Intro to Turtlebot

My turtle has Ubuntu
He'll soon be learning Kung Fu
And before too long he'll sing a song
whilst casting spells of Voodoo

@robo-pi

It's a long way from dancing. I managed to upgrade (I think) the thing from 12.04 to 14.04 (which the forums said couldn't be done) unfortunately, as soon as I tried to boot the 14.04 the power supply overloaded and the built in circuit breaker popped

I pulled this particular PS from an old mini dell

that was set to be recycled that had proprietary plugs on it, so I pulled a standard 4 pin molex out and plugged that into the breakout board of the Atomic Pi (The Atomic Pi has NO POWER PLUG on the main board ! Without the breakout board you have to attach power by individually attaching wires to the GPIO pins, which is ridiculous. They saved money on manufacturing by not installing a power plug. I mean seriously. The very first thing any reasonable person would say about any electronic device after they pull it out of the box is "Where do I plug it in ?")

I put a meter on the PS and the 5V rail was only putting out 4.9 while the 12V rail was only putting out 11.9, so, I guess we know why it ended up on the recycle shelf

Awhile ago I replaced the (el-cheapo fire hazard) 12V power supply that came with my cheapo Anet A8 printer with a nice 450Watt ATX so I still have that laying around, and I've got a box of buck converters that I bought for the robot (cuz the batteries are 12V and the Pi wants 5V, so I figured I'd need them at some point) so I'm in the middle of jury-rigging that right now so that I can start the turtle master and find out exactly how badly I've messed up the turtle install by upgrading Ubuntu like the forums said couldn't be done

Hmm... Now that I think about it, I wonder if the power is the reason that the original turtle wouldn't boot after I installed it. Follow my logic here... More processing power required more power than the power supply could actually supply, so the thing gave up trying. Maybe after I get this power supply jury rigged I might try the original turtle again

Yea, one thing at a time... Buck converter to the fire hazard first

Seriously ???

These things have no terminals ???

Why can't anything ever be easy ?

@spyder

Yeah, I use a few of these and they are odd.

I have an Atomic Pi as well. I have mixed feeling about it. Power IS a pain in the mid-body-rear hole. I really wonder what the company that originally made them was going to do for power and the odd way they pinned it out. When I got mine, it was without the extra board. 🙁  

I know ETAPrime has put new OS's on it

I have not tried it myself and only updated/graded (with an error)  I played wit the GPIO and changes the python lib they have to not send every action done to STDOUT. It browns out easy it seems, to me anyway.

Posted by: @spyder

It's a long way from dancing. I managed to upgrade (I think) the thing from 12.04 to 14.04 (which the forums said couldn't be done)

I'm from the old school.  I'd still be using DOS 6.0 if it were up to me. ? 

This is day 3 on my mission to get Microsoft Speech Engine up and running.   The problem is that I'm trying to get an older version of it up and running and it doesn't appear to be compatible with my "newer" computers.  Even though my "newer" computers are old.   They were all Windows 8 machines that have since been upgraded to Windows 10.  Not because I needed the upgrade, but because Microsoft forced the upgrade.  I guess as a matter of security with the Internet it's necessary.   But it does tend to mess with older software that I prefer to run.

It's 4:30 in the morning.  I've been up all night working on trying to get the Speech Recognition Software up and running properly.  I've actually made quite a bit of progress, but it's still not fully functional.  I can feel that success is just around the corner.   But my old tired bloodshot eyes are begging me to put that last little bit off until tomorrow (or I guess that would be later today).   So maybe it's best to go back to bed for a while and pick this up later. 

@robo-pi

I'd still be using DOS 6.0 if it were up to me

Me too!

A few years ago, just for fun, I sat the test for a "Long Range Certificate".

Part of the practical examination was to send and receive messages by satellite.

The software for this was the old menu-based graphical interface (pre-Windows), and I could see other participants, far younger than I, really struggling to use it. I can remember programming Turbo Pascal on DOS-based operating systems, so I waltzed through the practical exam.

@Robo Pi

Many a time the wee hours have slipped passed as I 'just try this one last thing to make something work' only to go on the try yet another last thing'.   Usually nothing is achieved and inevitably I find that going back to it in the morning with a clearer head I usually clear up the issues in short measure.   But try telling myself not to try the one last thing on a subsequent late evening......  oh well I can be a stupid boy.

Okay. This is insane (I mean, like, more insane than I could even make up if I were to make up insane stories about technology, because, technology doesn't need my help to sound insane)

I reinstalled the turtle master, and, just like before, it hung during POST, but I let it sit, thinking that maybe with the extra power I gave it, it might just surprise me, and go ahead and boot while I wasn't looking.

So I stopped looking. Just in case it was camera shy or something

A few minutes ago I looked at my router, and saw turtle master listed there, so I went back and looked at the screen, and it was still hung at POST... or so I thought

I pinged the address listed in my router, and it ponged... Well, that's... odd

So I typed in the address into SSH, and it logged me in and let me browse files and folders ?!

I don't think this is a POST screen. I think it booted and just doesn't know what to display or how to display it

The only thing I can think of that would cause anything even remotely like this is some kind of driver issue

Anyway, it looks like it's running, in a kind of a ghostly kind of headless mode, but, the turtlemaster is up, and the turtle slave is up. I guess I should try to get them to talk to each other now, or maybe look into the driver issue

Sorry for disappearing. I was recently informed, by a higher power, that the freedom to putter undisturbed in my shop for hours at a time was a privilege... not a right.

 I could re-earn that right by catching up on my chores. In order to keep my happy life, I guess I will be spending less time in the shop for a few weeks 🙂

As a middle-aged man, I have to agree; after a certain age, men turn back into teenage boys with grey in their beards and hair.

@twobits

little girls grow up to be mature women

but little boys stay little boys, just the toys get more expensive

Posted by: @twobits

As a middle-aged man, I have to agree; after a certain age, men turn back into teenage boys with grey in their beards and hair.

Extrapolate that out to 70-years-old and that's where I'm at.  I told my cousin that I'm in my second childhood.   She corrected me and told me that I've been saying that for years.   She confirmed that I'm currently in my infinite^th childhood and told me that it won't be long before I find myself back in diapers.

Eureka!

I finally got the Speech Engine working!  It turns out that it was a problem with the microphone in the computer.  I got all the software problems fixed but it still wouldn't recognize my voice.  So I naturally thought it was still a problem with the software.  But after some investigation trying to use the old-fashioned audio recorder I quickly discovered that the sound input from the computer's microphone was horribly garbled.  I plugged an external mic into it and it recorded crystal clear sound.  I went back to my program and BINGO it was working!   It recognizes my voice based on the vocabulary I have programmed into it.

Strangely my debug editor is still giving  me a message:

SAPI does not implement phonetic alphabet selection.

I have no clue what that means.  At first I thought it was some sort of error.   But it's not listed as an "error", it's just listed as "information".   And it doesn't appear to have any negative effect on my program.  So I'll just ignore that "information" and accept that the program is working. ? 

Finally, I'm at a point where I can start programming grammar schemes.  That's where I wanted to be four days ago. ? 

But I'm here now so, "On with the show!".   Actually four days isn't bad.  I'm used to having problems that take more like two weeks to solve.    So four days is a bargain.   Not bad for getting old obsolete software out of moth balls.

@robo-pi

YAY !

Congratulations ! ? 

Now go build Skynet