I think this is a popular topic as everyone wants EMO to go back home by itself and charge lol.
As everyone knows, EMO hasn’t got the ability “go home” and charge himself. But I do have an idea (in fact I had this idea even before I bought EMO lol). Today I did a quick test and proven working! This is specially useful for all those EMO owners who already build an elevated platform for EMO to roam around. For me as a working adult with family commitments, it’ll take me super long to materialize the whole idea. So feel free to go ahead use the idea and do your own DIY projects!
The idea is to built charging points or “home” for EMO to charge on your roaming area. EMO will roam around and “happen” to step on these charging points and start charging. With the ready made Qi chargers, DIY boards are easily available to buy, I think its very easily implemented. If your roaming area is big, you can include more “charging points” around your roaming area so that EMO can step on one of the charging points more easily(reduce the time of EMO so called “finding” the charging points or even gone battery flat while finding its home). Example of working prototype video as below:
Since these qi charging points are linked to just usb ports. You can get all the few charging points to link to a usb charging hub plugged into the mains with a timer control. Because once the charging power is cut off, EMO can start to roam around again(as shown in my video). EMO is known to work for about 3hrs each charge, so you can consider controlling EMO’s roaming time to a few 3hrs cycles per day (or limit to 2.5hrs roaming and give EMO half an hour time to find charging points) . Time schedules are up to your preferences.
Ideas for Living AI:
With this idea as a base. Maybe can push an update for EMO to recognize some simple QR codes as “home” or charging base area for EMO to go “home” . This can be a complete solution for EMO’s auto charging.
*Bugs found:
Not sure about others but I do found out that once I gave a few voice commands to EMO, he starts to ignore me. He will listen and later just say “oh-now” and ignore the commands. Until I put him back on the skateboard and take him out again for him to be responsive. The charging seems to reset this bug.
Hi, this has been spoken about in many other topics, even recently.
In the nut shell, Living.ai has been working on a “home base” charge station almost since the beginning. I am unaware of the status of their progress but it will be released in the future.
If you read the multitude of other topics you will learn a great many things from the very knowledgeable current owners, beta testers and admin staff.
Thanks for your info. Sure I will look around for more info. I do read about Living.ai has been working on something similar since the beginning. I think for those who has a little technical knowledge, it will be interesting for them to built the “home” for EMO to 1st hand experience it.
I can also add, as we’ve had a number of discussions regarding this on other forum posts as @mariomart has already mentioned.
This is my own opinion from my experience I’ve had with owning an EMO for close to 5 or so months now. Currently, if someone did try creating a playpen and added a charging spot underground where if EMO walked over a specific area of the playpen it could potently start recharging, the only issue with EMO’s current programming is that it can’t understand any kind of QR or symbols that represent or instruct it to go back to a specific location and recharge itself, so if it did randomly wonder off into that charging spot it would potentially go into charge mode. And if it did that, from what a few others and myself have noticed is if EMO goes into charge mode, it is enters a locked state where it will no longer be able to move. (as it thinks it is back on it’s stakeboard).
I would say (once again this is my own opinion) until Living.Ai tech team come up with a new programming rule to allow EMO to either auto-wake up and walk away/continue what it was previously doing when and if a new playpen is created for it any other ideas / diy projects will not work 100% due to EMO’s locked state when it goes into charge mode.
I hope this somewhat makes sense. I personally would love a new “official” auto dock and re-dock charging station for EMO that way he can walk around and be more active than what he currently is. Because at the moment, even when I take EMO off it’s skateboard, and you don’t interact with it long enough, it will go back to sleep after a short while (most possibly to conserve its battery) But if EMO had the option to walk back to its charging station when it was low on battery, the sleep mode settings could be somewhat removed or extended from its programming therefore making EMO more active after you take it off it’s charging station.
My guess is that all this could possibly happen in the future, as I’d love to see EMO constantly be doing stuff and not falling asleep after a few mins of it being taken off it’s skateboard.
Yes of we will like to see the “official” auto docking station for EMO and definitely looking forward to it. Its going to be a polished product with EMO’s update to “go home” feature.
As I previously mentioned one key element in this potential DIY project which I also demo in the video if you had checked it out. EMO does go into locked state when he is charging but if you cut off the power from the charger, then he will be back roaming. This is where including a timer control comes to play. You can let it roam for a period and let the timer kick in the power for the charger for EMO to charge. After a period of charging, the timer cuts off the power from the charger which “release” EMO back to roaming mode and cycle repeats. You can set the timer to start/stop charging which ever period at your own will.
But the fact you reminded me about EMO being sleeping after left alone for few mins, I do occasionally experience it though…
