Bomb disposal robot with Lego gripper

lego

[Krash] had a lot of fun hacking up his Spy Gear TRAKR; we're just lucky he was able to move a suspicious Shrek doll before it detonated. The now discontinued Spy Gear TRAKR serves as the basis for [Krash]'s build. This tiny remote-controlled toy transmits video back to its remote and makes us very jealous of the awesome toys our nephew has. Thankfully, the engineers behind the TRAKR made it … [Read more...]

Spy Video TRAKR: software and first hack

trakr-hacked

Our initial view of the Spy Video TRAKR “App BUILDR” site had us believing this would be an internet-based code editor and compiler, similar to the mbed microcontroller development tools. Delving deeper into the available resources, we’re not entirely sure that’s an accurate assessment — TRAKR may well permit or even require offline development after all. Regardless of the final plan, … [Read more...]

Spy Video TRAKR: the teardown

trakr-camera-slide

Last Friday we looked at Wild Planet’s Spy Video TRAKR programmable RC vehicle mostly from an end user perspective. Much of our weekend was spent dismantling and photographing the device’s internal works, and poring over code and documentation, in order to better gauge the TRAKR’s true hackability. Our prior review included some erroneous speculation…we can clarify a number of details … [Read more...]

Spy Video TRAKR: first impressions

trakr-box-back

At the Bay Area Maker Faire this past May, we had our first glimpse of Wild Planet’s Spy Video TRAKR, a $130 radio-controlled toy with some surprises under the hood. On the surface, the Spy Video TRAKR — the latest addition to the popular Spy Gear toy line — is an R/C tank with a video camera and night vision, with the added ability to download new “apps” from the internet for … [Read more...]