What is it?
Ok, so it's not a Friday.. Or Force Friday.. However, I recently received my favourite (and most expensive) purchase!!
I present to you!...BB-8 IOS Controlled Sphero!!!!
First of all, the box. Amazingly detailed in the Star Wars style! It looks like a metal crate and has a VERY cute picture of BB-8 on it!
When I first got BB-8 out of it's (not sure if it's male or female at this point!) box I was surprised at how small it was, it was in a pretty big box. I thought it may have been the same size as the original Sphero, but the size of the box led me to believe it may have been a little bigger.
The instructions were pretty short, just a few pictures. I followed them to a "T" though and was soon charging BB-8 and downloading the app. As you put it on the charger he comes to life and starts flashing and looking around a bit.
It takes around three hours to charge and my son was a little gutted as it was bedtime.. I promised him a play the next day though!
That night I was able to test out the app. It has four main functions which I believe somewhere I heard they'd all be updated coming up to and after The Force Awakens comes out, so hopefully we'll see more sounds and features!!
Drive
The main function of BB-8.. You have (like the old Sphero) a few simple controls with a few more extra buttons to click for character traits.
You firstly have a direction pad, which it great as it responds to small movements as well as big, therefore you can set BB-8 to "walk" or "run" depending on how far you push the pad. You also have a "heading" setting so you can choose where forwards is. There's also an auto setting for this.
The extra buttons do a clever little "yes" which makes BB-8 nod his head and talk, the same kinda thing with a "no" button. There's also a kind of jeering mode where BB-8 auto run's backwards almost teasing the chaser! I wonder if that will be in the film???
I won't tell you all the secrets but some of the other buttons are pretty cool too!
Messages
Now, I personally have had a little trouble with this.. Right off the bat I'll say that I have checked with the guys at Sphero and they are doing their utmost to fix the problem with this.
Basically, when I first downloaded the app, I was using my iPhone 4S. Every time I went into the messages part of the app and tried to play the "X-wing" message the app crashed. I was heart broken!!
The following night I tried downloading the app to my iPad Mini (one). This actually works now, but does sometimes crash when O want to record my own message. It also seems to have some kind of trouble when playing back the messages, the app can't seem to find the spot on BB-8 to play the message from, so it ends up playing the message from BB's Behind!! Which albeit funny, could be alot better!
So hopefully with time, the kinks on this part of the app will be ironed out :)
Patrol
Personally, apart from maybe the drive function, the Patrol ability is my favourite!! BB-8 will literally go off and have a walk about autonomously!! It's so much fun to watch as he'll bang into stuff and make an annoyed sound, then run off in another direction, apparently mapping out the area as he goes. There are some great images going on, on the app screen while he runs about, velocity, temperature, a map as he see's it, there's a few others too. I decided to try this while doing the washing up as he still had around 10-15 minutes play left in him. It was like we had a little pet! He'd walk around the kitchen for a bit, then I'd loose him.. Only to find him in my hallway! At one point he'd escaped to my living room and was waddling around and driving in and out of under our sofa's!
The Verdict
There's of course a few other settings and buttons you can press for more interaction but not to ruin your experience I'll let you find these!
Problem aside with the messages, BB-8 still does enough to keep you entertained, and the word is that after the release of the new film, they'll be even more features!!
BB-8 has been an absolute pleasure and far easier to look after than a dog or a cat!
If you love Star Wars, droids and all things R/C and Cute? YOU NEED TO GET ONE OF THESE!!!! They RRP at about £129.99 but in my eyes TOTALLY worth it!!
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