FREE RABBITS OS

A new OS for your Karotz. It's simple to install, it's simple to use, and it's free!

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TIMEBUTTON APPS

An appstore full of apps for your Karotz. Free to use. And we still add new apps!

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BONJOUR!

Nous avons une section spéciale pour les propriétaires français de Karotz.

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Recent Activity: 17 minutes ago

♦ 17 minutes ago, a Karotz did an update of its Timebutton software.

♦ 20 minutes ago, a Karotz woke up.

♦ 1 hour ago, a Karotz went to sleep.

januari 29, 2022

FreeRabbits moved to a new server

Today (29 January 2022), we moved our website to a new server. We hope you and your Karotz didn't notice it.

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juli 17, 2021

Downtime July

On Wednesday, July 14 2021, the main server in our data center crashed.
That's why we had an outage between July 14 and July 16. We apologize for the inconvenience.

All systems are up again. If your Karotz still doesn't show a green light, turn it off and on again.

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december 31, 2020

Statistics December 2020

As promised in April, here are some statistics from our database.

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april 01, 2020

500 Rabbits Registered

Today, we reached the number of 500 registered Karotz rabbits! 
Thanks to our visitors and thanks to you registering your Karotz, our services are still alive. 

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maart 29, 2020

Corona

In December 2019 we all heard the news about the Corona virus in Wuhan, China. Now, in March 2020, our region faces the same situation.

Because we can imagine that you want to follow the Corona news, we added three Corona-news-podcasts-apps to the Timebutton Appstore.

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december 31, 2019

The year 2019

The year 2019 passed by, and although we didn't write any blogs this year (except for this one), we were still busy helping all those Karotz in the world to have a happy life. So let's look back on the last day of this year, to see what 2019 brought us.

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november 24, 2018

Sinterklaas 2018

Have you ever heard of Sinterklaas? It is a saint in a december-tradition in the Netherlands. Did you know we have a real "Sinterklaas App" in the Timebutton Appstore, on page 6?

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juni 27, 2018

Adding drivers for extra hardware (Part 2)

My Karotz friend from the UK changed his WIFI-router, and since then, his Karotz dropped out of the WIFI-network and didn't came back. 

A solution might be upgrading Karotz with a newer WIFI-network-adapter, and that's what we did. Read this article to find out how we saved his rabbit.

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mei 07, 2018

Adding drivers for extra hardware (Part 1)

About a year ago, a French Karotz owner called "Slash" contacted me. He is using an Edimax EU-4230 USB to LAN adapter to connect his Karotz to his LAN, and succeeded in cross-compiling a driver for it. He used insmod to insert this driver into the Linux kernel. This way, he was able to add hardware to Karotz that isn't supported out-of-the-box.

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december 27, 2017

New TTS provider: Microsoft Speech Services

We want to inform you about a change in our Text-to-Speech (TTS) provider. We now use the Bing text to speech API from Microsoft as our main TTS provider. 

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oktober 17, 2017

Brownie

Lets talk about Karotz Brownies. My Karotz has been in our living room permanently since november 2015, so for almost two years now.

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september 23, 2017

Rab-bit Pi

This weekend, a Karotz owner named Lee contacted me about his idea to create new internet connected rabbits. Lee started an Indiegogo campaign. 

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mei 29, 2017

Star Wars Moods

We just published six new apps in the TimeButton Appstore

Three of them are new moods and were created by Waarzawa. These new moods contain sounds from the Star Wars movies.

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april 27, 2017

Karotz likes Metro tickets from Brussels

Karotz user Denis has discovered that the Metro tickets from Brussels can be read by Karotz. He created a video. 

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december 22, 2016

How to control the ears of your Karotz

In this blogpost, I'll try to explain how you can control the ears of your rabbit.

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december 12, 2016

Text to Speech with Polly and Voice RSS

Our Karotz lost its voice on the 8th of December, but we found new voices! 

Maybe you haven't noticed, but Karotz lost its voice on the 8th of December. We maybe have a solution for this problem.

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november 15, 2016

November News

Let's give you a short update about what is going on here, because the latest news was written some time ago, but a lot has happened in the meantime.

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juli 30, 2016

Free Rabbits OS

You haven't heard from us in a while. That's because we were busy creating a brand new OS: Free Rabbits OS.
We are very proud to announce the launch of the first version today. Our Karotz is running this version for a few weeks now, and is stable and happy with it.

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mei 26, 2016

Changing Karotz Firmware (part two)

In the previous post, I described how to extract the original Karotz Root Filesystem (Rootfs) from Violet/Mindscape to a (virtual) Linux machine, using "cramfsck". We now have a directory with the original firmware files from the read-only part (i.e. the flash memory) of our Karotz.

We can now change these files on our Linux system. When finished, we want to re-CRAM the files back to an image. We can use this new image to flash our Karotz with our custom firmware. If this succeeds, our Karotz will have a modified Root filesystem and we can make more modifications. 

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april 28, 2016

Changing Karotz Firmware (part one)

I wanted to know if it is possible to change the (flash) firmware, the so called "Root File System (Rootfs)" of my Karotz. I'm lucky to have multiple USB-keys with original firmware files with version 12.07.19.00. What if I could re-program this firmware, for example to update Busybox to the latest version? 

