Raffi’s writing again, here about the state of technology in R/C cars – and appropriating it to create what he calls “Mixels” – moving pixels…

“…there is a lot of technology being crammed into $15 dollars (and still leaving room for profit) — there is a DC motor, a few gears, RF receiver, RF transmitter, a few LEDs, gearing, capacitors, charger, etc. i think it says quite a lot about the current state of mass technology production…

…Most real hacking involves research and a budget, but radio shack short circuits that whole curve by providing the user with a hacking kit, effectively.

The most interesting, I believe, is the possibility of using zipzaps as a “platform” for something. what would you do if you had a $10 to $15 “mixel” (for lack of a better name — a moving pixel)? The remote control looks trivial to interface to a PC (and its on my ever-growing list of things to do), but the real question is “If you had a cheap and disposable device that you had pretty fine xy control over on the meter scale (but without positioning feedback), what would you do with it?”

Looking forward to see what Raffi does with it!

» Wasted-Bits: Zipzaps