One of the most sophisticated, user-friendliest consumer robots at tech conferences (or anywhere in general) this year is temi the personal robot.
For a brief introduction, I’ll just leave it to the official temi FAQ page:
What is temi?
temi is the world’s first, truly intelligent, mobile, personal robot for your home. Temi places you at the center of your technology, including smart home devices, online content and video communications — harnessed by the power of your voice, hands-free. Featuring state of the art AI, and a system of sensors and cameras, temi will seamlessly improve your life, perfectly navigating in the most dynamic environment imaginable — your home or office. temi offers you an effortless way to connect with online content and friends…
Well, that all sounds nice and dandy. But wouldn’t it be even cooler if we could program temi to do what we wanted it to?
The good news is — we can!
Is temi open to third party developers?
Yes, temi has an Android OS open source platform that encourages third-party developers to add skills and apps to the platform which allows temi to stay new and innovative in the long run.
If you are an Android developer, or if you happen to have read one (or more) of my introductory tutorials on Android development, I’ve got even better news for you — you are already good to go!
As a start, developing for temi can be as straightforward as running your existing Android app on it.
In this post, we will walk through the process step by step.
Note: For readability of the technical tutorial, I will be capitalizing “Temi” below, even though its official name is supposed to be in lowercase.
Prerequisite — Create an Android app
This post is for those who are already somewhat familiar with Android development, and are able to create an Android app from scratch.
Mac users:
For a quick refresher, please feel free to refer to one of my previous posts here.
Windows users:
Sorry, I have yet to make time to write up a Windows version of the quick-start tutorial. Luckily, there should be plenty of relevant tutorials online for you to get started.
Here’s my new test project on Android Studio:
Changing just one string in the TextView for now for illustrative purposes. You’ll see “My Robot Temi” instead of the standard “Hello World.”
The goal is just to get the project to compile, and it does!
So now it’s time to see if we can run it on Temi.
Connecting to Temi via Android Debug Bridge (adb)
Because there is no easy USB access as of the latest edition, we will be communicating with Temi via adb instead.
The good thing is, if you have reached this point, chances are you would already have adb installed on your computer.
1. Make sure your computer and Temi are on the same WiFi network.
2. Find out your Temi’s private IP address.
Via: [Settings] > [Temi Developer Tools] > [About] > [Private Wi-Fi IP address]
Make a note of it, as we’ll need it in step 4.
3. Switch on TCPIP
Via: [Settings] > [Temi Developer Tools] > [ROBOX] > [Custom Command]
4. Connect to Temi via adb
Type in your command line tool:
adb connect [IP address]where the IP address is the one you located in step 2.
(I had to add port 5555 at the end for it to work properly.)
5. Deploy app to Temi
If you click on the [run] icon in Android Studio now, you should see Temi (aka Rockchip) showing up as a connected device.
Click [OK] to proceed.
That’s it! With some background in Android development and access to a Temi machine, you — too — can create your very own robotic app.
I am super excited about all the possibilities that ensue. And while the sky’s the limit, I vow to focus mainly on robotic applications that are designed to do good for humanity and society.
More updates to follow. Until next time!
Last but not least — our magazine plug:
If you are interested in more articles like this one, my team and I are creating a printed magazine to feature many more useful how-tos and tips for the community.
Please feel free to check out our Kickstarter campaign. You can pre-order a volume or three from the project page until August 26 (Friday), 2022.
