Autonomous, laser-guided turret takes aim

The homegrown home security options out there just keep getting sweeter and sweeter, as yet another go-getter has conjured up an autonomous turret to hold down the fort while the owners are away buying more capacitors and Fruit by the Foot. The programmable weapon relies on an 8 servo serial controller and a s666n High Torque servo motor, not to mention a good bit of programming to get things in working order. What started out as a curious ambition has now developed into quite a serious project, as the creator is hoping to "develop a weapons platform for the Defcon Bots competition," and judging by what we see here, things are lookin' up. The robotic sentry can apparently take out targets on its own or follow a simple laser to targets and fire away, but alas, what good would a made from scratch robotic piece of artillery be without a video to demonstrate? Click on through to see the firepower.

[tom needer @ May 2nd 2007 4:50PM]

Those projects are all rip-offs of the original by Inventgeek. i really hate it when people take ideas as there own. they may have a differing method of doing it and i give kudos for that. but its not your idea, just your improvement on an existing well publicized idea.

http://inventgeek.com/Projects/usbairsoftturret/Overview.aspx

[Paul Hildebrandt @ May 2nd 2007 6:10PM]

Yeah, there is no way he thought it up on his own. Maybe two people had the idea, it's not all that amazing of an idea. But it's cool that he did it.

[Colin Karpfinger @ May 2nd 2007 9:16PM]

Sorry but you are wrong. I'm pretty sure I started my project before that. Also, if the idea of automated weapons systems is patented by thinkgeek... I'm pretty sure there are a few million Movies out there with impending law suits.

Does inventgeeks turret shoot circles? Can it shoot at a laser pointer? Does it have any vision capabilities at all?

It was a cool project, don't get me wrong. But if you're going to compare the two, the write word should be an IMPROVEMENT, not a ripoff.

[Big @ May 2nd 2007 4:56PM]

There are GREEN lasers available for $500 which can actually burn and cut through dark, non-reflective plastic/rubber surfaces.
The only problem is, they take a long time of focus on a single spot to be effective.

Personally, I'd use the lasers to blind people in a home defence role, but, its so much more effective to develop .177 CO2 pistol turrets for your home mounted to a video camera and a servo actuated swivel.

I'd actually done on e of these home defense systems before (just to see if I could) to stop squirrels from getting in my roof. It was very simple actually: a photo electric eye connected to a model rocket kit, connected to an electric bb gun. Squirrels never knew what hit em!
I'm still picking up bodies !

[Ohmz @ May 2nd 2007 5:19PM]

Nice toy bad grammer.
You've misused "alas" in the post, "alas" is a negative exclamation, alas there is no video would be a proper use.

Sorry for the pedantry, but it's a pet peeve.

[Burt Reynolds @ May 2nd 2007 6:40PM]

Why are you saying Kelsey Grammer is bad? I mean, you couldn't possibly be misspelling grammar while bitching at someone's grammar, could you?

Get your fckn spelling right if you're going to bitch.

[Mike Caraway @ May 2nd 2007 9:32PM]

Though Colin's current robot is his own design and uses his own programing pieced together from existing code, I helped him with some of the mechanics of the first evolution of his defcon bot. I can assure you that the first prototype was working not long after January 1st. The idea of an automated gun may not be unique, but colins designs and programing are original. While he has used portions of other peoples code to help identify targets and lock on them, the credit for the success of the final product should be given solely to colin. In all the discussions Ive had with him about designs, problems, knew directions for the device, I have never once heard the name Inventgeek. Ever. I have yet to actually look it up and find out what it is. You wanna rip on someone, try to build this yourself and you'll figure out that the only moron in the room is you. Piss off

[CVD @ May 2nd 2007 9:41PM]

I don't understand why you are saying that this idea has been "ripped off." The link that was posted to inventgeek surely shows something that is similar but not the same. From what I can tell, the turret posted in this article acts completely on its own, determining its own targets and firing on them. The inventgeek one is a retail product that has been modified to fire an airsoft gun and is controlled by a person manually at a computer. No doubt the inventgeek gun is very cool, and would be very fun, it simply isn't the same thing as what was originally posted.

This turret gun obviously took a serious amount of development to build it. The automated target acquiring alone would take quite a bit of work to implement. Not to mention getting everything to work together.

[Elequin @ May 2nd 2007 10:06PM]

Are you the same person that had the automatic shooting bot at Defcon last year? I didn't stop too long to watch, but it looked like it used a video camera to aim...?

[anonymous @ May 2nd 2007 11:26PM]

I would love to see someone develop something for the car. would be nice to shoot down those crazy ass scooters that zoom in very close to your fenders as they overtake you. Pretty much like the ones on Batman's original batmobile, or in Jame's bond's invisible car (die another day).

[SugarDaddy @ May 4th 2007 9:09AM]

Not quite DARPA material...