I want to make a toy that will allow me to play with my 7 month-old neice and year.5-old nephew, who live in Germany and Virginia, respectively. I video chat with them on a regular basis, but I can't play. Perhaps I can write a video processing program that will allow me to move my body in front of the camera and effect a light-up or noise-making toy remotely. The wireless module would be used to connect the plushie to the remote computer and receive/send data through the internet to the video program. Squeezing one part of the toy may make it rain flowers over the video of me, for example, providing an interaction between me and my far-away family. To summarize: I can make the toy light up through video processing, and they can affect what happens to their video view of me through poking at the toy. Interaction notes: My neice really likes small things she can grab (but not swallow) and things she can bang on.
On another note, I made more of my wireless steaks, wired them up to my Arduino board, and made them eerily glow. Aaaaand they got posted to the Make: Magazine Blog. There's a video of them on my Thesis Blog. I got plenty of insigtful comments about meat irradiation, but not a terrible lot on the contstruction and implementation of my plushies.
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