Mister Malware- Irritating resolution issue fixed. This means that a while ago I messed with it because everything was too small, got irritated with it later because windows were going past the space and there was a black border I couldn't get rid of. And I forgot how to reverse it. But I fixed it! I have to deal with small font, but for my purposes, it's fine.
- Stupid motor issue fixed! Everything is working peachily (yes I made that word up) with the mobility base now! Kind of embarrassing, but I overestimated the voltage needed for the servos and apparently a 9V battery WILL work. I drove him around the living room and aside from one servo being ever so slightly faster than the other, everything is okay. The rechargeable 9V battery I got doesn't work so well with it (I'd assume it's the current), so I'll deal with a standard 9V battery until I find a better one.
- VOIP is not looking to good right now, so the solution is a bit simpler. The whole purpose of it is to contact emergency services, so since you can use Python to access a GMail account, an alert can be sent to caretakers/other people in the event of the user not responding (the logic is that people usually have their email linked to their phones, anyway). The response mechanism would be a hacked phone that rings after a certain amount of time and needs to be "answered" (simply picked up so the mechanism is a digital issue- a 1 or 0, essentially).
- I'll probably be going with Jasper for voice recognition. The file size shouldn't be too much of an issue since Kagaku's programs will be stored on a flashdrive and not the SD card itself. The purpose of this is so that these functions will work offline. From what I've found, Jasper does have some bugs, but I'll see how it goes. The worst that happens is I uninstall it.
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Great to see you are still working on this! The 9V batteries are notoriously problematic, I found that the AA and AAA rechargeable batteries give much more current, and are not that much heavier.
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Very sorry for the extremely late reply, but anyway- Thank you! I did end up going for a separate power source for the servos; I have a 4 AA battery pack glued on the bottom of the board and the 9 volt powers the Arduino. Works fine. My big problem now is figuring out if I need to replace the micro servos with bigger ones. I did an overhaul of almost everything; the base is replaced with wood, part of the holder for the screen is now wood, the base itself is actually level now, reinfoced glued on bits with much stronger Titlock glue, and I think I solved an issue I had early with the AI portion basically being thrown off the mobility base. I'll have pictures up soon to show my progress. Anyway, thanks again for your interest! I appreciate it. :)
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One way to make servos stronger without replacing them is to feed them higher voltage (within their allowed values, most servos accept from 4.8V to 6V), and/or feed them higher frequency PWM (careful with that, they may become hot if you increase that too much). Of course they will draw even more current then -- the power is not for free.
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I think my issue with the servos is going to be whether or not they are physically strong enough to handle the weight of the robot. I'm hoping so, but I seem to have said that a lot over the course of this project.
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