Yep, they’ve arrived, and in good time for Christmas. I backed these on Kickstarter and I’m looking forward to playing with them over my Christmas break. There’ll be a video I’m sure!
Crafty Robots
Tag: Robots
I do like robots, but I’m not really sure of what to do with them
Romotive no longer selling the Romo?
I had a recent look at the Romotive web site and noticed that there’s a banner saying that the product is no longer for sale. That doesn’t look good to me. It sounds like they’re not going to be doing Romo anymore, or at least not in its current form. I hope that they’ll continue to do something with robotics as they were really good and I’ve had a lot of fun with my Romos.
Romos I and II side by side
It’s interesting to see these two devices side by side and compare the quite startling differences between them. It isn’t just size, it’s build quality and finish, and, basically, everything!
Quite amazing really. It’s a shame the Romotive seem to have now vanished off the face of the earth.
Romo II
I’ve wanted a Romo II for a while now. I originally funded the first Romo on Kickstarter, but never got the second one. So I finally managed to get hold of one on eBay for just a few pounds.
So I’m looking forward to getting this one going and maybe even doing something using both of them together.
Messing about with Mindstorms
Well I’ve got going on my next mindstorms project. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything with this stuff, so I’m not entirely sure how it’ll turn out, but it’s fun to start thinking about how to put stuff together again, and trying to work out just how I’m going to achieve what I want to with this project.
It’s time that littleBits started to play nicely with others …
So having carried out a number of experiments using the Romo I’ve decided that a more musical robot is needed, and that will require something more bespoke. So I’ve chosen Mindstorms as a starting place, but of course for the musical side, littleBits is ideal. Connecting the two will now be easy, because of the above.
And another robot
This time from the National Museum of Scotland whilst I was up there for the Edinburgh Festival in August.
Romo from the desktop
I’ve been using the Romo desktop Mac OSX app as well recently, and it’s really good. It’s very useful to be able to use the arrow keys to steer with, almost better than the virtual joystick. The only downside is that there’s no way to record video from it. Even so, it’s good to have another way to control Romo.
Romo returns!
It has been just over a week since I sent my Romo off to Germany to have his main board’s firmware updated to work with an EU smartphone. He’s back, and he works just fine now. In fact, he seems to be as good as new.
After all this time it’s great to be playing around with my Romo and enjoying such a clever idea. Now I want more from my Romo apps already!
Romo is going to get fixed
Well it looks like the lovely people at to motive have come up with a solution for the EU smartphone volume problem and have established a little outpost I Germany to the main board firmware updated.
So ish all be sending off my board in the next few days in the hope of getting it back soon so I can finally use my Romo.
When it happens there’ll be posting. Much posting.
I am Ashley Elsdon 