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Smart 'Lego' Set Conjures Up Virtual 3D Twin
philetus writes "New Scientist has up a story on Posey, a hub-and-strut construction kit that senses its configuration and communicates it wirelessly to a computer. From the article: 'If you gave Lego brains, you might get something like Posey, a new hands-on way of interacting with computers developed at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, US. When Posey's plastic pieces are snapped together, an exact copy of the construction appears on a computer screen. Every twist of, say, a stick figure's arm is mirrored in 3D modelling software ... Each piece's plastic shell is stuffed with chips and devices for processing these signals. They are sent wirelessly to a computer using a low-power protocol called ZigBee. This means, bending Posey's pieces can make objects on-screen respond in real time. Right now, each custom-made piece has about US$50 (£25) worth of parts, Weller estimates. But if mass produced, it could be much cheaper.'"
that the ASCII goatse guy doesn't get hold of a set of these.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
Are batteries included? I mean, I know it's a low power protocol, but how long is the power source in this going to last, and is it replaceable?
This little toy's neat, and no mistake--but if you can only use it for, say, 50 hours total and then it loses half its function, then what's the point?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
It seems to me that doing this with actual lego blocks should be much simpler. If each bump on the blocks had a small contact point with the ability to identify what it was connected to, the blocks could daisy chain the information to a computer, which could easily construct a full model of the blocks if it knew how each block was connected to its neighbor. Very cool idea though, kudos to the makers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zigbee
When I was little, I had simple Legos to play with. I became a nerd. If I give my kids this kind of stuff... what will they become? Super-nerds who'll take over the work with their Battle-Poseys?
Lego has brains, called Mindstorms. I'd love to see a Mindstorms app that uses a camera to examine itself, then replicate itself by grabbing from a box of Lego (Mindstorms) and snapping its twin together.
Then watch as it builds an army. Which attacks a toystore and builds a bigger army. Which fights another self-assembling army, wins, and cannibalizes the enemy to rebuild its own wounded ranks to double size. And they build two friends. And so on.
Legoworld reduced to a chunky Grey Goo.
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make install -not war
Whilst I Have not found a way to get rid of it, you can alter the way it interactst with the page.
If you click the little [ / ] icon in the top right of the floating box (same position as close window X) then it switches between the 3 versions:
Left hand float
Across the top floating
Inline between article and comments (basically the original position)
liqbase
there is a video of posey being demoed at a dorkbot pittsburgh meeting here: http://www.allartburns.org/dorkbot/dorkbot-200704-weller.mp4
although posey is still a research project, it is being developed on linux in python.
the source code is available from the code lab mercurial repository here:
http://code.arc.cmu.edu/hg/pyposey
if you are interested in building an application for posey send me an email.