The hand would receive orders what key should it press (either from another keyboard, from the web, wherever), would move above the desired key and press it.

It seems the drive belt (read: cheap rubber band) had slipped off the carousel. D’oh! I fixed that, but who uses CDs anymore? Hence the reason I got it: I want to hack a DVD (burner, probably) drive in place of the CD one and interface the onboard CD catalogue thingy to some kind of software to keep track of DVDs, install discs, burned backup discs, etc.

The only road-blocks are: 1) finding the time/space, and 2) getting over my fear of completely ruining both a DVD drive and disc changer. :P

Also, who cares about the stupid hand-shaped, Chinese Furby? There are too many cool/useful hacks out there to waste time on that junk…

One day I want to make a robot arm with miniature servos controlled by a computer which is in turn controlled with a PS2 joypad.

The only problem is finding the time to transform them in valuable projects!

I thought the animatronic Elvis would be added to my pile of stuff to hack someday, but this one actually stuck for once. :)

Following that, articulate the fingers individually. Using cord that alternately wraps/unwraps around a motor would probably allow for individually addressable digits (so to speak) with a minimum of fuss.

Once you’re done with that, a binary clock that uses finger up / down to show 1s and 0s :) You’d have to encode the time in an arduous way though (somehow compress it in to no more than 32 at a time)

The favorite bits include a operating room style equipment arm, a 2hp blender, Parts from powered windows, two 20lb pure Teflon cylinders, this breaker-flipper of a light that pivots and has a switch marked “solar ray – off – heat ray”, a functional drill press that the garbage man would’ve made off with, an overbuilt ptz camera with 20x optical zoom, and all of this epic scsi equipment from a thumper truck.

Most promising is probably the scsi equipment. A buddy of mine rescued the stuff from a metal recycler, but he had to be speedy so he only got a carload of the little bits. He’s anti-clutter so I ended up with most of it. Lots of drives and redundant power controllers and stuff, but also these funky boards with beefy relays on them. They look like the most promising home automation component ever.

Should’ve seen it when we first got them. He was like “I’m bringin’ SCSI back”, and doing this horrifying Justin Timberlake routine up until I saw what he had in his trunk. I stared a bit, then he said he’d kill me if I started singing “my humps”.

Sorry for the rant. Before I shunt my flow I think I’ll plug the ultra-pertinent T. Edison quote, “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”