Bigtrak

If you're of a certain age, you'll remember Bigtrak:

UK Advert

[youtubehd]QThWgzT4Q1s[/youtubehd]

American Advert

[youtubehd]u6V-tuOf3dE[/youtubehd]

They're now back in the shops (in the UK at least) and I managed to pick one up second hand off ebay.

Its interesting because its virtually identical to the original - you even have to put the stickers on yourself. Does that happen anymore? Asking kids to put stickers on the toy themselves instead of the kids at the factory doing it?

I'm impressed at how the box and manual and everything is very faithful to the original (although apparently people say the electronics are different inside). Even the price (about £40) is the same as the original price.

Although it was really fun to see it again, I'm remembering how bad they are to program. When you tell it to turn, the motors are very imprecise, so on different surfaces you have to try different numbers to get a proper right angle. Also, at different levels of battery power it seems to turn differently. In short, programming becomes a nightmare because it all has to be trial and error, rather than planning. Kind of equivalent to being in permanent step-through-debug mode rather than busting out code that works first time.

Its also really really LOUD. It makes cool noises but I dont want to annoy the people in the flat upstairs too much.

This also got me thinking that consumer electronics used to suck, and its only in the last decade or so that we're actually turning out technology that does what its supposed to do.

Apparently, back in the 80s there was a soviet clone of the bigtrak called the Planetokhod. Here's a video of it. It could shoot a flying propeller out of the top of the casing. Also, from the video it looks like its movements were a bit more precise than the UK/US version.

[youtubehd]qvVBg6Ai8b8[/youtubehd]

To finish, here's an impressive bigtrak hack:

[youtubehd]cTyiH36xXqI[/youtubehd]

I like bigtrak