What is it with me and robots?
I wanted a gumstix when they first came out, but had a momentary lapse of technofetishism and decided I had 5 perfectly good computers already, some of which even had swanky thing like ’keyboards’ and ’screens’.
Then some guy at essex uni starts playing with helicopters and I decide I want one again (this despite the fact that on reading the paper it transpires that the current ‘swarm’ is 1 helicopter with a flight time of about a minute before the battery wears out, and has an external pc doing all its computation for it).
So, sanity prevailed – I signed up to the gumstix list, bookmarked the odd link and let Bush weaken the dollar until I could get a connex for under 50 quid (under 55 pounds this morning – USA! USA!).
Then this lot pop up on my radar. Swarm robots again, built from BT-enabled gumstix and cameras (and obviously less prone to falling out of the sky and smashing by virtue of their unique ‘not-flying’ abilities) but this time with robot arms. Holy crap.
Loads of good docs on the various components required too. I was always told I should take up electronics, so think its time to see what basic tutorials I can mug up on. ISTR being a bit hamfisted with a soldering iron, so it might be worth getting a breadboard kit or two to get back into it before melting an XScale.
No rush anyway, I need a few more Rumsfeld speeches on exit strategies before 800 dollars gets affordable.
(oh the hubris! Since I opened my fat mouth, the dollar has shot up. as of 1st July 100 bucks now costs me over 56 quid…)