After thinking and thinking about what I’m actually developing and what I plan on attracting the market with I realize they don’t match up at all. Adding features that allow users to build a script of i2c commands that can be forwarded across the network to a chip on the other side of the zbot may be useful to some people, but not the majority.

I realize that I need to work only on the features necessary to meet my initial goals. Then I can add in all the neat features and sdk that will be used by others. So what are my initial goals ?

Initial Goals

• Fun game with zbots, like fps
• video
• easy to use, cheap

Things I have done that are not related to those goals

• I2C forward
• Java Service, subscription
• basically the whole client was for experimenting not games
• library in c#

I started to realize this when I was thinking about the usb “dongle” and how it would be better as a ethernet “dongle”. Then I started to think about how it would need to support multiple devices, etc. The cost of the “dongle” would be similar to that of the zbot, doubling the cost, not good. Then I thought about how the dongle could be the service and allow for the user to not tie up a “server” computer to host connecting to zbots. These aren’t the days of people configuring hard to use servers so their friends can play quake anymore. Just by having a dongle and server I’ve excluded a large number of potential users.

The solution ? Bluetooth and android, yes what I already knew a long time ago. I had abandoned this idea a while back because bluetooth was too short range and not fast enough at long range, plus it was a little pricey. But given the cost of a “dongle” I could basically have wifi, so if I want to keep the cost down a “dongle” is not the way to go, yet. Since I started this project (I think) there have been other bluetooth solutions created. These other solutions will give me about 1Mbps and about 30 ft of range. Not the best numbers but a good start. Aside from that they support usart so I would not have to change any of my current code.

So, I’m scrapping any goals not related to the immediate goals. There is just a Zbot and a app that runs on android phones. The Zbot will be a toy that you can use with your phone to fight with your friends, capture the flag or do missions in the real world. My development time should be about 1/10th what it was and we should see the goal much faster. Then after the initial goal, we add in the sdk, the features and the server / client model.