Christmas Robots

We've seen them - they are all the rage in Silicon Valley right now.. and have been for at least a couple of years: the Wow Wee Robots, Flying toys, and realistic human heads (weird). Everything from cutesy little rounded robo-sapien, to the Panda pair, a flying remote control dragonfly, and even the king himself. These things are really fun toys, and nice diversions - the Dragonfly is a ton of fun to maneuver.

One of my favorite places to pickup the odd-to-find office toy is ThinkGeek. A former co-worker of mine gifted me the oh so snazzy Missle Launcher. (insert tire screech sound) ... What do these have in common? Nada. Unless you keep on readin'.



A couple of years ago, I began dissecting a couple of hard drives, an LCD from a CD Duplicator, and a controller board for the CD Duplicator robotics. I had this notion that I could build a partially autonomous robotic thingie out of those bits and maybe an old Dell CPi or CPx running some sort of BSD or Linux flavor.

Unfortunately, due to lack of electronics surplus stores in Tucson, I was unable to even begin to build my robo-buddy.

Since moving back to Silicon Valley, I have re-discovered everything that is circuity-goodness (is that even a word?) Between Halted, Weirdstuff, Fry's (electronics.. not grocery), CRC, and the multitude of other surplus suppliers I don't even know about yet, I am now able to accomplish what I was previously unable to accomplish: I will build my bot.

So - to tie it all together: Fry's has groovy robot toys, which made me think about my robot project, which is now enabled by the USB control system built into the ThinkGeek Missile Launcher toy :)

Stay tuned.. either I will build a groovy robo-thing - or I'll be electrocuted.