This has to be the very nerdiest thing I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Remember the Erector set? A bunch of metal pieces with nuts and bolts to stick’em together, and a little battery-powered motor to make the toy crane or train or whatever actually move?
Well, there’s a company called 80/20 that makes what they call an “Industrial Erector Set”: the same fundamental principle as the Erector set of yesterday—simple individual parts that can be combined in many different ways—but taken to the “industrial” level. The devices made from parts they provide can actually be used in production environments to do real things—they’re not just toys for kids to play with.
So, this company, using their “industrial” erector set parts, put together a device of sorts that could manipulate a Rock Band guitar. As if this wasn’t geeky enough, they then hooked up a camera and a computer to this device. The camera watches the screen, as a human would, detects the symbols that mean a button on the guitar should be pressed, and then sends synchronized signals to the guitar-bot that will play Rock Band (near) perfectly.
Truly, this is a triumph of amazingly geeky proportions.
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I forget exactly where I saw it, but I saw another one that was similar – though not built with an industrial Erector set!
It’s a bit silly, but this makes me uncomfortably feel like I’ve been out-smarted by a machine, because all my Rock Band guitar efforts have been shameful variations on a theme of fail. I console myself with thinking this console couldn’t pass a Turing test…