Pleo!

You'll need to be comfortable with a basic text editor and interested in learning about programming Pleos. Other than that, no previous experience is necessary.

If you're interested reply here and let me know if you use Mac, Windows (which version), or Linux. Is your Pleo a Ugobe or an RB? Also if you know your Pleos Operating System (1.0, 1.1, or 2.0)

This way I can gauge interest and find some early victims... I mean beta-testers...

Michael

Crewella · « **Reply #1 on:** January 30, 2013, 02:24:50 PM »

Ooooh - how interesting. If you're willing to put up with a complete noob, then I'm in.

And I have ...... ahem ........ at least two of everything Pleo wise........

Running Windows XP mostly.

degers · « **Reply #2 on:** January 30, 2013, 02:50:43 PM »

Quote from: Crewella on January 30, 2013, 02:24:50 PM

Ooooh - how interesting. If you're willing to put up with a complete noob, then I'm in.

And I have ...... ahem ........ at least two of everything Pleo wise........

Running Windows XP mostly.

2+ Ugobes,
2+ Pleo RBs
2 of Degers' pleos!

I'd be interested please!

Running windows 7 and XP.
Ugobe pleos.

Crewella · « **Reply #3 on:** January 30, 2013, 03:16:22 PM »

Heheh ........ Degers has almost no Pleos right now.........

kat · « **Reply #4 on:** January 30, 2013, 04:07:20 PM »

Ok I'm interested but not sure if I will be any use to you as I have no idea what a basic text editor is? I am fairly computer savvy though so will look it up and see if I can put in a crash course so that I am up to speed

RedwoodsMama · « **Reply #5 on:** January 30, 2013, 06:48:02 PM »

Hi, I am definitly in! I like many am a "newby" but a willing student

, and with 25 pleos, (and one other on the way...)

I think i have the amount of " raw materials" needed. i have 21Ugobes, running everything from 1.0 to the current 2.0, two Unknown or non working pleos, though one worked briefly when I got him this past year, one that runs skits only and 3 Pleo RB.
I have Windows 7, and an older Windows XP that is just sotting around. As long as I can do most of this stuff with just one hand, and you are willing to accept me, then I would really enjoy learning how to do this. (I also have plenty of the Li-polmer "egg" batteries, so no shortage there.

This sounds like a great learning experience! RWM

mlbelanger · « **Reply #6 on:** January 30, 2013, 07:23:43 PM »

Great to see so much enthusiasm! Everyone is welcomed and no worries if you have little programming experience. The whole idea is to simplify things and save all of the the 4+ hours I've spent today for instance, trying to get libraries to link correctly in the right order!

I'm hoping to have a first version up online for this weekend. Please stand by!

In the mean time, what do you wish you could get your Pleo to do through programming?

M.

InmemoryofRomeo · « **Reply #7 on:** January 30, 2013, 08:03:29 PM »

Ooh, oh, pick me!

I have an iMac running Mountain Lion
2 Ugobes on 2.0
1 2009 Innvo Labs Pleo
4 Pleo RB's all updated
Lot's of enthusiasm for anything technical

Lunamione7 · « **Reply #8 on:** January 31, 2013, 06:22:28 AM »

I have an elderly Windows XP computer. (and a Windows 98 but I'm sure you don't care about that one...)

I have one RB and I also have a Ugobe running 1.1

I don't have any experience with robot programming apart from Skitter/MySkit and Genibo control manager.

What would I like to get my Pleo to do... I am happy with them as they are to be honest so I wouldn't be interested in personalities (I like the ones they have!) but I would really like them to play games. Tic-Tac-Toe, card games, like these programs for Aibo: http://aibotoys.com/
I love card/board games but have no one to play them with so a robot that can play with me is something I would really enjoy.

If Pleo could play with a ball like My Aibo that would also be fun. I'm sure it could be done as he already has some basic colour tracking skills and he could easily kick a small light weight ball around, Stephan and Tron do it all the time but it is accidental. If they could seek out the ball on purpose I could have a lot of fun. They need not even kick it with their feet, they could push it along with their noses. But mostly I want them to play games with me.

Talon · « **Reply #9 on:** January 31, 2013, 11:12:30 AM »

I should know better even to try anything of this sort but... *sigh* well here goes. I have long considered modifying my Ugobe pleo's voices so I could tell one from another as they wander around. I'm not sure if I even need programming knowledge for this but I will need help.
Currently I'm running Windows Vista Premium. I'm also totally blind and use the JAWS screenreader software in order to use my computer.
Both my Ugobes are running the 1.0 OS but I can move them to a later version if need be. All this talk of doing our own programming is really exciting! I just wish I had a spare pleo I didn't feel very attached to to experiment with.
Talon

pnhicks · « **Reply #10 on:** January 31, 2013, 11:32:07 AM »

I do, I do!!!!

