[Noisebridge-discuss] hacking Spykee robot

[Al Billings]

This looks pretty fun. I'm game.

On Oct 15, 2009, at 3:21 PM, Gian Pablo Villamil wrote:

> I recently picked up a Spykee robot, basically it's a WiFi
> controllable robot with a webcam for a head.
> (http://www.spykeeworld.com/spykee/US/index.html - annoying flash
> site).
>
> I've built it, it works, you can actually control it over the
> Internet, but it has a lot more potential. The manufacturer was
> supposed to release an Open Source SDK, but has dragged their feet on
> it. It seems to be running some kind of embedded Linux, connecting to
> the internal serial port seems to give access to the internal file
> system.
>
> The lack of the SDK hasn't prevented a bunch of people from hacking
> it, by reverse engineering the control protocol, and doing clever
> hacks like using the LEDs (which are user controllable) to trigger
> additional motors instead:
>
> http://www.spykeedev.net/
> http://www.spykeemods.co.uk/
> http://www.spykee.org/Default.aspx
>
> I've successfully used the streaming webcam driver from SpyKee dev to
> feed video into VJing app, amongst other things.
>
> Anyone else want to play? It seems like quite a capable robotics
> platform, shame the makers haven't seen fit to release the SDK.