Ok, so I got a bit bored at some point over Christmas and decided to play with one of my presents – a USB Rocket Launcher.
The first difficulty was getting it to run on my Linux laptop as the drivers were only for Windows. A quick search and Scott Weston sorted me out. Then I thought it should really be controlled by more than just the keyboard so I hooked it into the Thinkpad accelerometer – now movements of the laptop could direct it. Finally, as I knew Andy Stanford-Clark would be a bit disappointed in me if I hadn’t, I MQTT‘d it so that the accelerometer details are published to a broker, a bridge app subscribes to that info and (where appropriate) publishes commands which are received by a final subscriber that actually sends the commands to the rocket launcher. This way you can easily swap out the accelerometer or indeed rocket launcher for something completely different.
I feel quite pleased with myself and slightly ashamed at the same time.
Heh… Maybe you should add in a dual control for firing via MQTT, so like the real ones you need two people to agree to fire before it launches.
I like it. Maybe two people waving their laptops in the air in a kind of freaky synchronized swimming attempt…
just wanted to say, this is a great blog! i love your writing style, and the stuff you talk about (better than you at a pub…
joking! :))
look forward to seeing more posts from you
http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/17/1231254
shake a secure bluetooth connection
this idea implemented using thinkpads would be a great way to securely kick off an event – tie the PM and the Queen together, shake them with their thinkpads, and off the rocket go!
Ta very much – I aim to please! By the way, what’s happened to benfletcher.com?
I’m not sure the Queen would shake her own Thinkpad, she might have to get someone to do it for her…
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