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[Gimpdiggity]

So, Pearl doesn't want to do anything in my house at night.  

During the day she's just fine, but at night even directly under two 100 watt light bulbs she gets scared like its dark as soon as I turn her on, and after a few minutes goes into single beep shutdown.  

What kind of light bulbs do I need to keep her awake when it's dark outside??  

Jeff

[kat]

Have you tried the scared of the dark patch?  You can get it from the downloads section here on the forum.  I use it with my guys when I want to play at night as I have the same issues as you.  My guys are fine in the daytime but my house is just too dark when the sun goes down. 

[Gimpdiggity]

Have you tried the scared of the dark patch?  You can get it from the downloads section here on the forum.  I use it with my guys when I want to play at night as I have the same issues as you.  My guys are fine in the daytime but my house is just too dark when the sun goes down. 

Okay, I'll go get that. 

It doesn't change her personality at all, does it??

[Gimpdiggity]

I tried that patch, and it seemed to just cause her to go into an endless loop of waking up.  She'd wake up and do something for a few seconds, then go completely still, and then make the waking up sound again, then do something for a few seconds. 

I've read that I should be using a Micro SD card, but all I've got are SD-HC cards...that doesn't make any difference, does it?? 

Thanks.
Jeff

[InmemoryofRomeo]

How did you use an SD HC card in a micro SD card slot It shouldn't fit?

[Gimpdiggity]

How did you use an SD HC card in a micro SD card slot It shouldn't fit?

Micro SD HC, I'm sorry. 

It's one that I had for my old phone. 

8gb, class 2, Micro SD HC. 

It's this one here:
http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-microSDHC-Class-Adapter-SDSDQ-8192/dp/B001B1AR50/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1360120579&sr=8-11&keywords=micro+sdhc

[Gimpdiggity]

Well, with my 1000 watt halogen outdoor work lamp in the living room, she gets around just fine...

...but, I'm not sure how often I'm going to want said 1000 watt halogen work lamp inside the living room!!!

I THINK it's actually my carpet that causes her fits.  It's really dark in color, and doesn't reflect hardly any of the light which is coming from directly overhead.  I found if I set her on top of a bright colored poster board (neon yellow) she walks around and doesn't act scared.  The only time she starts to act scared is when she walks OFF of the poster board and onto the carpet, or when she starts facing away from the painted wall that would be reflecting the light.  The other wall is a sliding glass door with light deadening shades, so that doesn't reflect much light, either. 

So, it's clearly a light issue.  I'm going to try to find a regular micro SD card instead of the SD-HC, to see if that makes any difference with the scared of the dark program. 

[Gimpdiggity]

Sorry for the third post everyone, but this has given me something to occupy some time on a cold boring night.

So anyways, I've been crunching some numbers...and it turns out that my living room area is about 1000 lumen short of what would be considered the "baseline" for a decently lit room. 

I've got 302.5 square feet, approximately, of space.  Probably a bit more, so I'll just say 310. 

To get decent lighting, most home improvement places are telling me I want about 20 lumens per square foot.  That means that in order to get good lighting in this room, I would need 6200 lumens. 

Before the new lights I put in yesterday and today, I was running 375 lumen bulbs in four different lamps.  I had a total of 1500 lumens with that setup, which is WELL below the light threshold that I should have.  No wonder I was always needing my LED headband lamp in order to see anything I was doing in this dim room. 

So I upgraded to some bigger lights, and those put out 1260 lumens per bulb.  That's almost as much from one light as all four had been before!!  However, that still works me out to 5040 lumens, still well short of the 6200 that I really kind of need this room to have.  One more of the bright lights would get me to about the recommended level...but here's the catch...

The darker the carpet, furniture, and accessories in the room are, the MORE lumens are needed to actually make the room be lit correctly.  I've got dark blue carpet in the room, a dark maroon chair, REALLY DARK blue curtains covering the sliding glass door, black appliances in the attached kitchen portion of the room, and darkly stained cabinets.  So basically, my room is really dark...so even that 6200 lumens would most likely not be enough light for this room to be considered well lit. 

All of this is starting to make sense to me.  Ever since I moved into this house with my wife, I've felt that at night it was dark in here, even with all the lights on.  I ended up getting used to it, but even when preparing dinner in the kitchen in the winter time while it's dark out, it's really hard to see what I'm doing.  I've long wanted to upgrade the lighting in the kitchen portion of the room, but now I'm realizing that all of the lighting in this room needs to be upgraded. 

No wonder Pearl has trouble seeing when it's dark in here...it's TOO dark in here to be considered marginally well lit...let alone WELL lit. 

