Rovio™ is the groundbreaking new Wi-Fi enabled mobile webcam that lets you view and interact with its environment through streaming video and audio, wherever you are! With Rovio, you will always be just a click away from the people and places that are important to you.
That was back in 2008 and boy was I excited! Think of all the fun that could be had: I could connect from anywhere and checkout what's going on in my home at any time; I could chase the cat! (if I had one); follow my wife around on those days she gets home before I do; if someone broke in, I could follow them around and take their pictures while the police are being summoned. It was like the Red-Rider BB Gun in "A Christmas Story" all over again!
I even thought this would be a great way to visit Shanghai from here - but that's another blog...
Alas, my glee was cut short by the harsh realities of budgets. The list price of $300 was just too high, and $200 above my spousal-unit imposed spending limit (without prior written approval - of which I could not get). Patience is a virtue, and I have learned to become very virtuous...and yes, $300 was a bit much for this 'toy'.
Woot to the Rescue!
So, where do products go that are over priced, over produced, or just not wanted anymore? Woot, my friend, or more specifically woot.com. "One day, one deal" - which means you end up being very virtuous while waiting for your desired discounted item to appear. But appear it did, and I jumped on it. Lucky for me, too, the Rovio appeared right at my budget limit of $99.95! The lords of Cobol were smiling down on me that day - yes they were.
However, I'm still waiting for a smile from them on sub $5 bluetooth headsets and $99 Dyson vacuums. But that day shall come. Yes it shall. Bawaaahahahahaahaaaaaaaaa!!!
Delivery - the subplot
Ok, now I had to get it in the house, set up, configured and ready to go without my significant other knowing (once it's unboxed, set up and running, its harder to return!) Normally, this is not a problem as she works late a lot. However, fate was plotting against me, the lords of Cobol were asleep, and Fed-Ex delivered it at 3pm on a half-day for her.
Time to enlist a co-conspirator.
A quick exchange of Texts to my son revealed he would not be home until well after my wife. Alas, it appeared I was doomed. What was Woot's return policy? I might be forced to find out. Still chained to my desk well after 5pm, another Text arrived. He had successfully smuggled the packed into the house and hid it in the basement all without raising his mother's suspicions! Woohoo!! He is crafty, after all. As on one occasion, he had managed to swap an entire set of cars tires in and out of the basement without me knowing - all while I was sitting in the living room watching TV (the basement door is in the living room!)
The next day I spent setting up Rovio and getting him all configured for his introduction:
"Oh my God, what did you buy?!?"
"Remember that robot I wanted a few years ago?"
"Oh no! You spend too much money!"
"But he's so cute!" (sometime that's works...)
"No. Why you by this??!"
"But it was less that $100 - 1/3 its original price."
"Oh. OK, that's good. He is kinda cute."
Speaking "The Language of the Deal", William Shatner would have been proud.
How (well) It Works and a Video!
So, I've had Robbie (think "Forbidden Planet") for a few days now, and at $300, I would have been disappointed. But at $100, its a great deal.
Once you get him maneuvered close to his home base (recharging station), you can tell him to go home and he'll find it and park himself. First time I did that, he missed and kinda reminded me of a dog wiping its butt on the carpet as he kept trying to dock (sorry for the imagery). Once I realigned the beacon lights on the ceiling, he's not had any more problems.
The batteries were totally discharged when I got him, so it took a full day to get them recharged. And a spooky thing happened while we were out shopping on the second day: he committed suicide. Somehow, Robbie, had run himself off the base a few feet out and then sat their until his batteries died. Now, you can program routes into him to run at specific times, but if he is within visual range of his base, and his batteries are low, he automatically goes home, re-docks and recharges. There were no routes in his configuration and it has not happened since. (queue Twilight Zone music now....)
Robbie has another feature where he will try to open ports on your wireless router so that you can control him from anywhere on the internet. Turn that feature off. The constant retires clogs your wireless connection to the point of slowing down all internet connections in the house. It better to just manually configure it so it doesn't do constant retires.
Rovio (Robbie) also has an infrared sensor that is used to avoid collisions. I have not tried that yet, but I can tell you he's pretty much blind in low-light places. There is a 'headlight' on him, but I think a candle would be brighter. Wowwee has come out with a bright LED lights attachment to help with this, but its currently sold out (however it is under my spending limit, so my credit card stands at the ready!)
So, anyway, I've run him around from home and from work (shush! don't tell anyone!) and he works pretty well and is a ton of fun! Did I mention he has a speaker and microphone too?
There are also a couple of hacker sites on the Internet with programs and hardware hacks to enhance him. I still haven't tried all the things he can do right out of the box, so it will be a little bit before I start enhancing him.
Videos!
This video shows Robbie auto-docking (going Home). I drove him into the room just in front of his home base and then clicked on the "Go Home" button. Once his head goes down, its all autonomous action on his part. The base unit shines two infrared crosses on the ceiling which he uses to align himself (that's why he raises his head up). Most of the time he docks just fine, but occasionally, he misses or thinks he's dock but really isn't. In those cases he'll not recharge and will eventually try to re-dock before running out of power, or just die. Poor guy.
