Disco Shooty Tin Dog

So far, I've talked , written , blogged about the case/body for my 'droid'. Although it's going to be pretty cool to have a little K-9 running/rolling about, I really need to look at what I want him to do and how I'm going to do it. So here's some thoughts and observations. The Raspberry Pi is pretty much a fully functional PC. It's not a particularly powerful device, but that's by design, and it kind of adds to the whole DIY ethos I suppose.  The full specs are here , but the main features are:- 700Mhz ARM Processor 256 Mb of Ram USB Ethernet Videocore 4 GPU supporting full HD with HDMI  and RCA connector Internal storage is via a standard SD Card, so 32Gb or so for local files. Here's a nice diagram... You'll see from the diagram that only real I/O for the device is via USB. You might recall from an earlier post that one of the reasons I'm doing this is to have K-9 move around, so I'm going to need to figure out how

Five days later and no activity on my EBay bid - K-9 was mine!  The bid ended on a Sunday night and I approved the payment right away though Pay Pal. Now we just needed to wait... Wednesday I got the message through that K-9 had shipped... Friday, I arrived home to my box or robot fun! K-9 was exactly what I expected. No remote, but both ears were missing. I found them in a little bag at the bottom of the box.  Thankfully, they hadn't snapped off, they push in and out, but they're a bit loose, I'll need to look into how they can be fixed better WHEN I CUT OPEN HIS HEAD! Below are my two K-9's. The one on the left is the "new" one, (I think!) I'll need to find a way to tell them apart - I don't want to carve up my good one by mistake.

Ok. so now I knew what I was going to do with the Raspberry Pi - build a 'real' K-9. Next I needed a case. There is no way I'd do anything to my own beloved Radio Controlled K-9, certainly not take a Stanley Knife and a Screwdriver to it. So I needed another donor.  ***Fires Up EBay*** I found quite a few K-9s on EBay, most loving looked after, some still in the packaging. Looking at the current bids and some historical searches, it looked like I might need to pay between £50 and £100 for another one.  That would be fine(!) if this K-9 was going on display or even into storage, but I couldn't spend that sort of cash on one to chop up.  Thankfully, I found this fella. His listing had a couple of points that intrigued me. His was sold as seen (what was wrong with him? Ah yes, he's missing an ear) and he came without a controller although one was pictured with him. Oddly, the remote in the picture is different to the one that came with my own K-9. Mine h

Hi. There’s only two things you need to know about me to understand if this blogs for you. I’m a software developer and a Doctor Who fan. Still with me?  Good, let’s move on... I’ve been fascinated by the Raspberry Pi since I first heard about it a couple of years ago.  For more details  go here , but basically, it’s a fully functional PC on a circuit board the size of a credit card - and it costs just £25.00.  It’s intended for educational use, but at that size and price, you can imagine lots of people are having lots of ideas about what it can be used for. Like all good geeks, I wanted one, but didn’t really have any ideas about what to do with it.  As the computer is literally a circuit board with some ports nailed onto it, my first idea was to build a case for it. As with any any new product in this market, as soon as it’s announced, there springs up a secondary market for accessories.  So, you can buy a smart looking case like this... Or like this... Build one yo