Well, I’ve to admit that, despite the (outrageous) $3000 tag price, I haven’t been reluctant to buy one in order to support the project. I played around with Q.bo for some times before loosing interest in it: the community weren’t really active and, moreover, the project received little or no updates at all from TheCorpora.

For the last few years, my Q.bo ended up being forgotten in a corner of my office - with many other geek stuffs - at least until TheCorpora wrote their very first post in 4 years, on September 29th 2016:

It’s been already four years since we launched our Q.bo project to the market. (…) Q.bo’s sales figures did not reach our initial forecasts (…) The idea that prompted us to launch Q.bo was to develop a high-tech robot open source (…) but this goal has been undermined to some extent by the high cost involved in high technology (…) Perhaps our resources were limited but our commitment and passion didn’t decrease at any time. If we have been overwhelmed by events and we couldn’t serve our customers the way they deserve, we apologize to those who have felt neglected by us (…) We thank all those who trusted us and now have a Q.bo.

At least, they apologized and thanked me. By the way, it sounds like I’m not the only one feeling neglected looking at comments on their blog:

Did you noticed the “Comments are closed.” that follows? It will matters.

Fast forwarding to March 20th 2017, they announced the Q.bo One along with a revamped website - followed by an Indiegogo campaign.

Unlike Qbo, Qbo One is designed to be a desktop interactive robot closely aligned as a product for everyday folks. It is easy to use and understand as long as you put your heart into it.

Q.bo One

Such good news made me feel like it was a good time for my Q.bo to be back on my desk again! I’d first need to get my hands on schematics, and probably re-install the OpenQbo distribution on it for a fresh start?

TheCorpora

But wait… Where are my Q.bo schematics, PCB, or parts list?

(…) thanks to Arduino, whose flexibility has allowed us to design two boards (of the five contained in Q.bo) compatible with this platform, and that we will deliver to the community in open source format (…)

Did I missed something? I can’t find those files. Since TheCorpora revamped their website they disappeared, violating whatever “open” license they choose. No more luck with the OpenQbo distribution or their wiki: openqbo.org is down.

openqbo.org is down.

Arduino source code for the boards along with some ROS demo are still available on their GitHub, but rather useless without schematics, pinouts or operating system.

I first tried to ask TheCorpora using their so-called “forum” which is, in fact, a lightweight Questions & Answers:

Surprisingly, once your question has been filled and submitted, she’s awaiting moderation:

Guess what? It’s been a long time, and my question didn’t publicly showed up yet, not even in the unanswered section.

Even if they’re not providing an email address on their website, you can find some in the legal page but still no luck, I never received a reply:

Obviously, trying to post a comment on their blog is a no-go since comments have been disabled a long time ago, and you’re not allowed to post a question on their Indiegogo campaign until you’ve committed to give money.

The Ugly.

After all, TheCorpora may be quite busy those days? Far from being discouraged of my attempts to save my orphaned Q.bo, I sent a tweet to @QboRobot:

Guess what? No replies. But TheCorpora immediately blocked my Twitter account from accessing their feed:

Bummer.

Discriminative Q&A, buried email address, disabled blog comments and unresponsive mailbox on top of an autocratic Twitter account.

What happened? Did TheCorpora lost their soul despite Francisco Paz own words?

(…) I’ve always believed that Robotics should have its base in an open community where knowledge flows and that we must banish, once and for all, the model of closed laboratories surrounded by absolute secrecy (…)

While probably violating some GPL (or similar) license which they were so proudly promoting, TheCorpora is sending a smelly message to both past and future supporters.

Beyond feeling neglected, Q.bo and I are now feeling rejected.

“Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum”