I'm a relative newby to the Arduino, but think there is a possible genre of use that I have not seen exploited. In getting my own arduino and servo up and running over the web (I simply use it to pan my web cam remotely) I've seen numerous and interesting applications of the arduino that the general public might find a lot of fun to play with. Most of these have been demonstrations on youtube and projects in the arduino archives.
So I am wondering if there are any other people in this group who might have an interest in opening their site to public use so users could not only see the site on a web cam, but interact with it in some interesting way. One idea that came to mind right away was feeding chickens. Sounds silly, but I think a lot of young people would enjoy going to a web site where they can not only see chickens, but press a button and an arm could throw some feed and call the chickens. That's just off the top of my head and not as interesting as what is possible,
A lot of things would have to be discussed like security of the site and conflicts when multiple users act at the same time. But that's why it is a topic that needs to have some good heads fleshing it out. Do you have any comments or interest in this? Thanks.
Sounds silly, but I think a lot of young people would enjoy going to a web site where they can not only see chickens, but press a button and an arm could throw some feed and call the chickens.
You'd end up with either the world's fattest chickens or the chickens would quickly loose interest. I'm betting on the fat chickens, though.
Of course the chickens was just an example... and yes, it would be boring even possibly for the portly chickens wallowing around. But I thought it was a better example than a hot tub full of guacamoli that people could remotely dip grasshoppers into and then feed them to starving children in Umgalamala. Or vice versa.
The point would be to have many sites that were not places that individuals would hang around like an online game, but just visit, have a little fun, maybe learn something on the way, and leave it behind. That way the site could change or even disappear without a long term commitment to its audience.
I remember the CSIRO had a robot on the web that you could gain like 10 mins control over for a while. They had a room full of stuff it could interact with. The best part was the robot was in I think the sydney museum and visitors could see what the web user was doing.
A minature arduino version would be fun, I had an idea once of having a robot to do puzzles of some sort. Or have a robot with independently controlled interfaces which require more than one web-users to work in sync ( like those games where one person is blindfolded and one directs them ). Just something to keep the interest and attention. Having a ton of Lego and a construction robot would be cool.
Doing puzzles of some kind is not a bad idea. At this point the video stream delay would make a real time action game hard to do but a puzzle could be set up so the delay would not affect it.
I do recall somebody a few years ago... I think he was in Canada.. who had a robot vehicle of some kind set up in a floor space in his house. He let users play with it.. go forward, backwards, turn and stop.. that was it. But the web was really slow back then and by the time a signal got to the vehicle the whole thing sort of stalled. But now that's not a problem. But he had worked out a queue so multiple users could get in line and run it when their turn came. This guy was very clever. Thanks for the comments.
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