This is part one of two about changing Karotz firmware.

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april 10, 2016

SSH with Dropbear and your Karotz

In this post I'll share my Dropbear SSH adventures with you. Dropbear is an SSH server. With SSH, you can remote login to your Karotz and get a remote shell using a secure (encrypted) protocol. You can login with a username/password but also with a (public and private) key-pair.

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april 07, 2016

Zermelo instruction video

We created an instruction video. The video will explain how to connect Zermelo to your Karotz.

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april 02, 2016

Appstore March 2016

In March 2016, we did some minor and major changes to the TimeButton AppStore. We changed the userinterface, added some Apps, connected to new services and more. Read the post if you want to know what kept us busy.

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maart 06, 2016

Ethernet - a wired network connection

This week, I've ordered a USB network adapter for my Karotz. On the webshop Azerty.nl, they promised to deliver in a few days, and they did.

A Karotz needs a USB network adapter with the Moschip MCS783x chipset. So I choose the Startech USB2106S.

I wanted to know what is happening behind the scenes to enable it.

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februari 24, 2016

TTS Cleanup

On nabaztag.forumactif.fr, a French Karotz owner named DuplO asked for help. His rabbit didn't speak anymore. I did a rewrite of the original TTS file and asked him to download this file. This helped to solve the problem, his rabbit is speaking again.

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februari 10, 2016

More TimeButton Apps

The TimeButton software with our Appstore has been online for a few weeks now. 
Every weekend, we have added some new apps.

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januari 24, 2016

The TimeButton Appstore

A new year has started, well, is already a few weeks old. In these weeks, we have been busy to create a new Karotz experience for you.

We have created an Appstore full of TimeButton apps.

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december 29, 2015

Top 2000

Every year, between Christmas and New Years Day, there is a radio program called 'the Top 2000' 

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december 23, 2015

A Christmas Carol

Just on time before Christmas Eve, we present you "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. 

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december 22, 2015

Lets play Bingo!

Maybe you want to play Bingo during Christmas Holidays, or on Christmas Day with your family? Let your Karotz call the numbers, and let FreeRabbits.nl pick them. 

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december 08, 2015

Disney Christmas Songs

Have you ever been to Disneyland? If so, you will remember the typical Disney Music all over the place. Everywhere you walk, you'll hear music. And during Christmas, you'll hear special Christmas Music all over the park. Well, good news! Your Karotz can play this unique Disney Christmas Music! Read on...

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november 29, 2015

Church Rabbit

You don't want to go to church, but still want to know what is going on? Read on to find out how to use your Karotz as a Church receiver.

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november 17, 2015

Read an RSS Feed Every Day

Have you seen our RSS-Service? It allows you to let your Karotz read an RSS-feed (for example the daily news). Or do you want your rabbit to read your favorite RSS-feed every day at a specific time? That is possible using a Python script and our Karotz RSS Service. Follow our instructions!

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november 11, 2015

How to change the button of your rabbit

I wanted to make use of the button of my Karotz, and wondered how to change its actions.
In this post, i'll try to explain how you can assign multiple actions to the button on your rabbits head.

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november 11, 2015

If This Than That

Niek did some experiments with IFTTT (If This Than That). Connect your rabbit to the rest of the world!

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oktober 30, 2015

How your rabbit speaks (using Text To Speech)

In this post, I will try to explain how your Karotz can talk, that is changing Text To Speech (TTS).

When you enter text and submit it to your Karotz, it is not changing it into speech by itself. Instead, it is using a service from a company called Acapela.

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oktober 11, 2015

Network dropouts related to ARP

Since I have my Karotz up and running on my Wifi network, it sometimes (or often) does not respond to a web request by different browsers of different devices. There are more people having this problem, and they solved it by pinging their Karotz on a regular basis. I wanted to know what is going on, so continue to read why this is happening.

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oktober 08, 2015

Links to a lot of information

There is a lot of useful, funny and interesting information about your rabbit on the world wide web. You want to know all about your Karotz, even how it looks inside? Take a look at these links!

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oktober 04, 2015

Karotz Diagnostics (USB key)

I decided to create a bootable USB key to collect diagnostic information about my Karotz, including a list of available Wifi networks, as the (Wifi interface of) the Karotz sees them.

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oktober 02, 2015

Reconfigure your Wifi

I wanted to be able to reconfigure the Wifi settings of my rabbit with a bootable USB key. I succeeded in creating a USB key with the tools to change your Wifi and Network settings. 

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september 29, 2015

Install instructions for Open Karotz (with extra steps)

When I installed Open Karotz, I had to change a few steps in the install procedure described on the Open Karotz webpages. These are the steps I recommend to install Open Karotz.

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september 27, 2015

USB Boot - Booting a Karotz from a USB key

I wanted to boot my Karotz from USB and discovered how this works. 

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september 26, 2015

They arrived!

The rabbits arrived! Yesterday, Niek and I visited Alice and drove home with a car full of rabbits. 

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september 02, 2015

Karotz - The adventure begins

This weekend, I was reading some articles about the Internet of Things and Robotics on the web. This remembered me about Karotz, a robot-rabbit. My friend Niek temporary owned a Karotz because he participated a social experiment with, lets say, 'robotic rabbits'.

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