I missed the post, because a real world incident (some people refer to as "work", "the job", "the salt mine", etc

) interfered with my bob the pleo time!

How very rude!

After nearly two years of unemployment, I thought I was done (as stick a fork in me , at the tender age of 55), but lo and behold their came a job offer right when someone says "hey who wants to learn how to program Pleos?" Is life insanely cruel or what?

??

I was on top of tech, but then it passed me by! I was a visual basic guy sort of with interest in Java and C, and ideas about assembly level stuff, but a Very long time ago, in a galaxy far away...

I don't have a Pleo YET, I keep getting outbid on Ebay or the time when I won, it didn't arrive and I didn't pay via Paypal (how do you say sucker in German?).

Anyway when I don't work for money, I like to volunteer at Canem Assistance and Therapy in Zaragoza Spain, and we are investigating the use of Pleos as therapy pets. Alternate personalities or even cooler would be remote control Pleo. The RBs are nice, but acording to PleoPet seem to be harder to hack and perhaps not that much more bang for buck and for a charity that is a big factor!

I have a windows 7 machine but I can create a linux partition if necessary (dual booting).

I think that's it for now.... oh if any of you Pleo addicts have a Pleo that has been "loved hard and put up wet" and could possibly let it go for a good price, let me know!!

mweed · « **Reply #11 on:** January 31, 2013, 11:39:05 AM »

Talon, your issue may be/probably better addressed by having someone with audio software take all the sound files and adjust the pitch to raise/lower/or otherwise alter the voice, put them all on an SD card and use the built-in sound shadowing do the rest. No real programming needed, and no change is made to personality . . . the pleo with the SD card just sounds different. And you don't really have to do all the sounds either.

mlbelanger · « **Reply #12 on:** January 31, 2013, 04:05:06 PM »

Hey mweed,

In regards to the sound shadowing, I think it was IMR who told me there are about 300 sound files on the built-in Personality. Do we have a complete copy of those somewhere and/or a file-name list? Otherwise I'm assuming we'd need to extract them using DinoMite?

My plans with myPleo is to have a stock set of sounds, most of the ones that come with the PDK (about 50 sounds) and add to them some useful sounds for debugging programs as they run, (counting numbers 1-10, and words like "program", "subroutine," etc. To make these as seamless as possible coming out of an adorable Pleo Kami and I were discussing the idea of a Pleo-esque "Scooby-Do" type voice. We might end up with 100 sounds or so for writing programs from scratch.

To change the voice on those people would just need to record their own versions of the 100 files in whatever voice they liked and swap the .wav files in the PDK prior to building their applications. So Aussie Pleo, Southern Pleo, Baby Pleo, you name it.

Michael

mlbelanger · « **Reply #13 on:** January 31, 2013, 04:22:06 PM »

Talon,

As mweed suggested once I get a full set of all 300 sound files from the built-in personality, I can batch process a pitch shift on all of them to make a couple of new voices for you. But if you want to learn programming then I'd say go for it as well. The big issue for you will be handling everything using your screen reader. You'll need to navigate the windows file system (which I assume you do all the time anyway), edit plain text files, and then run some scripts from a command prompt. Luckily it's all text based so tedious but totally doable.

I'm also reducing the amount of code in the main and sensor files for the myPleo application so there will be way less stuff in there for you to listen to compared to the full files from the PDK.

Michael

fancyfont · « **Reply #14 on:** January 31, 2013, 04:26:21 PM »

I would like to give it a go Mike B. Not sure if I could learn and I'm sure Degers, IMR and Mike Weed are saying to themselves "Oy Vey, Not fancyfont" But I can give it a try.
I have a MacAir and running Mountain Lion. Have one Ugobe on the original Os, two more on 1.1 and two on 2.0. I have a RB., Not sure if there were any upgrades on these!

mlbelanger · « **Reply #15 on:** January 31, 2013, 05:12:58 PM »

Greetings All,

Awesome that so many people are interested!

It looks like the most stable version of computer and Pleo is going to be Windows of some sort and a Ugobe Pleo running 1.1. I've run into an issue building "command" files on the Mac and I'm not sure if it will be resolved or not so I'll probably create the first version of the myPleo bundle with no command files, just straight motions and sounds. That way it should work fine on Macs as well. (if anyone has successfully gotten the sound_command example file to build on a Macintosh please contact me ASAP!)

Kami will probably be matching whatever I do on the PrbDK with her two rbs so if you absolutely had to develop on just an rb then you could do it with her version of things, but I won't promise any "customer support" in that regard since I don't have any rbs to test anything on at the moment.

