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Automated Sentry Robots
jimbob5 writes "New Scientist reports that you can now buy your own automated Room Defender. 'Who would like this gift? Any child, or anyone who saw the director's cut of Aliens and dreamed of owning one of those automated sentries.'" The New Scientist gift guide looks pretty useful.
Once triggered, it issues a verbal warning then fires a warning shot (a foam disc).
.357 to the thing, rigs up a solenoid trigger-puller set up to activate when the "foam discs" are supposed to launch.
Oh yeah. I can see it now. How long before someone bolts their
Jehovah's witnesses might have something to worry about.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
I've wanted to build one of these things for years. However my goals were a little higher. Complete motion tracking camera/servo system, and it would have fired paintballs or airsoft BBs... Too bad I never thought of the downgrade to common toy as a great selling point. Guess I'm and engineer and not a businessman.
I want this! But I won't get it. We have a little one running around and I can see what would happen some early morning around 4am...
"Mommy, Daddy... I had a bad dream!"
"Exit the room or there will be... trouble!" (fires warning shots, 1/4 payload)
"AAAAARGGGGHHH!!!!! A MONSTER!!!!!" (flees, heavily pelted by nerf discs)
"You were warned! Have a good day and stay out of... trouble."
"ZZzzzzZZZzzZZZZZzzzZZZ" (mom & dad (in unison))
"Waaaaaaahhhhhh" (cries to sleep)
On second thought... that could make for some interesting Skinner experiments where we actually get to sleep for a whole night! Although the little one might not get to sleep at all, living in fear of the menacing turret monster. Hey maybe this could breed a new form of learned Tourette's Syndrome?? I mean what else is going to happen after being pelted by a nerf turret living in your parent's room for your whole childhood, until all you can do is swear randomly. (all the moderators with Tourette's are going to love this comment... can you imagine their reaction??? At least they won't be able to mod this down -- for a while)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
All you have to do is train your dog to sit/stay obediently, then get him to take the shots for you until the ammo runs out. You're free to pillage the room unmolested after that.
Have it push around a vacuum cleaner while it's on patrol.
I have an earlier model. The biggest change is that instead of shooting discs, it howls and then poops on the carpet.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I sent that link to my gf. She has 3 cats, 2 young ones which torment an older one. The old one stays in its room most of the time while the 2 others come in to play mean. I suggested she puts one of these at the entrance to that cat's room to keep the bad ones out.
...and I want one just because it's cool
Trolling is a art,
This isn't impressive.
If it said anything about actually TRACKING the target, I'd be impressed.
As it is, it appears to be little more than a light sensor attatched to a rapid-fire nerf gun. i.e. Dumb-fire, no aiming.
If it says otherwise, I'd love to know... but I saw nothing to indicate that.
I was going to get one of these but then realized it wouldnt take long for wife wife to figure out how to disable it with an EMP grenade.
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?
....wouldn't be as fun as liberating my sister's room. I want a unilateral robot room liberator/democracy imposer.
The boss will never sneak in on me again, catching me watching pr0n during work hours.
Quote from the customer reviews:
:)
"Bedroom? Stuck it in me garden, and that pesky cat ain't come round no more!"
Phil, Harrogate
So now Phil doesn't have a cat in his garden, but he has to search in the bushes for the bullets and he likes that
Amazing.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Why all the bloat? Just give me Assault Mode!
Can you imagine an office full of these things. Hundreds of cubicles flinging nerf discs everywhere. That is until someone figures out how to use AOL CD's as ordinance.
...that can really persuade people to go away .
sigs, as if you care.
They've had them since I was a kid. There were little motion alarms, something that shot ping pong balls, etc. I built one of these in my high school electronics class - the assignment was to wire a "home security" system to the user port of a C64, the home security system was then installed in the framing of the "house" that the wood shop students would build, then tear down every year.
We wired up an electronic valve attached to an air compressors tank, and it would blast "invaders" in the face with air, and a sparker right in front of the nozzle. As you can imagine, we weren't allowed to use acetalyne.
This is a pretty chinsy looking toy, a plastic piece of shit that shoots foam disks. There's no technology there to be interested in. Oooh ooh a motion sensor! Buy it for christmas, its broken by new years.
Another slashvertisement, nothing more.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.
This, combined with the teleportation research we read about the other day, can only convice me that we will soon be overrun by zombies, imps and cacodemons, and that only sentry robots will protect us!
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
What happens when the super intelligent monkeys get their hands on these? Seriously people, we can defeat the monkeys and we can defeat the robots, but not at the same time!!!!!
She will likely have to defeat my current wife in combat first...
That's a great idea! We can oil them both up and broadcast it live. The first ever Slashdot Pay-Per-View.
BTW the first yahoo to make the "Broad-cast" pun gets a -1 mod.
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?
Remember Family Guy?
"Present hall pass now!"
Girl timidly shows hall pass.
"PRESENT HALL PASS NOW!!!!"
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Great. A bunch of little illegitimate gadgets runnig around beeping Mommy, Daddy.
Busy aligning my non-linear thoughts.
So,
My parents had a flower bed that the neighbourhood cats used as their litter box.
Dad got fed up with that and built a little contraption.
He rigged up a booby trap with a wire and a clothes peg. When the cats tripped the wire the clothes peg pulled off and broke a circuit with a battery and one of those old style magnesium flashes that one used to have for cameras in the 70s.
So the cats would walk in there at night, with pupils dilated to the size of grapes and preparing to do their business.
And trip the wire and.... *flash*!!!
The wire got tripped a few times. Once per cat in the area I would presume. And then never again.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
Freeze the scene in which Cpl. Hicks sets up one of the Sentry guns with an amber-screened laptop, and you'll get an idea of James Cameron's fanatical attention to (convincing) detail - the sentry guns have all sort of settings for "Interrogation modes" "IFF (identify friend or foe)", and an expected target profile, "Soft, Hard, semi-hard." Very cool stuff, but the theatrical cut didn't suffer too badly without that and other scenes. Two of my favorite films, Die Hard and Aliens were long (2.25 hrs apiece), but felt much shorter because of excellent writing, directing and a smoothly flowing storyline.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but something seems odd about the term "5-quadrant."
I really need one outside my office door to keep the boss from cutting into my quality time reading slashdot
Now where is my Cloak of Invisibility
if it actually aimed the disk, then I'd think about it... mostly to keep my year old son in line.
Check out the CMUCAM: CMUcam vision sensors.
It can be hooked to servos and automatically track objects, plus the CMUcam2 can control multiple servos, so you could have it be a sentry without having to do any wacky wiring or microprocessing.
Wow, you guys take domestic dispute to a whole new level of technology.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I'm getting me one and modifying it so it shoots saw blades instead of foam disks. Ain't NOBODY getting near my stack of porn!
Be very careful if you're going to be setting up shooting blades around your stack of porn. If there's any chance you forget to deactivate it when you're "in the mood", with all the blood out of your brain, you may accidentally "disable" yourself from ever using your porn again.
Reminds me of the turrets in Half-Life. Actually this could be a great way to defend my computer space for the week after Half-Life 2 is out. I wouldn't have to stop playing, or even say "get out of here". Better gaming through robotics!
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
That is correct. In the director's cut the Marines (+ Ripley and Burk) watch nervously as the sentry's ammo ran down. The aliens stop attacking the sentries just as their ammo was nearly exhausted. Instead they breach the perimeter through the ductwork and come down from the ceiling. In the original version the Aliens don't confront any sentry guns and just find the ductwork as a way arround a series of welded doors.