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Adding Vision and Speech

A project log for Little Friend

This companion robot, 9000 farads of super capacitance, spends less than eight minutes feeding--then 75 minutes or more she can be a buddy.

mike-rigsbyMike Rigsby 07/05/2016 at 20:210 Comments

First, we have to print a top bracket and drill some holes for the Pixy camera.

Next, we drill holes for the Arduino that is connected to the Pixy.

Secure the camera and the Arduino.

Print a bracket to hold the Arduino/Speech module.

Glue or melt the bracket onto the main holder.

Test the system.

The speaker sits in the speaker holder.

The speaker lid snaps on.

I secured the amplifier with a tie wrap through the speaker cover holes.

I attached everything using velcro.

It's now ready to mount to the top of the capacitor holder using velcro.

Here's the schematic that shows how everything ties together. There are a couple of minor quirks to the shields that you should know about. For the speech shield, it must be powered (by Vin of greater than 7 volts) and it must settle down (led quit flashing) before you connect the usb cable to your computer and install the sketch. The usb supply is not sufficient to power the speech shield.

To train Pixy . . . press and hold the white button on top until the led on front turns red. Release the white button. Place the frog in front of the lens and make sure that the led color is (approximately) the same color as the frog. Press and release the white button and the led on front of the Pixy will flash to acknowledge that it understood. To train Pixy on the second color (ball--the frog must be the first color) press and hold the white button on top of Pixy until the color (sort of yellowish) occurs after red. Release the white button. Place the ball in front of the lens and make sure that the led color is (approximately) the same color as the ball. Press and release the white button and the led on front of the Pixy will flash to acknowledge that it understood.

Pixy is quite sensitive to light changes, so it is best to operate in a room where the light is even and there are not light changes (daylight coming through curtains and changing throughout the day and night.)

The assembly is now getting pretty large.

The wiring is getting thick--just pay attention and everything will work fine.


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