So cute *.* (but plus, the more I see him, the more he reminds me heavily of some old wooden toys we used to play with with my bro when we were really small... He loooks so familiar... )
VOCALOID Yamaha's AI Companion Charlie [Private Vocaloid]
- Thread starter lIlI
- Start date
The small bot can now be preordered. (If only I was fluent in japanese.)
Tweet thread from Uncreepy:
Tweet thread from Uncreepy:
I was too excited before and looked too quickly, I added to the thread and realized I misunderstood the $5 plan. It's actually a requirement on top of the $230 purchase fee in order to use any of his functions (talking, weather, horoscopes, etc). If you don't join the monthly billing, Charlie can't do anything. : /
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Wow that's... a bummer! You would think the extra fee would be, like, some sort of extra or premium features and that he could at least talk back to you for the base price 
I think it's partially to fund continued development of him, too.
I finished translating the new info from his website, TOS, manuals, FAQ and it's on the Twitter thread WyndReed linked to.
All that's left for me to do is write an email to Yamaha asking if it's possible for foreigners to use Charlie. (But I won't be able to write that for a while due to irl stuff.)
I finished translating the new info from his website, TOS, manuals, FAQ and it's on the Twitter thread WyndReed linked to.
All that's left for me to do is write an email to Yamaha asking if it's possible for foreigners to use Charlie. (But I won't be able to write that for a while due to irl stuff.)
This has been a major trend in the consumer robotics industry within the last handful of years, and it is pretty frustrating. Sony's AIBO ERS-1000 and the Groove X Lovot both require significant monthly plans on top of the already expensive hardware. Local consumers in Japan complain about it, overseas consumers complain about it, but ultimately it doesn't matter because those of us that can't afford it are not the target demographic. Compared to those products, Charlie is cheap, but I fear that unless the singing gimmick and social elements are well fleshed-out, it will turn into yet another "Amazon Alexa with a servo motor" product that dies as quickly as it is launched.
If Charlie is 'region-locked', you'd want to set up a network in your house attached to a Japanese VPN. That should resolve any issues.
If Charlie is 'region-locked', you'd want to set up a network in your house attached to a Japanese VPN. That should resolve any issues.
I wrote an email to Yamaha about Charlie. I sent my email in Japanese, but I will only write the English translation here:
Their reply is basically "Thanks for liking Charlie, but we can't guarantee he works outside of Japan."
Here is a translation of their response:
Their reply is basically "Thanks for liking Charlie, but we can't guarantee he works outside of Japan."
Here is a translation of their response:
Ouch. The VPN pico mentioned seems like a fairly solid plan, though still a bit of a risk. I guess if he sings about the weather in Japan, you'd have to give him a Japanese address, too, so he knows what weather to sing about. You might end up having to fool him on a few different fronts in order to let him work
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Like most devices, that would probably be based on the location of the IP rather than some kind of address input. So wherever Charlie's network *thinks* you are would be the location of the weather report. So, in this case, wherever the VPN host is. (All of this is assuming that they wouldn't let you connect Charlie to their cloud service on a foreign IP, but in uncreepy's email they fail to confirm either way. So it could be necessary, or it might not be.)Ouch. The VPN pico mentioned seems like a fairly solid plan, though still a bit of a risk. I guess if he sings about the weather in Japan, you'd have to give him a Japanese address, too, so he knows what weather to sing about. You might end up having to fool him on a few different fronts in order to let him work
Charlie's price page specifically says he can tell you "weather within Japan (日本国内の天気)", I think since they said they made him assuming you'd be in Japan that is why they said it, unless he flat out can't tell you weather outside of Japan.
Can I ask you how difficult it is to set up another network connected to a Japanese VPN? I have a Japanese VPN I use sometimes, but I have no clue where to look/search for to find out about setting one up that Charlie would be able to specifically use if I theoretically obtained him. As in, can you recommend any tutorials?