I've been wanting to do new lights in this room for years...I think that maybe this is going to give me an excuse to actually do it.  The kitchen will especially be a candidate, as we've wanted to do that for a while.  While we're doing that, we may as well go ahead and put something nicer up in the living room half of the room as well. 

To think, a robot not being able to operate correctly in a room at night would help me come to the realization that this room is woefully poorly lit.  Amazing!!   

[InmemoryofRomeo]

And cost you a makeover I have poor eyesight and require a very bright room, so no issues with unhappy Pleo's here. Make sure you go with white light not yellow light as white light is easier on the eyes.

[Gimpdiggity]

And cost you a makeover I have poor eyesight and require a very bright room, so no issues with unhappy Pleo's here. Make sure you go with white light not yellow light as white light is easier on the eyes.

I'm going to go crazy!!!!  May as well paint the walls and ceiling if I'm putting up new lights...so that will be on the horizon as well.

I've picked out a couple of fluorescent light fixtures.  They're similar to the ones my parents have in their kitchen, and I never seem to have any trouble seeing in that kitchen.  Each one holds four bulbs, each bulb produces 2800 lumens of 4100k white light.  That's 11,200 lumens of light out of each one...which should be enough to make it seem like daylight in the room. 

I will get a couple of floor lamps to put in the corners of the room as well, which will allow me to turn those on instead of super lights whenever we want it a bit less light in the room. 

To think, a robot would start an Extreme Makeover Home Edition!!!!  I love it. 

To be honest, we need to start doing these things anyways.  We are in the process of buying her brother out of this house.  It was left to her and him when her mother passed away a few years back, and we've been living here and paying, so it's time to buy him out.  We've started the mortgage process, so it's already in the works.  We've put off upgrading and fixing things because we didn't want to really raise the value of the home just to have him benefit from our work, but now that we've started the process I think it's safe to start upgrading things...so, the lights and walls in this room that we spend most of our time in will probably be the first thing we do!!! 

[Crewella]

Heheh - your house sounds scarily familiar!  My house is similarly dark and dingy ...... but I kind of like it that way, which is why I'm such a fan of the scared-in-the-dark patch. 

[Gimpdiggity]

Heheh - your house sounds scarily familiar!  My house is similarly dark and dingy ...... but I kind of like it that way, which is why I'm such a fan of the scared-in-the-dark patch. 

Yah, it sounds cool. I don't know why it didn't work on Pearl.  I'm going to try to find a non HC micro SD card, but from what I've read the HC ones should work.

[Crewella]

Do try that, and you're right about the dark carpets.  If you think about it, most of the time the Pleo RB's nose is pointing downwards (or more down than up, at least), so it needs light bounced off the floor if the overall lighting conditions are low.  

[kat]

My micro SD cards are all 2 gig so maybe look for a small one.  I think I remember reading somewhere that pleos don't do so well with larger cards.  Can't remember if that was about all pleos or just Ugobes though. 

[Gimpdiggity]

Well, I was able to get my work light set up in a way that still allows us to do our things while Pearl is doing her thing.  We watch TV, she crawls around investigating.  Last night while testing, the light made TV watching difficult because of the glare.  I found a way to angle it where this doesn't happen...and it's right by the door to the garage, so I can store the light in there while not using it, so it's only in the way for an hour and a half or so at night. 

I showed my wife the overhead lights that I found, and she likes them, so I may head to the home improvement stores next week to get two overhead lights and two colors of paint.  If I'm gonna put up lights, I may as well paint the room, too.  We've been planning that for a while, so this might be a good time to start. 

The lights will be great for everything, and I think Pearl will appreciate them, too!!!

[Talon]

Awe! You must really love your pleo to practically remoddle your living room. Lol! I'm having lighting issues too in my new living arrangement. According to my cousin who is sighted, my carpet is sort of sand-colored, my walls are white, I have three windows that let in natural light only during the middle part of the day, and then I have one single yellow-ish lightbulb with a globe over it in the middle of my room which also has a very high ceiling. It irritates my pleos to no end and my poor Aibos can't see their toys much after two in the afternoon because when they approach them their shadow falls over the toy so they can't orient properly to kick them or pick them up. I have one florescent light bulb to put in the overhead fixture but I'm not sure how to get light into the far-flung corners of this room where I was planning to put the Aibos docking stations. I was going to put them directly under my windowsills but nearly everyone on the Aibo forum I'm part of  said that was a very bad idea because the robots don't need to be in direct sunlight. Any advice?
Talon