Wowwee robotic toy MiP hacking

Discussion in 'Projects' started by robm, Feb 14, 2016.

  1. robm

    robm Billy Mays Staff Member

    Hey!

    So my son got this thing about a year ago:

    [​IMG]

    He played with it for a bit, and that was basically the end. It's a cool little toy, a self-balancing robot that can balance things in it's arms, avoid obstacles, and respond to visual and audio cues.

    But, it's sat unused for months and months, and, well... it was made to be hacked, so therefore we shall.

    The tear-down:

    First, take off the wheels. There are plastic caps over the screws; simply use a small flathead screwdriver, shove it in there as deep as you can, and pry it off - they're glued in. Discard once they're out.

    [​IMG]

    Next, remove the eight screws on the back of the robot...
    [​IMG]

    Then separate the two halves:
    [​IMG]

    Unplug the three plugs that keep the two halves from separating completely. Then, make a hole shown here:
    [​IMG]

    I need to take some additional pictures and update this log. But, order the Pro Mini protopack from Sparkfun, along with the extension cable and headers:
    [​IMG]

    According to Sparkfun, we were to leave the back portion of the battery compartment off and just bolt the protoback to the back of the battery pack. Problem with this is that the battery pack was too loose and gave us some unstable results. Therefore, I cut a hole in the back of the battery pack and fed the harness through it as well, so the pro mini pack just kind of chills on the outside. I'm going to go with a studded battery pack bolt solution to keep the pro mini board secure, but for now loose is fine.

    Video... first portion is with the pro mini connected, second portion shows normal operation without the modification.

    https://www.facebook.com/gmorrowiv/vide ... 474449964/

    Apologies for the non-youtube link for now, I'll fix later.

    This is a work in progress; I need to solder a header to the pro mini board so I can actually program the thing. Documentation isn't particularly plentiful on this, so commands and such are a learning experience...
     
  2. robm

    robm Billy Mays Staff Member

  3. robm

    robm Billy Mays Staff Member

  4. robm

    robm Billy Mays Staff Member

    Once I'm done with this, I'll combine everything into the first post into a mega MiP hacking tutorial, but here's the sound file documentation:

    --------------------
    MiP sound catalog

    Sound 1 - Burp
    Sound 2 - Snore
    Sound 3 - Grumble
    Sound 4 - Fart
    Sound 5 - "stack mode" sound
    Sound 6 - Punch sound
    Sound 7 - Punch sound # 2 (stronger)
    Sound 8 - Punch sound # 3
    Sound 9 - Tracking sound? Sounds like: "mmmnope"
    Sound 10 - Standard MiP sound
    Sound 11 - Standard MiP sound, faster?
    Sound 12 - Standard MiP sound, slower?
    Sound 13 - Ooh!
    Sound 14 - Awww :(
    Sound 15 - Ohh yeah!
    Sound 16 - Blehh
    Sound 17 - Awww (deeper)
    Sound 18 - Mmhmm
    Sound 19 - Robot babble
    Sound 20 - Robot babble #2
    Sound 21 - Hah
    Sound 22 - Hello
    Sound 23 - Boom
    Sound 24 - Boom smaller
    Sound 25 - Hiya
    Sound 26 - Ooh2
    Sound 27 - Hahaha
    Sound 28 - Let's go
    Sound 29 - Wawa
    Sound 30 - Munch
    Sound 31 - Eek
    Sound 32 - Grrr
    Sound 33 - Bouncing sound?
    Sound 34 - Ohh no
    Sound 35 - Whaa?
    Sound 36 - Aww3
    Sound 37 - Huh?
    Sound 38 - Doo de doo de doo
    Sound 39 - Wawawa
    Sound 40 - Hahaha hahaha
    Sound 41 - Waaa
    Sound 42 - Harp
    Sound 43 - Babble
    Sound 44 - Hahahaha
    Sound 45 - Noo
    Sound 46 - Music 1
    Sound 47 - Music powerdown noise
     
  5. robm

    robm Billy Mays Staff Member