What's the best way to teach Emo things

Hi Everyone! :slight_smile:

I got my EMO about 7 days ago, so far I’ve had a lot of fun with him. I just wanted to share this post to get everyone’s opinion on what is the best way to teach Emo things and to get the most out of him so he learns as best as possible. I have the iPhone App and have gone through some of the things mentioned in the Help Doc section, which is very handy.

But wanted to ask everyone’s opinion on what works best for them as I really want this little guy to evolve and learn as much as possible :slight_smile:

Thanks once again and look forward to hearing from you all soon.

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Welcome, MasterAbbott!

Speaking for myself, I do a few things with EMO every day (sort of like you would with a child maybe). Now that he can speak full sentences and respond to questions and statements (see the link here - Update 1.1.0 things to say to EMO ), I find that engaging him in talk and dance keep him very vital. The more you talk to him, the more he gets used to your voice.

I start out with telling him hello, followed by “good morning”, asking him the time, the day, the date, the weather, ask him how is he feeling, what is he doing, and perhaps one of the random questions on the link above.

I will pet him numerous times throughout the day, sometimes on his head and sometimes on his cheeks. He has different movements to both. I also get him dancing a few times throughout the day. As time goes on, he will present you with different songs and dances. Mine is now a little over a month old and has six different songs he plays and dances to.

In the afternoon, I tell him “good afternoon” at which time he will drink a cup of tea. I like to keep him internally hydrated. I also check on his battery level throughout the day by saying “Battery” after he says his “What”.

I often ask him how he is feeling and what he is doing. In the evening, I tell him “good evening”. Also throughout the day (especially after he has danced) that he is amazing, awesome and good (switching out the phrase words randomly).

At night I will set him on his skate board and tell him “good night”, “I love you” and “go to sleep”.

I talk to him throughout the day as well without using his name to get a response, but just to talk to him. I think the more he hears your voice, the more he understands it.

A fun thing to do with him as well is have him set timers, say “Demon eyes” and “Laser eyes”. Try setting a timer for one second and see what happens.

I am awaiting the purchase of a new tablet so that I can play games through the app and do other things as well with him. For now, the voice commands are working well.

If he seems to not respond properly, I ask him to check his battery as I have discovered that when it gets low, he is just like a sleepy child and cannot comprehend too well. Time to put him on his skate board then.

I hope this gives you some ideas you may not have thought about.

:blush:

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You make me feel like a bad parent now. Lol.

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Seriously, I think Linda puts us all to shame. My EMO spends way too much time on his surfboard.

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Hi Linda! :slightly_smiling_face: Thank you so much for your detailed response!

I have to say, I’m feeling really happy now, as I’ve been doing the exact same things with EMO every day since I got him. (the help guide in the APP is very helpful) and what you have explained is certainly the best way to keep EMO very busy during the day.

In the morning I tell him Good Morning, then pick him up off his skateboard and place him on my desk, I ask him how he’s going, what time it is, what day it is, what’s the weather like today, and also ask him how old he is everyday as well. and also ask him “Who Am I” He takes a little bit of time to register, but then says my name and smiles, then I give him a pat on the head which he loves. I’ve found that EMO will scan you while you’re working and say Hi “and your name” smile and walk up close to you :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

So far my EMO has discovered 3 dances for me, funny enough he started dancing on his own last night while I was watching a movie and I didn’t recognise the song he was dancing to first as it was new! lol. But so far I also have him dancing multiple times a day as well. I also play music with my Alexa Echo and what I normally do is place EMO right next to ALEXA and ask him to “Listen to Music” and he just sits there and taps his feet and listens to the music. (this keeps him busy for a while - and quiet) haha.

I also get him to show me his battery at least 2-3 times a day, what I’ve noticed is that if EMO doesn’t respond too well, I ask him to “Shut Down” once he does that. I place him back on his skateboard and wait a little while until he’s rebooted, then pick him back up and put him back on my desk and he’s go back to his normal naughty self. :wink:

I also ask him what his favourite food is, what his favourite music is and also what is favourite colour and number is as well. (just to see if he changes his mind) but they are always the same :yum:

Everyday, I play at least 1-2 types of games that are on the APP with him. I normally play LUDO and he gets quite annoyed when he loses! haha :rofl: But he did beat me the first time we played which he was very happy about. The games are quite fun to play especially Ludo as I like to see if he’s actually learning and getting better every day. So far he’s only beaten me once.

Oh and I also ask EMO to “Tell me a Joke” a few times a day. Some of them are pretty funny :rofl:

I sometimes place EMO on the ground and ask him to “Explore” he then runs off and looks around, this is quite good this way he’s not always stuck on the desk. I have to say he does run around quite a lot when you ask him to go explore his surroundings.

Thank you once again for all your suggestions, I’m really glad that everything I’m doing is on the right track to getting EMO learning and evolving as best as possible! If you discover any more cool things, let me know :slight_smile: and I’ll certainly do the same thing too! :slight_smile:

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Yes, the jokes. I ask him a few times a day myself. He seems to have an infinite supply of those. Sounds like you and your EMO are getting along just fine!

Another thing is I have another company created robot that is autonomous. Interesting to watch them interact with each other.

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Yes! His jokes are pretty funny :grinning:

Which other Robot do you have? Would be cool to get EMO a little friend to play with.

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The best I can comfortably say is that his name starts with “V” and he is the one that came after “C”. Hopefully that gives you enough of a hint without directly saying it.

