Building EDDIE
So I got my EDDIE kit yesterday and put it together. Only real problem was with the aluminum screws that were included. They seem to strip almost by looking at them. I'm talking about the long screws that hold the motors to the motor mounts and the big ones that hold everything together. I would recommend replacing those parts.
There is a part that I cannot identify. It is made of black acrylic, is rectangular with a split hole in it.
The EDDIE page says you need a 5/32 allen wrench. You will also need a 7/64 allen and another one (to mount the caster on its axle) You will also need a USB cable.
A printed assembly guide would be nice, nothing like running back and forth to the computer to look through the assembly video
When I went to plug in the sensors, I looked through the firmware and couldn't find any reference to the IR sensors. Is this support coming anytime soon?
This seems to be an incomplete product with the firmware not supporting the supplied hardware but I understand. Still it would be nice to have the IR code in place. It just makes me wonder where else it's going to fail and that is a distraction we don't need.
All in all, I still give EDDIE 4 stars out of 5. I have been building robots based on similar hybrid models and think that once the kinks are worked out, it will become a great platform.
There is a part that I cannot identify. It is made of black acrylic, is rectangular with a split hole in it.
The EDDIE page says you need a 5/32 allen wrench. You will also need a 7/64 allen and another one (to mount the caster on its axle) You will also need a USB cable.
A printed assembly guide would be nice, nothing like running back and forth to the computer to look through the assembly video
When I went to plug in the sensors, I looked through the firmware and couldn't find any reference to the IR sensors. Is this support coming anytime soon?
This seems to be an incomplete product with the firmware not supporting the supplied hardware but I understand. Still it would be nice to have the IR code in place. It just makes me wonder where else it's going to fail and that is a distraction we don't need.
All in all, I still give EDDIE 4 stars out of 5. I have been building robots based on similar hybrid models and think that once the kinks are worked out, it will become a great platform.
Comments
Sorry to hear you ran into some trouble putting together the Eddie, but we really appreciate your feedback. Hopefully I can help clear some things up for you.
This is actually what we affectionately call the 'Eddie Laptop Screen Clamp'. You can slide this onto the standoffs supporting the Kinect plate and use it to better secure your laptop screen while driving Eddie.
That's a good point. Since we include the instructions for building the Caster Wheel and Motor Mount and Wheel kits, we only listed the additional parts needed for Eddie. I'll update the documentation to include everything that you need so that it's all in one place.
The USB cable, however, should have been included in the bag marked Eddie Hardware/Electronic Pack. I apologize if it was not, and will look into how that may have happened.
We do have an assembly guide available for download on the www.parallax.com/eddie page. There are a couple reasons we don't include it in the kit: first, it adds to the overall cost, but more importantly, it's harder to maintain. By solely providing the documentation online, we can easily make updates and know that customers are always looking at the latest version when they sit down to put together their robot. As you were using YouTube, I'll make sure a link to the Eddie page is included in the video's description so that people know a written copy is available as well.
They're there, just listed as 'ADC'. The Sharp IR sensors are analog sensors, so we use an ADC to obtain distance data. If you type the command 'ADC' in the Parallax Serial Terminal, you should get distance values back. You can find more information in the Eddie Command Set document.
I hope this helps a bit, please let us know if you have any other questions or comments!
Cheers,
Jessica
We aim to make your "out-of-the-box experience" a great experience, but we don't always hit the mark. Let's see what we can do here...
First, the assembly doc (a pdf) is here: I'm "old school", and for me there's nothing else like a paper copy - gotta have it for convenience. (most people will just look at the pdf on a computer, but I print it out, 'cause for me, building this thing on a workbench with paper copy is more effective.
In the doc, on Step 12 on page 15 shows the "rectangular cut hole piece". It's a laptop screen "sliding clamp" (you can see it in Photo 12a). It's designed to (tightly) slide onto one of the 12" Kinect standoffs and hold a laptop's screen to keep it from flopping around.
more to come... standby... :-) wow - Jess! you're quick!
The bolts you're referring to, should not be aluminum - they're should be stainless steel - they should not strip out.
