Well, this metal suit might not make you a dinosaur, but it would be perfectly possible for you to play one on your computer. Retailing on eBay for a mere $2,397.99 OBO (plus Freight for a 350 pound box), this device was made and used for the motion capture of Ugobe’s Pleo Robot. With the right external components (no word on what those are), it would be perfectly possible to get this suit up an going back on Motion Capture as all the onboard electronics are included. This setup would be perfect for anyone planning an animated dinosaur movie that needs some reference movements, or for any mad scientist engineer who needs a control rig for a 40 story robotic dino of death. The possibilities are endless!

[eBay via Engadget]

We reported that Pleo was given a second chance a while back, but it was great to see it in person. We got to pet a stock one, and it seemed very responsive like we’ve heard, and turned its head whenever it was pet, but as hackers, we enjoyed seeing it with the skin ripped off.

Those of you who have played with a Pleo know exactly where this is going. The Pleo averages about 30 minues per 2-3 hour charge. Just swap batteries you say? Nope, the battery packs aren’t available. Fortunately, you can make your own pretty easily.  The basic frame is a standard battery pack for 6 AA’s. There are only a few modifications necessary to line up the leads and make it fit once you’ve loaded it with batteries.

[Robert] sent us some news on Pleo’s future. Apparently a company called Jetta has bought the rights to Pleo during the bankruptcy sale. They intend on re releasing the cute little robot. They mention that they have built parts for the iRobot line. We wonder what they’ll do, if anything, to make it more appealing.

[Andy] wrote in to show us how he hacked his Pleo to be controlled by a Wii Nunchuck. He has installed Xbee units for the communication as well as written a “skit” that allows the Pleo to just stand there and wait for commands. He is using an Arduino to interpret the Nunchuck input and send it to the Pleo. It’s a pretty cool proof of concept, but the response time is pretty slow. This might be due to the Arduino’s slower serial communication rate.  Yes, we said you might want to refrain from hacking them, due to their impending extinction, but did you expect us to stick to that? If you’re going to dig into one, you may also be interested in how to hack the Pleo for face recognition and remote control.

Ugobe has officially filed bankruptcy. This is bad news for Pleo. That lovable little dino bot is no longer being produced. If you’ve got one you might want to refrain from hacking, just in case it’s worth something one day. As the point out at Engadget, another toy company might buy up the rights, but we doubt it.  At roughly $250 per unit, these things probably weren’t flying off the shelves.

The two tutorials released by GRIP cover adding wireless communication with a PC and adding a higher resolution camera to the unit. The goal was to make the platform capable of doing facial recognition.

The first tutorial is to replace the web cam. GRIP did a fantastic job of documenting this upgrade. There are tons of pictures, covering every step, 15 pages of them actually. The people at Ugobe have done a good job as well, its hard not to feel a tinge of sympathy for the poor guy as its getting disassembled.

They have a few areas that have been updated as well, such as the fact that they later came back and built in a new power supply to avoid interference. The updates are in line with the instructions, as opposed to tacked on the end. That’s nice. Its always such a pain to get to the end of a tutorial to notice that the author posted a different and better way of doing an early step.

The second and much shorter tutorial is where they add the communication with the PC. Using an XBee RF module, they patch into the Pleo’s serial port. This installation doesn’t require any modifications to the structure of the Pleo and only involves 2 wires being soldered. Once it is connected, you can send commands to the Pleo using Dino-MITE by BAUER Independents.

GRIP has done a fantastic job on this tutorial. They ask that we also help them research our hopes and objections for future robotics by taking their survey.

[thanks Martin Diruf]