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Lego Mindstorms DJ
jagger writes: "How often have you heard someone at a party say, 'Oh, change the music, nobody is dancing to this song!' Well, that problem is now solved with this lego dj that detects whether the dance floor is hopping or not and also responds to hand motions from people in front of its camera."
I like the product, and it has an excellent price for what you are getting, but I would be willing to pay $150-200 if it was wireless. Heck, it would be more useful if it had a longer cord - but wireless is truely where it would be great.
Imagine creating a web-cam bot that could roam around the house (at least until its batteries died) under control from a web page based interface!
I guess until they do this, one will have to cobble together thier own wireless cam solution (maybe one of those X-Cams mounted on the bot)...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
What would be interesting would be to combine the CueCat scanner and the Lego Mindstorms. For instance, I am sitting at my desk. In my cd-player, which has a massive sound system, I want to change the CD. Instead of getting up to do it, I scan in a bar code related tot he CD I want to hear. The robot changes it for me.
I am not sure how either of these two devices work (yet), but the fusion of the two could be kind of cool.
-Frijoles-
All right! Now we've replaced the band, we've replaced the DJ... In a few years, we'll finally be able to replace those blasted dancers! Behold, the party of the future: perfect and pristine.
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I am not a mindsorms owner (IANAMO), but I believe that there have been ports of several languages to the platform. For example, there's an old /. article that discusses one.
I got my Vision Command the other day, and I must say it is pretty impressive. The camera is actually pretty descent and the Lego studs make it the coolest computer cam out there. The software could stand to be more powerful, but at the price it's pretty good. Unfortunately, you are still stuck with the lousy Mindstorms programming "language." Also, the camera's observations are unchangable and execute continuously (ie. you can't detect motion in the upper-left corner now and look for blue later). You also can't observe two things simultaneously. However, the abilities that it does have (observe movement, color, light and interact with the RCX) are quite versatile. I expect Lego to be updating this software in the future and this idea has a lot of promise. Overall, this is probably the coolest thing to come out of Lego since the original computer interface in the 80's. For under $100 (including camera, software, and a good assortment of pieces), you'd be crazy not to buy it.
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
Feel free to add that to your, and your friend's, cookie.txt file. :)
what happens when it gets 30yrs old?
Does it get overweight, short, loud, annoying, lose any trace of wit and intelligence it may have had in its 'younger years', and play mediokre venues to chat up hundreds of women a nite and finally pull the dirtiest 'famous for fifteen minutes shag' girl, and ends up getting her famous for only 15 seconds then collapsing in a 'coronary waiting to happen' type slouching pile on the edge of the bed?
Good, cos I hate DJs who do that (PS sorry for the rant, I been listening to some asshome DJ on Radio 1 here in the UK and he been pissing me off
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PROUD to be GEEK
*Man walks up to the camera, gives it the finger*
Computer:
Command interpreted, beginning the purge function... activating lasers... targetting... targetting... target acquired...
Lasers firing.
Complaint remedied.
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Even scorpions dream, Boone... give it time...