remote control baby.

14 August 2012 · by · in toyhacking

Meet toy 5, a cable-controlled truck. Ken and I decided to mux it with toy 6, a baby that gurgles while it crawls on its four little legs.

Despite promising to let me do the hacking and problem solving, Ken took it all into his hands after Dave kindly (and mindlessly) drew what he thought we should do. I only got to do a bit of thinking and some soldering (really fine soldering I must say). But, well.

We managed to get the baby crawl forward, and backward, when we command it to do so with the truck’s cable-control.

And Ken found that there’s a sensor in the baby’s head. What it actually senses is still a mystery, though.

Mother’s milk, maybe?

Thanks to Hackerspace Melbourne for tools and brains, and Ken Lin for having fun with me.

photograph. →

As a result of an auction in Sarah Vanhee's The Great Public Sale of Unrealised But Brilliant Ideas, my bio has become a collective bio:

When they were thirteen, Tintin Wulia and Christiane Berndes wished that Peter Pan would lose his shadow in their neighborhood, because they thought that Peter Pan was kinda sexy. Night after night, they would think a happy thought, wishing that Peter would find them if they could fly. Nothing happened – Tintin and Christiane discovered that Peter had much preferred Wendy.

Three decades later, Tintin and Christiane are still discovering many things. One, that Peter Pan is a fictional character invented by James Matthew Barrie. Two, that the fact that Peter is fictional doesn’t mean that he’s illusory. They are also discovering that, three, it is not a happy thought that one needs to be able to fly – it is, rather, the combination of a passport and a valid visa. And also, four, that the fact that one needs a passport and a valid visa to be able to fly is just shitty.