Outré USB Gadgets 102
PreacherTom writes, "We've all connected a myriad of useful things to USB ports: flash drives, printers, webcams. How about a vacuum cleaner? Pair of heated gloves? Anti-cubicle missile system? Joseph Pisani offers a listing of some of the most creative USB-controlled gadgets available, and includes a slide show of the most popular."
USB controlled or USB powered? (Score:5, Informative)
Only the little missles look like they could be USB controlled. The rest just seem to be drawing power from the USB port.
I've got the missile launcher, it's okay. (Score:5, Informative)
It takes AA batteries to actually power the launcher motors, with a switch on the underside of the base. The part of the missile that locks into the spring mechanism is actually heavier than the the rest of it, so it doesn't always fly nose-first like you'd think. It also doesn't have much in the way of range. If I could find extra missiles for it I'd experiment a bit with weighting the tips to try to address those issues.
I haven't used the included (Windows-only) control app yet, but a guy wrote a control app for it for OS X that's not too bad. You can find it on Versiontracker, I'm too lazy to hunt it down and make a link right now.
~Philly
uhhh. yeah. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:USB (Score:5, Informative)
USB in the PSU (Score:2, Informative)
Re:USB Powered != USB Gadget (Score:3, Informative)
Re:USB Powered != USB Gadget (Score:3, Informative)
Re:USB "short run" gadgets (Score:3, Informative)
Look again: Silicon Labs [silabs.com]
makes some nifty microcontrollers and you can buy a developer's kit [silabs.com] with in-circuit debugger for a hundred bucks. And you can use sdcc [sourceforge.net] for your compiler.Of course if you want to sell your USB device you need to get your own Vendor ID from the USB-IF.