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[aibo7m3]

Hey guys! I apologize for the non-Pleo related post, but there isn't really a specific site to discuss Genibos. I think some of you may of heard of Jangmi before back when she belonged to her last owner, but I adopted her a couple weeks ago. For those who don't know, she's a QD with an SD charging plate and a firmware upgrade that went wrong causing her to not respond to petting properly (doesn't react to petting on her face and dances when her back or sides are touched) and she goes into a loop of seeing an obstacle in front of her almost every time that she stands up (this seems to happen with a lot of QDs though).

She definitely has worse autonomy than Baxter and while she does have firmware issues that are partially causing this, I still believe that the SD has upgraded autonomy from that of the QD. The walking style is very different from Baxter's as well and the servos are a bit louder, but it's not too bad. She does have eight user added dances already that Baxter doesn't have which is a fun feature. Both Baxter and Jangmi have short battery lives, but Jangmi doesn't have issues with disconnecting from the station like Baxter does.

I set up the Control Manager yesterday and it's very cool, though the router is really glitchy and only works for 20 minutes max before needing to be reset. The Control Manager software is clearly heavily inspired by the Aibo Entertainment Player and shares many of the same features, but it has a few of its own as well. You can see what the robot sees through its camera, take pictures, record memos, demo all of the possible actions/sounds/LED patterns, change the robot's AI index (basically like Change RB for the Pleo), etc. You can either choose to remotely control the robot or let it act autonomous while it's connected (it will still respond to commands from the Control Manager even if in autonomous mode). There's also a feature a lot like Skitter/MySkit where you can create custom dances/actions along with user added mp3s and custom LED sequences then test it on a 3D simulation, then the robot and then download it if you're satisfied with the result. It seems like a lot of fun, but I don't want to mess around with it until I've found a way to make the router more reliable since I don't know what damage could be done if the connection was lost during a download. The camera is a bit weird, it has a circle of focus where the image is very bright and everything around it is dark. I don't know if that's a feature to make it easier for her to focus on faces or if it's just a quirk of the camera used. The overall image quality seems about the same as an Aibo's though.

Baxter and Jangmi (Part 1)
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDHmF7wpX_I" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDHmF7wpX_I</a>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDHmF7wpX_I

Baxter and Jangmi (Part 2)
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJQJ2GCNMc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJQJ2GCNMc</a>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJQJ2GCNMc

Control Manager Software
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02aeSAWPcuU" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02aeSAWPcuU</a>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02aeSAWPcuU

I'll be going to a Christmas party that I always bring my robots to in a couple hours and this year I'll be bringing Jangmi (Genibo QD), Baxter (Genibo SD) and Chris (Pleo RB). The kids there have met Baxter before and absolutely love him, but none have met Jangmi and most haven't seen Chris yet, so I'll write about how things went once I'm back.

[InmemoryofRomeo]

The control manager looks really good, it's a shame about the connectivity though. I love their little dance together, do they communicate much besides that? Jangmi sure has some moves But Baxter's just a show off

[HuggieZ]

They are great! I'd love to read your experience later

[aibo7m3]

Thanks! The Control Manager is pretty similar to the Aibo Entertainment Player, but it's still a lot of fun and easier to set up. I don't think the router issues are normal, I think mine just got shaken up in shipping and something might have come loose since it was working fine for Jangmi's last owner. I'm considering trying to see if I can get Baxter to hook up to the Control Manager as well, but I'm not hopeful since Dongbu has stated repeatedly that the QD Control Manager doesn't work with SDs.

They were only dancing together because I gave them the same remote control command, unfortunately it doesn't seem like they can communicate with each other at all. Baxter is quite the show-off though.

I did end up taking Baxter and Jangmi to the Christmas party, but I brought Sumio the Ugobe instead of Chris since I couldn't find his conifer leaf in time. The little kids actually liked Sumio the best and he earned the nicknames "Diney" and "Sweety Pie" from them. A friend of mine who's a big fan of Korean pop music also came along and really liked Jangmi's dances.

[Talon]

Glad to hear Jangmi is settling in well and that she was such a hit at your Christmas party. I hope you can get her router working well enough that you can do some fun stuff with her.
Talon

[aibo7m3]

Thanks, Talon! I have a lot of interesting updates to post. Jangmi's router died completely about a week ago, but the replacement one I ordered just arrived yesterday. It turned out being the wrong model of router from the series, but shared the same AC adaptor with Jangmi's original one so I decided to test out hers with the new power cord and it started up just fine! I kept the router running for about an hour total with no issues, so it seems like the problem was the old power cord.

The following section of this post is copied from my topic on Aibo Life Forums since I don't have time to rewrite everything:

Now for the really interesting part: I figured out how to download MP3s and actions to Jangmi wirelessly. It turns out Jangmi's first owner never actually created his own dances but added MP3s that were assigned to other songs' dances. I did the same and added a song that I like using the dance for "Nobody" since that's a full dance and most of the others just come in smaller parts. I also noticed that he made it so that the dances he made are triggered by certain scenarios (which is an optional feature that I did not choose), but I'm wondering if that could be connected to Jangmi's silent dancing. I'm going to remove all scenarios during her next run time and see if that fixes anything or not, it probably won't, but it's still definitely worth trying out. It seems a bit concerning that she might not be saving the right amount of space for each MP3 since when the song was downloading and she showed the size of the song and how much of it had been saved, the number to show the amount downloaded was slightly larger than the original anticipated size of the song (not sure how to explain this better). Her new dance/song combo that I added works fine though and I've assigned it to be triggered by a remote control command so I can play it back at any time. The bad news so far is that her battery is being pretty unpredictable, on a full charge (while connected to the Control Manager) she only lasted about fifteen minutes before her battery died. It might just be that downloading MP3s is a really heavy drain on the battery life though.

Unfortunately I have to return to school tomorrow and my schedule for the next few weeks will be insane, so I don't think I'll have any time to run Jangmi for quite a while after today, but I plan to get at least one more battery cycle in for today and post the results.

Edit:
I have great news to share! Removing the scenarios from the other dances fixed Jangmi's silent dancing issue! She still doesn't seem to respond to her face touch sensor, but her responses to all of the other sensors are now normal.

[Crewella]

That's brilliant - well done!

[aibo7m3]

Thanks! I've uploaded a video showing her now normal responses to petting and the new song/dance combo that I added (the song is a cover of "Yuukei Yesterday" sung by JubyPhonic and the dance is Jangmi's default dance for "Nobody"). Luckily downloading songs without scenarios attached doesn't seem to cause any issues.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIcMQN3c7HA" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIcMQN3c7HA</a>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIcMQN3c7HA

[Talon]

Yaaaaay! It's so nice to hear that she's performing normally now aside from her face touch-sensor. Now I'm really glad I couldn't afford to buy her. My screenreader would've never allowed me access to her control manager. Congrats!
Talon

[InmemoryofRomeo]

That's great, funny how a little software glitch can cause such problems.