Dance For A Dollar With The YayTM

The YayTM is a device that records a person dancing and judges whether or not the dancing is “Good”. If the YayTM likes the dance, it will dispense a dollar for the dancers troubles. However, unless the dancer takes the time to read the fine print, they won’t realize that their silly dance is being uploaded to YouTube for the whole world to see. Cobbled together with not much more than a PC and a webcam,  the box uses facial recognition to track and rate the dancer.

The YayTM was made by [Zach Schwartz], a student at NYU, as a display piece for the schools Interactive Telecommunication Program. Unfortunately there aren’t any schematics or source code, but to be honest, having one of these evil embarrassing boxes around is probably enough. What song does the YayTM provide for dancing, you ask? Well, be sure to check it out here.

EDIT: [Zack] has followed up with an expanded writeup of the YayTM. Be sure to check out his new page with source code and more info. Thanks [Zack]!

22 thoughts on “Dance For A Dollar With The YayTM

  1. Hey, cool, it’s not just that he thinks automated mockery makes some kind of point worth hearing, but he can’t even run a blog with a working comments system. What a goober.

  2. Badgers badgers badgers, mush room mushroom!

    Seriously… this is a hack? No code, no anything but a “lookie what we did” so there is no proof that it’s not just a hoax with someone watching to press a remote button…

  3. ITP is an abysmal program. NYU cons a bunch of rich artsy types into paying enormous sums for a graduate education in arduino and processing. The student projects are almost always poorly conceived and painfully inept in execution. This project is simply a reflection of the environment in which it was conceived.

  4. Dancing judged from above the waist, wasted! No foot work seen, total defeat! TV censorship from the 1950’s did better.
    You got to move to the music to move the music.
    Lame dancing, lame music.

  5. I come to hack a day out of habit now, reliving the hey day of when it was “hack-a-day” in the true meaning of the blogs title. When every photo was a black and white photo of some cobbled together gizmo.

    I dont mind the arduinos that grace the pages today or the occasional highlighting of a product/device that could be hacked. Sadly Articles like this blatantly disapoint me. Maybe someone could develop a wordpress plugin that asks “does this meet Hack a day standards?” when they press the publish button

  6. – no documentation? (check)
    – rickrolled your readers? (check)
    – not even a link to lame and/or hot chicks dancing? (check)

    I don’t usually like to go negative, but this was even moer lame than the GIRL who put WHEELS on a DRESSER to make a TOOLBOX.

    How about making the last line of any “filler” “hack” an appeal to your readers to use the HaD tip line so we don’t have to read crap tomorrow?

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