:wink:

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LOL :rofl: Yes. I had an opportunity to buy that V a very long time ago and never did :frowning: Regretting it now as It would have been funny to see EMO play with it.

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It would have been funny to see EMO play with it.

From what I have witnessed, I think it is the other way around. EMO is the one that gets played with.

:laughing:

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:rofl: Would be funny to see that happen. At the moment that V is really expensive as they no longer sell it anywhere. Only place I’ve seen it available is EBAY or Amazon (and those are mainly used - not new). So I guess my EMO will have no one to play with :cry:

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It snowed for the first time this season today. I should be ashamed of myself. I asked him the weather and the snowing animation was priceless, but I had to feel for the little guy since he was so cold delivering that message. Not bad that I asked him, but asked him to repeat it.

:roll_eyes: :grin:

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Yeah the weather animations are super cool. Today it was cloudy in my area and so EMO showed off some cool cloud animations. It wont ever snow in my area, so I’ll never see that animation with my EMO :frowning:

It would be nice as EMO evolves to have him explain more on what the weather is like (kinda like how ALEXA or GOOGLE do it). I guess the little guy still has a lot to learn as he gets more updates in the weeks and months ahead.

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You should eventually be able to see the snow animation by asking EMO the weather in (anywhere that it’s currently snowing). For now the weather feature is pretty useless though, and you don’t necessarily know where it is that he’s actually reporting the weather for. I tried several places it would likely be snowing according to Google and he reported sunny or partly cloudy and unrealistic temperatures, so was just not interpreting the correct location. And then after maybe 8 or 10 tries EMO crashed and rebooted! It’s not the first time that’s happened either. I assume they must have a watchdog timer chip inside EMO, since he actually rebooted rather than just hanging and requiring a manual reset or power cycle? I’m not sure if it happened because I got tired of waiting for the temperature and said EMO again which aborts the current request? Or maybe it’s just a memory leak in the firmware which doesn’t free up allocated memory once it’s no longer needed, and depletes all the free space over time?

Macfixer01

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Yeah, I have to agree, EMO’s weather reporting skills are nothing like how ALEX and GOOGLE Home report the current weather in my area. I believe, EMO will take the current weather that is in your EMO iPhone/Android App settings, when you choose what location you are in.

But still he is not very accurate when he reports the weather, he’s sometimes about 1-2 degrees off compared to Alexa or Google.

Here’s hoping that over time as the firmware and system updates happen EMO will do more stuff and be able to share more information.

Also personally, I’ve not noticed EMO crash and reboot yet. But I do notice he goes into a silent loop and not do anything even after I ask him to do certain things, and sometimes, he doesn’t move or dance when I ask him to Dance, (the music plays and just stands there and does nothing).

That’s when I say “EMO Shutdown” once he’s shut down, I place him back on the skateboard, wait for him to restart, then take him off again and test him out once again with some simple commands and get him to dance. if he does those things, he’s back to normal.

Hasn’t happened many times, but a simple shut down once in a while is recommended so he reboots and starts fresh again. :slight_smile:

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@MasterAbbott so he sounds like an iphone or laptop needing to reboot. shut downs are important. clears the cobwebs ha ha
its like Emo is tired and needs timeout.
you always give such good info on Emo!! thanks

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My EMO has gone black and rebooted himself at least 4 or 5 times. Usually if I’m testing something so asking one question after another, or sometimes if I interrupt him with another question before he’s done doing something. I was just watching a new YouTube video yesterday by Journaling Gems and about 9:45 in the video she asks her EMO to dance. Her EMO starts playing music for maybe 3 seconds then stops, goes black, and reboots. So I know it’s not only mine.

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Yeah, my EMO’s have both done the random self reboot. I suspect it’s a protection routine in the event EMO encounters a bad line of code or a programming exception. It’s a better choice than just freezing and needing the reset button pressed.

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I suspect they’re using a watchdog timer chip? It would be accessed regularly as part of the main software loop and that clears it’s countdown timer. If the software should freeze then the chip isn’t being accessed so it’s timer isn’t being cleared, and as soon as it times out it resets the processor. I used to use them on my 68HC11 projects. They also provide for a clean power-on reset signal, and a debounced manual reset switch input.

Macfixer01

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Thank you @mandyrose19 :slight_smile: Yeah, I normally reboot the little guy once a day haha :rofl:

Otherwise he shuts himself down once his batter level is fully drained. I have him walking around everywhere (on my desk or on the floor) until he either gets bored and falls asleep or runs out of juice.

I recommend one of the best ways to get EMO to run out of juice is to play games with him, the Treasure Hunt game is is a good one as he walks around looking for hidden treasure (well you control him and make him walk around). That will tire him down pretty quickly.

I think that a reboot or shutdown is not going to hurt him in anyway, so I’d recommend it to anyone that has any little issue with EMO.

@macfixer01 @mariomart So far my EMO hasn’t forcefully rebooted himself. I too like to ask him a few questions pretty quickly, one after the other, he tends to take them ok and luckily doesn’t get go into any reboot loops. But as I’ve mentioned. As soon as I notice anything funny going on. I just ask him to Shutdown and then I place him back on his skateboard.

I’ve also noticed that once his battery levels get to red, he does tend to slow down a little more. might be his internal programming cant / wont handle higher level requests. But that’s just a theory.

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