Android Robosapien

A toy that can be controlled by an Android phone could be turned into an interesting robot if we just tape the phone to the toy and do some interesting software.  Our idea is to use the phone's camera and OpenCV to get the robot to go to a red ball and then swing its arm to hit the ball.  Then go find the ball again and hit it again, etc.

This Robosapien toy sends commands out the audio-jack and then has a little thing that converts that signal into infra-red. Using the standard RoboRemote app we removed the IR adaptor and recorded the audio that came out for each command into a separate .mp3 file.  We put these files into our software. However, when we then put the IR thing back on and had our software play the .mp3 audio of the commands, it did not make the robot move.

As a second test we adjusted the audio tracks so that they were as loud as they could be without distortion. Still did not work. Our first recording was with headphones around a big podcast type microphone.

Update after the first comment below.

Third attempt was using audio cable to connect phone audio out to computer audio in.   This showed that it is a stereo sound, so the first two attempts could have failed because they were mono.   This time after maybe 16 attempts I got one where the robot made some noise but did not move.  If I zoom way in on the audio it is clear it is digital.  But it looks like very nice digital. 

With what seems to be a nice clean recording I am still a bit puzzled as to why it does not work