Charlie won't be able to emulate a virtual network adapter on his own, so you'll have to set up the VPN on your router
How exactly you do that depends entirely on your router model, so there's not really any general tutorials
I've done it myself once, the setup was really finnicky (lots of errors about port assignments and expired certificates), but it should in theory work with all common VPN standards
In my case, the router also only supported VPN settings on a per-network, not a per-device base, so I had to set up a guest wifi network and connect the device I wanted to use the VPN to it while leaving the "main" network untouched
How exactly you do that depends entirely on your router model, so there's not really any general tutorials
I've done it myself once, the setup was really finnicky (lots of errors about port assignments and expired certificates), but it should in theory work with all common VPN standards
In my case, the router also only supported VPN settings on a per-network, not a per-device base, so I had to set up a guest wifi network and connect the device I wanted to use the VPN to it while leaving the "main" network untouched
Yamaha has an English article about Charlie's design (including his packaging), interesting read:
www.yamaha.com
Charlie - Yamaha Design - Yamaha Corporation
Yamaha Design "Synapses" expresses our design passion, through the conceptual keywords organically connecting whole Yamaha product design.
Wow, they have put a ton of thought into every part of the design instead of going „it just looks good“
I also didn‘t know he can move his head and feet, that‘s cute!
I also didn‘t know he can move his head and feet, that‘s cute!
The news about shipping out the preorder Charlies is pretty cute, look at all of them 
They added a page dedicated to the Charlie Plan where you can log in to pay: ホーム
I made an account without any trouble.
I was able to download the My Charlie app (my iPhone is in Japanese). It just kept having a popup that said I need to pay for the Charlie Plan, though.
I will look into it a bit more.
They added a page dedicated to the Charlie Plan where you can log in to pay: ホーム
I made an account without any trouble.
I was able to download the My Charlie app (my iPhone is in Japanese). It just kept having a popup that said I need to pay for the Charlie Plan, though.
I will look into it a bit more.
YYYEESSS!!! It actually worked! It accepted my American debit card and took $4.52 from my bank!
Apparently at some point, Yamaha added a notice at the bottom of Charlie's website and to the Purchase section of their FAQ saying that production of Charlie has ended. But people who own him can still pay for the Charlie plan (which gives him more abundant conversation functions). There isn't even a proper news post about it.
I really thought that if Charlie became discontinued, they'd just open his plan for free so his owners could use him, but I guess they will keep their hands in peoples' pockets as long as possible.
There's only 1 left on their Amazon store, so I think if people were to buy him, it'd have to be through an auction site. Poor little fella didn't last long.
I really thought that if Charlie became discontinued, they'd just open his plan for free so his owners could use him, but I guess they will keep their hands in peoples' pockets as long as possible.
There's only 1 left on their Amazon store, so I think if people were to buy him, it'd have to be through an auction site. Poor little fella didn't last long.
I actually expected that to happen because Yamaha's back to developing the Vocaloid engine...
Charlie wasn't meant to replace or compete with the Vocaloid engine.
He was a "conversation robot" meant to compete with other cute robot companions like Romi, LOVOT, RoBoHoN, and somewhat Pepper or Gatebox. Especially after covid hit, these sort of companions became REALLY popular and were frequent subjects on the Japanese news. Probably to Charlie's detriment, his target audience was more specific, he was supposed to be targeted at young women who didn't want to come home to an empty house.
I think Yamaha couldn't compete with some of the more established robot companions because of its lack of features (reviewers said Charlie got boring really fast). Other robot companions are more customizable (come in different colors and for example, you can even pick the eye color of your LOVOT in their paid app), some of them can even more around the room via wheels, and some have a soft plushie exterior for hugging.
I assume Yamaha thought Charlie would become more popular than he did, then decided costs to add features to the app (they said they would but never did) wasn't worth it, and they didn't want to put in more time/effort to promote him. During his short 2 years, the only promotion they did was like 2 YouTube videos but the rest was exclusively on Instagram (because the women-folk LoOoOve Instagram, probably to promote the "Charlie lifestyle") and they did like 2 or 3 seasonal campaigns to temporarily lend out Charlie in return for social media influencer's reviews and Instagram photos/videos.