This weekend I'll try out the PDK tools on my Windows 7 machine. I'm not sure if the 64 bit Windows problem is just the driver for the USB connection or the actual build tools. If it's just the USB that won't work we can live without that for now if anyone happened to have a 64 bit Windows machine.

So all you'll be needing aside from a Ugobe Pleo running 1.1, a functional battery, and a Windows computer that can run the PDK tools will be an SD card (something like a 1GB SD, not the larger SDHC cards) and a card reader for your computer.

If you haven't downloaded the PDK from here on the forums do that in the next couple of days (in the classic Pleo tools area), unzip it inside of a "PDK" folder your Documents folder, and just take a look at the contents. I think it unzips all the files next to the .zip file (instead of making a folder to put them in) so make sure you have the .zip inside of a folder before you unzip it.)

In the documentation folder in the unzipped PDK read through the "PAWN in Life OS" pdf and skim the "Programmers Guide" pdf (not sure of those exact titles). They're both pretty dense reads and I'll be trying to simplify things immensely AND make the examples a lot more complete as we go along, so don't let the technical stuff scare you off.

Some time this weekend hopefully I'll have a revised version of the PDK for you to download that will be much easier to work with. Then we can try out some first lessons.

This should be a fun experiment as we work together to figure out how to make our Pleos into something new (and probably even cuter).

Michael

Kami · « **Reply #16 on:** January 31, 2013, 06:02:22 PM »

The PDK programmer's guide is awful. As someone who is technically able to understand (most of) the content, I was baffled on my first read-through and remain baffled in large part. But being a somewhat dense (in a different way to the docs!) computer scientist is a special skill of mine!

I've been rewriting some of the content in that PDF in a more understandable format over on my blog http://sciencegirlkami.wordpress.com/pleo/ under the 'Pleo rb Development' header, although it's a labour of love that tends to happen when I have free time of an evening and am awake enough, so there are half-finished sentences galore at the moment and I haven't covered a lot of material. Also there's quite a bit of, 'what is this thing!?!?!?' A few parts, particularly explanation of how the VMs operate, are based on Michael's explanations as he's figured out things, so if I've misinterpreted or our understanding of things has progressed I'm sure he'll correct me.

I started the rewrite project mostly for my own benefit, so those docs aren't tutorial-y at all, but I'm hoping it'll be a good reference at some point we can add to the knowledge we're gathering together.

mlbelanger · « **Reply #17 on:** January 31, 2013, 06:29:04 PM »

Hey Kami,

That's an awesome start. You've already got more Pleo programming info in one place than most of the internet. (the bob forums excluded of course). This is an exciting time for our little dinosaurs. Finally they will get to grow!

Michael

InmemoryofRomeo · « **Reply #18 on:** January 31, 2013, 06:57:17 PM »

Just had a thought... I believe you can access many of the sounds and motions in MySkit

The library folder in MySkit was pretty extensive from memory.

mweed · « **Reply #19 on:** January 31, 2013, 07:11:19 PM »

pleopet's the expert I've relied on for files. It apparently isn't too hard to dump all the USF sound files out of an URF, but haven't tried. And as IMR suggested, most should be in the MySkit program. The sounds are different, and named differently in the Ugobe 1.x, PMS, and (of course) RB's I can contact pleopet for you, but it might be quicker to PM him or contact him at his site aibohack.com I'm sure he'd be thrilled to find someone actively making a usable PDK.

mlbelanger · « **Reply #20 on:** January 31, 2013, 11:48:04 PM »

IMR awesome. I have a Windows 7 machine up and running so I'll dive into MySkit and the rest asap!

mlbelanger · « **Reply #21 on:** January 31, 2013, 11:49:10 PM »

thanks mweed I'll check in with pleopet and see what's up!

mlbelanger · « **Reply #22 on:** January 31, 2013, 11:50:57 PM »

Update Everyone:

I have installed and successfully built example files in the PDK using Windows 7 (64 bit I believe)! It's almost as easy as on the Mac. I should have the process down and the PDK simplified quite a bit by this weekend so stay tuned.

Michael

kat · « **Reply #23 on:** February 01, 2013, 06:25:11 AM »

I'm really looking forward to this

I have windows 7 on my computer and both Ugobe pleos and rb's. I would love to make my guys activly seek and kick or push a ball around as I think this would be super cute.

Crewella · « **Reply #24 on:** February 01, 2013, 06:34:01 AM »

As Kat and Luna say, kicking or even just following a ball would be very cute.

Like Talon, I've always wanted to change the pitch on the voices so I can tell them apart by sound. You can just increase or decrease the speed at which the files are played in Dinomite, which works perfectly by raising or lowering the pitch on all the voice files, but I've never worked out how to save that feature onto an SD card.

Bob the Pleo Forums

Author Topic: Who wants to learn beginning Pleo programming? (Read 63272 times)

pnhicks