I've been posting about playing with small, battery powered,
programmable
micro controllers - and things you can connect to ithem - and control.

These micro controllers1 can be had for $10 - $30 and things to connect
to
them and control can be had at any Radio Shack store, in addition to a
ton of web sites. And you don't have to be a techno weenie or a
computer
programming genius to start playing with them. There are plenty of
tutorials
and sample programs you can download and play with. Once you have
sample
programs, you can start tweeking them to change what they do. It's
really not that hard to learn to do.

Having played with light and sound, I finally got to playing with
movement
- using a small RC servo like you'd find in a remote controlled car,
airplane
or helicopter. Starting with a program I found on the web that sweeps
the servo's arm back and forth through the servo's 180 degree range,
smoothly and continuosly in 1 degree steps with a 15/1000s of a second
delays between steps.

By changing the sweep increment to 30 degree and increasing the delay
between steps to a half second the servo arm moved jerkily. It was kind
of disturbing to watch. So I changed the program to have it move the
servo arm's position randomly, anywhere in a range from 45 degrees to
135 degrees. And I made the delay between moves also random, between
15/1000s to a bit over a second.

The effect was even more disturbing - the arm darting around - never
really settling into any nice pattern. It was like watching a cat
watching
one of those cat toys on a string flying back and forth - or the eyes
of a speed freak.

Seeing that behavior, I had a basic idea for a dynamic turning. Here's
where that's gone - so far. There's a link to the YouTube vid of the
servo's behavior near the bottom of the first page.

http://web.hypersurf.com/~charlie2/T...eedFreak1.html

Comments, questions, suggestions welcomed,