The 1/2 diameter standoffs are aluminum, but they shouldn't be even come close to stripping out. Especially when you consider they're holding HDPE plastic together with some 1/4" x 20 stainless flat head screws.
Could you post a pic of what you might have there, just to make sure we got you all the right stuff in the kit?
-Matt
That's a great point!
This industry is in its infancy, and we don't have any R2D2's roaming around quite yet. I view Eddie as a "development platform".
In my (humble) opinion, there are (3) major components that go into any Robot:
(1) a solid piece of initial hardware (motors, platforms. drive wheel system - you know, basic structural stuff).
(2) some software (low level firmware, and higher level stuff like Microsoft's RDS), and
(3) (which I consider to be the important and yet totally un-predictable): Inspiration for the next step(s).
We (us and you) are on the cutting edge. - NS-5's (from I-Robot) won't happen over-night, but they will happen. We look forward to seeing what you come up with - what new ideas for hardware/software/other_cool_stuff_to_build.
In the mean time, - don't be shy! take pics!, post code! make suggestions! we're here to help :thumb:
-Matt
Thanks for the fast response. One of the reasons I've been a loyal parallax customer for the last ten years.
Not to be picky but it seems to me, that without any documentation (I haven't found any anyway) the IR ports should be treated, from a user standpoint anyway, just like the pings. All anyone wants out of them is the distance to the nearest object it sees. Does this men that the IR sensors are NOT part of the MRDS platform, rather something you've added? Or does MS expect all IR things to go this way? Seems very inconsistent to me. If I remember correctly, the Sharp IR modules required calibration and maybe that's why they stayed under the ADC realm.
So, I'm assuming that the pings are in port 0 and one. Are the IR expected on any particular port number?
Also, are there any downloads that show how the EDDIE can do something with the sensors like maybe just an explorer program (in VPL) that lets it roam without bumping into things? That would go a long way to reducing the very steep learning curve that MRDS brings with it. There are lots of icreate examples but I have yet to see anything that targets the EDDIE or more specifically, the Kinect on the EDDIE. It may be in the MRDS but I haven't managed to find it.
Keep up the good work
The goal of the Eddie firmware is to provide the means for RDS to communicate with the Propeller, and the Sharp IR Sensors are a part of RDS (they were actually requested by Microsoft). The firmware provides the output voltage from the Sharp IR Sensor, which RDS then translates into distances. We wanted to keep the firmware as 'voltage only' so that those pins could be used for any analog sensors that customers may want to use. As Matt pointed out, the firmware is very 'low level' - which, while obscure, allows for full customization by the user.
RDS expects the IR sensors to be connected like so:
These examples are all included in RDS and should be available as objects that you can call. To be honest, I unfortunately haven't had much time to delve into developing with RDS so I'm afraid I can't be of much help there. :depressed:
The Robot Dashboard is a nice all-in-one option to get things going right out of the box. Instructions for installing it can be found here.
The hurricane tape holds the laptop to the upper deck, but we noticed that the screen would sort of flap around while driving the robot and especially while making sudden stops or starts. So the slide clamp was an ingenious design by MattG to eliminate that flop.
Cheers,
Jessica
I noticed that when starting any of the screws into the machined aluminum parts there were two "thread engagement points" for lack of a better term. When I would start a screw if I felt ANY sort of bind I would back off somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 turn to the point that I heard/felt a slight click. I could then turn the screw easily into the mount. If you don't don't do that you will probably cross thread the aluminum and have major problems later. The parts are extremely well machined and if anything more than a light force is required, it is probably the wrong force.
Not sure how you are trying to access the IR, but if you are using VPL you can get to them either through the MARK service or the Parallax2011ReferencePlatformIoController. For example, on MARK perform a Get(InfraredSensorArray) and the outputs will be on the result pin of the service.
Todd
Hi Davee-
PM me with a shipping address and we'll fix you up!
-Matt
Hi Davee-
PM me with a shipping address and we'll fix you up!
-Matt
'Zactly how cold izzit up there, Matt? Or has your metabolism just slowed since turning 50?
Although it is supposed to snow tonight...
-Matt