Gizmodo Australia » remote control

Mini HoverDrone Goes Up, Down And Into The Junk Drawer

Jack Loftus — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:30:00 +0000

For about $US20, this tiny HoverDrone will hover and flash its little lights. And then the dog will eat it.

Sorry, it’s inevitable, as proven in the ThinkGeek demo video below.

ThinkGeek is billing this as the smallest hovering device they’ve ever sold, so there’s that too. Requires a handful of AA’s and the controller has the ability to control two drones at once. [ThinkGeek via DVICE]

TweetMyPC: Remote Control Your PC With Twitter

Matt Buchanan — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Twitter is officially useful with this easy way to remote control your PC: Install TweetMyPC, setup a Twitter account and tell your computer what to do from anywhere. [TweetMyPC via Ghacks via Lifehacker]

VLC Remote App Controls The Baddest Media Player Via iPhone

John Mahoney — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:30:00 +0000

You can drop practically any file onto VLC’s orange cone, and if there is media buried somewhere within its digital crevices, VLC will find it and play it. Now, control the action via iPhone.

The VLC Remote comes in two flavours–regular and free. Both version can connect to any computer running VLC on your network to play/pause/skip tracks and videos and control the volume; the $US1 (for a limited time) version adds control of playlists, and a cool feature that lets you browse your hard drive for any media files and play them. To pair your computer with the remote, you need to download a quick setup assistant here.

If only VLC had better music library management (with iPod/iPhone) and seamlessly streamed to my Airport Express (you can do it with a $US25 add-on, but not natively), I could almost consider giving up iTunes all together. But for now, it remains the trustiest video player on any platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). Check out our friends at Lifehacker for more hands-on info. [VLC Remote Free (iTunes), VLC Remote (iTunes), Lifehacker]

MythTV’s MyMote iPhone Remote App

Jason Chen — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:40:00 +0000

The idea of controlling your DVR via your iPhone is nothing new, but this MythTV iPhone remote allows Linux DVR users to get in on the fun of using their phones as visual remotes. It’s got a real-time program guide so you can easily set recordings, plus the standard channel and volume buttons to flip around channels with. The only thing we have to complain about is that the UI is fairly ugly and not refined at all, but it’s bearable. Unfortunately all of us here use either TiVo or Media Center or the cheap set-top-box provided from our Cable company, so we can’t test it out. Let us know how it works for you. [eHomeUpgrade]

iTunes Remote Control Is Awesome

Nick Broughall — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:49:35 +0000

Steve from Tomizone is playing around with his iPhone 3G, downloading apps from the App Store and getting a whole heap of us excited for the Vodafone store opening in just over an hour.

One app he’s just downloaded is the iTunes remote app – it lets you use your iPhone or iPod Touch to control iTunes on your Mac or PC. As you can see from the video above, it works flawlessly…

More than that though, it will also work with your Apple TV. With more and more apps like this one, the iPhone will quickly become a must have tool for pretty much everyone.

Bring on the launch…

[iPhone 3G launch on Giz]

Team from UC San Diego Use Human Face as Remote-Control Unit

Gizmodo US Edition — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 23:00:00 +0000

This is possibly the ultimate hack–turning your face into a remote control unit. A computer-science Ph.D student from UC San Diego can use his fizzog to speed up or slow down video, as part of a project that hopes to make robots better teachers using automated facial expression recognition.

Jacob Whitehill, who is leading the team from the Machine Perception Laboratory, reckons that it could put an end to confused students during lectures. “If I am a student dealing with a robot teacher and I am completely puzzled and yet the robot keeps presenting new material, that’s not going to be very useful to me,” he said. “If, instead, the robot stops and says, ‘Oh, maybe you’re confused,’ and I say, ‘Yes, thank you for stopping,’ that’s really good.”

Whitehill gave a German grammar lesson in his lab–ja, ja, das is fantastich!–and recorded it using video-conferencing software in an effort to understand the facial expressions used by people as they learn and process new information. Nods from the students generally meant understanding of the subject, while a frown or puzzled look means, “Wassee on about?”

There’s a video of Jacob and his fabulous zapper face in action here, and the team’s findings are being presented today at the 2008 IEEE International Workshop on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition for Human Communicative Behaviour Analysis. [Science Daily via Neatorama]

Disney RC Tinkerbell Ornithopter Redefines the Term ‘Flying Fairy’

Benny Goldman — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:07:59 +0000

This Disney RC Tinker Bell is one seriously sweet flying fairy. As you see in the video, it’s using WowWee’s FlyTech ornithopter-type vertical flying system to flutter, glide and dive around this Waldorf-Astoria suite. It’ll be out in the spring for $US40. [Disney]

Flying RC Penis Disrupts Garry Kasparov Speech

Jason Chen — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:00:00 +0000

We had to double check that this wasn’t a story about Second Life, but rather is an actual event in actual meatspace occurring this past weekend in Moscow. As former chess champion Garry Kasparov was giving a speech to unite opposition political forces, a radio-controlled penis flew across the room to some applause and laughter. The fun was ended when a dour-faced man smashed the penis out of the air. That’s always the case, isn’t it? Some guy’s having fun with a flying penis with someone joker just has to ruin the party. [India Times via Sharenator]

Snelflight Jump Jet, a Fast R/C Micro-Aircraft That Hovers Too

Gizmodo US Edition — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:45:35 +0000

You know, remote control micro-aircraft are cool, whether they hover like ‘copters, fly like birds, or do both: like the new Jump Jet from Snelflight. It’s a kind of mashup toy, with four rotors to keep it aloft in the hover, or tilted to propel it forward, vectored-thrust style. From the demo video of a prototype in flight, it looks much easier to control than the multiple-crashing Chinook:

The aircraft charges from a power brick (not the controller, like Picoo Zs,) and a full battery will apparently give you around five to six minutes of flight. Its got proper three-axis control too, so you have forward and backward flight and yaw and roll. The IR remote has a range of 30 feet, and the model is designed to be as robust as you can get in such a small size, so it should survive the impacts it’ll incur as you learn to fly it. This extra sophistication means it will cost around $160, and it’s due for release imminently in the UK and later in the spring over in the US. And I want one! [SnelFlight]

Windows Media Centre Universal Remote IR Quirks Fixed

Jason Chen — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:15:26 +0000

Windows Media Centre users who use universal remotes—not the default Microsoft IR remotes—have problem run into a quirk where only some button presses register. Here’s the deal: media centre receivers expect to see an alternating IR code for functions like channel changing or volume switches in order to eliminate IR “bounce”, which is apparently caused by IR signals bouncing off stuff and hitting the receiver twice. In order to turn this off and fix the problem for universal remotes who don’t support the alternating IR codes, just change a registry entry and you’re done. Hit up CEPro for more details. [CEPro]