Start by placing your device next to your BB-8 Droid.įor some reason, the device won’t say Sphero connected but instead will recognize BB-8 as an Ollie Droid. Similar to D&D, download the App from the app store/ play store and run it on your phone. You get the most functionality out of your droid this way and it’s great for learning to program. Similar to SPRK, this is an open platform that allows the customization of the Sphero bot in executing an organized set of drag and drop commands. Macrolab is where my main interest as a robot programmer lies. Instead of merely bumping into objects and reacting, a la Patrol Mode, D&D allows for full colored movement of the droid. Overall this program gives much needed functionality to the drive ability of BB-8. Try experimenting by using the rainbow slider switch at the bottom left corner to change color or by drawing out a small path for BB-8 to follow. Now that your BB-8 is glowing, the app should run normally with your robot. If you get a readout that says “Sphero Not Detected”, either try placing your phone closer to your BB-8 or try closing the app and restarting. Next place your phone next to BB-8 and open the D&D App. To make this work on BB-8, first close your Sphero BB-8 App on your phone (if you have it running). Think “line following robot” but digitally. In D&D allows the user to draw a digital line on their smart device that the holonomic robot executes. ![]() ![]() ![]() Out of these, only two managed to work on my device: Draw&Driveand Sphero Macrolab. I downloaded about a handful or so Sphero apps from the Google Play Store and Apple Store to try and get them to work. My next goal was to find compatible apps that work with him. It looks like BB-8 requires the app to do all the connecting for it then. I also tried to manually connect it via Bluetooth on my Android and iPod 5th gen, which also turned out to be a bust (apparently Sphero locks the devices). That means unfortunately things like Sphero SPRK won’t run either. The official Sphero App was a bust in this case, since the program doesn’t recognize BB as a Sphero 2.0. In the Star Wars BB-8 app, the app connects via Bluetooth LE automatically. Since the robot is enclosed and I don’t want to take him apart, there’s no way I can physically diagnose the programming restrictions on the robot’s firmware.Īfter receiving my droid (THANK YOU THINKGEEK!) I immediately set to work this weekend figuring out what how to connect to him. Nonetheless, I had seen the BB-8 dissection videos and knew the product ran on the same chip that Sphero 2.0 operated on and was unperturbed. Needless to say, I was VERY disappointed- it looked like I was limited to only using a watered down version of their product. I reached out to the company about when this might change and this is what their response was. Additionally, unlike their other robots, the official Sphero SDK for BB-8 was not open. However, I soon realized the robot was limited to only using the official Sphero Star Wars App (which severely limits the robot’s functions to only allowing the most basic drive features and some autonomous movement). Throw in the iconic Star Wars charm and you’re looking at someone who rush ordered one the night it was released. Sphero, for those of you who don’t know, is a relatively advanced toy has a fantastic open platformfor their community (SPRK, Macrolab) that teaches higher level robotics at a small affordable form factor. ![]() So a while ago I purchased a BB-8 by Sphero with the intent to start developing and testing out my own apps with the robot. Using Third Party Apps with your Sphero BB-8
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