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Connecting Sphero RVR to Remo.TV

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Brendon Telman edited this page Dec 13, 2019 · 7 revisions

Remo.TV is a telepresence platform for robots and optionally allows control of the robot by other people on the site. Please see the disclaimer at the bottom for potential security/privacy concerns related to use of Remo.TV. Use of Remo.TV is not covered by the Privacy Policy for this app, since I have no control over what Remo.TV does.

There are two versions of robots that can be built so far.

This guide will cover setting this app up with the Android version of the Remo robot controller software.

Setting it up for the first time

Install the Remo Controller for Android at https://github.com/remotv/controller-for-android by grabbing the APK from the latest release, or building from source using Android Studio or command line.

Release:

Install the Controller for RVR (Unofficial) app from either the github releases or from the Google Play store.

GitHub (Always the latest version):

Google Play Store (Coming Soon)(Might be behind sometimes):

Setting up the Remo app

Please follow the setup instructions at https://github.com/remotv/controller-for-android in the README

Now that you have setup the app for general use, we are going to enable some more settings to allow connection to the RVR controller app.

  1. Open the settings in the Remo.TV Controller app
  2. Navigate to the Robot settings
  3. Turn on the robot settings toggle
  4. Change the connection type to RemoBroadcaster. This broadcasts the controls to the system, and allows any app to pick up and respond to only the robot controls. No other data is sent from the app
  5. Change the protocol type to ArduinoTranslator
  6. Optionally enable stationary mode. This allows the robot to respond to .table on and .table off commands in the chat from the owner
  7. Now exit the settings and hit the power button. This will start streaming to the site

Setting up the RVR app

  1. Open the app
  2. Hit the bluetooth button, and make sure bluetooth is turned on when prompted, and location permissions is also accepted. Location permissions is only used for scanning for the RVR as specified in the Privacy Policy, and location data does not leave the device.
  3. Connect to the robot when it pops up. Make sure it is fully charged and not connected to the Sphero EDU app or the Sphero Play app.
  4. Once the robot connects, the link is setup, and the robot should be controllable via Remo.TV. The screen can be turned off, but may need to have both apps have battery optimization turned off so the system does not kill them if running above Android 6.0. The Remo.TV controller app has a quick access setting for this in Settings->Display->App Power Settings

Troubleshooting

Please feel free to open an issue here if you have any questions of how to use the app, or if the steps are not easy to follow. I am open to making the documentation better if there are issues with it

Optional hardware to mount the phone to the RVR for portability

Disclaimer

Remo.TV allows controlling of real/virtual robots, and utilizes a camera and microphone to allow people to see and hear the environment the robot is in. If enabled in the robot app settings, they can also communicate with you or their environment. The server that the robot is a part of can also be set to private mode to only allow trusted users to access the robot if there are any concerns.

There are settings in the Remo.TV controller app for disabling camera, microphone, and text to speech, but they may limit functionality when disabled.

I am not responsible for damages that may occur to the robot or phone while using this app with Remo.TV. Make sure the robot has a safe environment free of stairwells or falling items, or buy a gate for it to restrict access to certain areas.

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