Tri-Bot Disassembled
The first thing I noticed about Tri-Bot, was its size. I said the same thing about RoboBoa, but in this case, its smaller than I was expecting, rather than larger. Here's Tri-Bot with one of my RS Medias for comparison.
Tri-Bot with a new friend
It seems the escaped mental patient who designs Wow Wee's packaging is alive and well, and has come up with something new for the Tri-Bot's packaging.
Hotglued Wire!
That's right folks, not only is the Tri-Bot wired in place, the wire twists are now held in place with hotglue. Getting him out of the box took me about 5 minutes, and required me to totally destroy the packaging. Which is fairly standard for Wow Wee offerings, however on the same day I extracted a Hasbro Interactive R2-D2, which is of similar size to Tri-Bot, from its packaging in about 30 seconds, and when I was done, he went right back in the pristine packaging. I'm not sure which is more fun, being able to extract and start to play with something in less than a minute, or having to absolutely demolish the box before you get to play with your new toy. I'll have to think about that....
Tri-Bot codes
Hi,
I want to control the Tri-Bot via a computer, but it seems to be harder than other WowWees. The two IR LED in the remote don't seem to follow a conventional binary code. Measuring from the IR photoreceptors on the body gives a nices binary code, although it's interleaved with a clocked pulse. Even the buttons pads inside the remote aren't simple pull-downs.
But then —surprise— inside the remote there's a pad in the upper right corner of the PCB labeled 38 kHz. Bingo! Although the actual frequency is 40 kHz, the signal is a typical WowWee binary code, with an initial burst of 8 ms, followed by 17.2 ms of 1s. Then comes the actual code: low for 3.2 ms followed by 1.6 ms means 0, while low for 1.6 followed by 1.6 ms means one.
Here's what the buttons signal:
STOP 0x7ED
FWD 0x7DE
BWD 0x7D8
RIGHT 0x7DB
LEFT 0x6D5
CLKW 0x7D1
ACLKW 0x7D2
FWD_L 0x7D4
BWD_L 0x6D6
FWD_R 0x6DC
BWD_R 0x6DA
HOME 0x6D0 0xFF0
Pout 0x6EC
Pin 0x7EB
DEMO 0x7EE
GAME 0x6EA
ALARM 0x6E9
Have fun,
cheers,
ntq
Tribot
Robosapien V2 4mem8
Hey Nocturnal, Nice write up, As usual very well documented, it looks like this one is a **** to get into, WowWee making it harder all the time to hack things eh!! Good work.
Its not to hard to get into,
Its not to hard to get into, unless you want to get into the head. In which case you are in for a world of pain and frustration.