Unleash Your Inner TF2 Engineer With Nerf Sentry Turret
Now you can shoot your friends with Nerf weaponry without ever having to pull the trigger.
Last Friday, we brought you the Team Fortress 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/101290-Get-Ready-to-Get-Heavy-With-the-LEGO-Minigun]. This Friday, we've moved on to a different nerd-favorite medium (from LEGO to Nerf), just as we've moved on to a different Team Fortress 2 class: It's time to play Engineer.
Well, okay, from what we can see, the Do-It-Yourself Nerf Sentry Turret has more in common with the Portal guns than it does the Engineer's weaponry - it's immobile, only fires in one direction, and even shares their oddly-adorable voices. Even so, it's still awesome.
The gun, which is the brainchild of student Adam Greig thanks to post-exam free time, is actually surprisingly simple: A netbook running open-source webcam-motion-detecting program Motion [http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome] is hooked up to a Nerf N-Strike Vulcan. When the computer detects movement, it sends a signal that activates a jury-rigged servo-pencil hybrid arm to pull the trigger (and to play one of the Portal turret sound bytes).
The turret has been equipped with a special battery to boost the fire rate. You'll still have to do all of the reloading manually, though.
First LEGO Heavy Minigun, now a Nerf Engie Sentry Gun? Geez, what's next? A K'nex sticky bomb launcher?
(Via Hack A Day [http://hackaday.com/2010/06/18/nerf-sentry-turret/#more-25231].)
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Now you can shoot your friends with Nerf weaponry without ever having to pull the trigger.
Last Friday, we brought you the Team Fortress 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/101290-Get-Ready-to-Get-Heavy-With-the-LEGO-Minigun]. This Friday, we've moved on to a different nerd-favorite medium (from LEGO to Nerf), just as we've moved on to a different Team Fortress 2 class: It's time to play Engineer.
Well, okay, from what we can see, the Do-It-Yourself Nerf Sentry Turret has more in common with the Portal guns than it does the Engineer's weaponry - it's immobile, only fires in one direction, and even shares their oddly-adorable voices. Even so, it's still awesome.
The gun, which is the brainchild of student Adam Greig thanks to post-exam free time, is actually surprisingly simple: A netbook running open-source webcam-motion-detecting program Motion [http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome] is hooked up to a Nerf N-Strike Vulcan. When the computer detects movement, it sends a signal that activates a jury-rigged servo-pencil hybrid arm to pull the trigger (and to play one of the Portal turret sound bytes).
The turret has been equipped with a special battery to boost the fire rate. You'll still have to do all of the reloading manually, though.
First LEGO Heavy Minigun, now a Nerf Engie Sentry Gun? Geez, what's next? A K'nex sticky bomb launcher?
(Via Hack A Day [http://hackaday.com/2010/06/18/nerf-sentry-turret/#more-25231].)
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