Nabaztag

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Nabaztag
Nabaztag
The 100 Rabbit Opera at the 2006 NextFest in New York
The 100 Rabbit Opera at the 2006 NextFest in New York

Nabaztag (Armenian for "rabbit") is a Wi-Fi enabled rabbit, manufactured by Violet[1]. The Nabaztag is a "smart object" comparable to those manufactured by Ambient Devices; it can connect to the Internet (for example to download weather forecasts, read its owner's email, etc). It is also fully customizable and programmable.

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[edit] Features

Out of the box, Nabaztag can send and receive MP3s and messages that are read out loud as well as perform the following services (by either speaking the information out loud or using indicative lights): weather forecast, stock market report, news headlines, alarm clock, e-mail alerts, and others.

With a subscription fee, Nabaztag gets more customized services, expanded messaging capabilities, and can read any RSS feed off the web. There is an API, with bindings for multiple programming languages including Java or Perl, available to program the Nabaztag in any way one wants[2].

[edit] Community

Some Nabaztag owners join social networks to share photos and videos on websites like Flickr and YouTube. Users can create podcasts (dubbed Nabcasts by Violet). There are currently over 100 of these available, mostly in English and French, created by different users on a variety of topics.

Since Nabaztag can be programmed to provide new services using an API as stated above, there are dozens of services available to date from other users, including a Dashboard Widget and a lottery alarm.

December 2006 (most notably around the Christmas December 25th timeframe) was an unmitigated disaster for Violet, the maker of Nabaztag. The Nabaztag device acts as a client to the French-based servers. When many users attempted to register their new rabbits, the centralized servers were unable to handle the demand resulting in many Service disruptions, server unavailability and data integrity problems caused by frustrated users creating multiple half-finished registrations. This resulted in a major customer service problem for Violet.

[edit] Technical Specifications

The device embeds a PIC18F6525 microcontroller, a BenQ 802.11b Wi-Fi PCMCIA card, an ml2870a Audio-PCM sound generator, an ADPCM converter, two motors to activate the ears, a TLC5922 LED controller, and a small amount of memory.

The embedded software handles the TCP/IP stack and WiFi driver. It also implements a virtual machine which is able to execute up to 64kb of code. A dedicated assembly language exists to program the different features of the device.

[edit] Nabaztag/tag

Nabaztag/tag is an improved model of Violet's device The new model features the ability to sense sounds, and to detect special-purpose RFID stickers provided with the device[3]. The Wi-Fi was also upgraded to support WPA encryption.[4]

Of course, the Nabaztag/tag can be programmed to respond to those stimuli, thus allowing voice control, as well as programmed responses to certain ambient sounds, or objects (with the RFID stickers on them) being waved in front of the plastic bunny (this feature is being marketed as "sensing smells", although the Nabaztag/tag obviously cannot actually detect odors[5]).

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ the Nabaztools homepage (French)
  3. ^ "Nabaztag passe à la RFID (French)", 01net, November 7, 2006.
  4. ^ "New Nabaztag/tag", i4U, November 9, 2006.
  5. ^ The "smell" feature is demoed in a Flash movie at the Nabaztag website.

[edit] External links

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