TJBot Setup

Setting up a Raspberry PI as a TJ Bot

Updated: 03 September 2023

Setting up a Bot

Build the Bot

Build the bot as per the instructions on IBM Research Site

Setting Up the Pi

The Raspberry Pi will need to have the OS installed first, this is done by copying the NOOBS OS onto the SD Card. Thereafter connect a mouse, keyboard and screen and run the following command via the terminal:

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curl -sL http://ibm.biz/tjbot-bootstrap | sudo sh -
  • If you run into this error when turning on the bot for the first time Waiting for SD Card (Settings Partition), format the SD Card and copy the OS back onto it. We used a 32kb chunk size which seemed to work.

Getting the Sample Code

Clone the tjbot repo to your Bot’s Desktop:

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git clone https://github.com/ibmtjbot/tjbot.git

Additionally you will have to run npm install inside of every the directory for every recipe you would like use

Running Tests

From The Documentation

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npm install ~/Desktop/tjbot/bootstrap/test
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cd ~/Desktop/tjbot/bootstrap
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./runTests.sh

To run a specific test you can run any of the following:

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cd ~/Desktop/tjbot/bootstrap/tests
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sudo node test.camera.js
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sudo node test.led.js
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sudo node test.servo.js
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sudo node test.speaker.js

Recipes

There are three recipes included with the Sample code which make use of Watson Services, these are as follows:

In order to run any of the Recipes you need to do the following inside of the respective recipe’s folder 1. Make a copy of the config.default.js file in the same folder and name it config.js 2. Add your IBM Cloud API login credentials for the relevant Watson API’s in this file. These are NOT your IBM Cloud account credentials, but will consist of:

  • a username like xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx

  • a password like xxxxxxxxxxxx 1. You are now set to run the program with the following command (from the recipe’s respective directory)

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       sudo node recipe-name.js

    Note that for the Coversation API you will need to

Changing the Voice

The voice can be changed via the tjbot.js file in node_modules/tjbot/lib, or in your conversation.js file by modifying the TJBot.prototype.defaultConfiguration which has the following properties:

  • robot.name
  • root.gender
  • listen.language
  • speak.language