I always try and somehow incorporate things I want to learn into fun and rewarding projects. My idea this time, is to figure out how to make a sort of "real life" video game using robots. Sounds cool already right? Any way I was lookin' around trying to find some cool ideas when I came across this RC Nerf Tank idea http://www.instructables.com/id/RC-Nerf-Tank/ . Basically, its a battery powered nerf machine gun, mounted on top a remote controlled car with an electronic trigger. I thought, "hmm.. thats pretty cool but I'm gonna look like a total nerd hangin out around this thing..", which brought me to recall that the Hak5 crew had made a wifi controlled rc vehicle... see where I'm goin with this? If you don't I'm gonna try to make a Wifi Controlled Super Nerf Tank with a modified Gun on a pivot (http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Ultimate-Nerf-Vulcan-Mod/), and camera mounted on the front so I can see what I'm shooting. Then this I'll be able to control from a VPN connection to the router mounted on board. Think of how fun it would be to have someone over to your house, and then you have this robot nerf tank come into the room and shoot nerf bullets at them at 500RPM. Anyway pretty hilarious idea so I started working out some parts. But for the pivot for the cannon so it can look up down left and right.. Does anybody have any ideas of how I can do this? I was thinking like a cradle type motor on a rotating disc would do the trick. Anyone have a better idea or recommendation? -T

That's a great idea, but for starters, how would you power the onboard router? That would need a pretty hefty power supply, and secondly, the router would be big, and along with the power supply that you'd mount, the tank would be PRETTY dang heavy. BUt that would be AWESOME, because if it was a VPN you could connect to it via the internet, and if you had a camera you could drive it around if you had like a nerf war, or you could design it to shoot airsoft bb's, that'd be awesome in an airsoft war!

GREAT IDEA

That sounds cool but it looks like it will cost a lot for parts.

        http://www.allelectronics.com/
    http://jameco.com/
    CCD camera modules can be bought cheap too but I never tried to interface one.

It wouldn' be too terribly expensive, for a project like this, it'd probaly run you about $50 to $70 dollars, which isn't to bad, if you do it all right and it comes out good.

If you get the machine gun, you could mount it on one of those BIG remote controlled cars, and you could pull all the stuff inside out and tint the windows(if you don't want people to see all the junk in the vehicle:)

That might work

SirHobbes3 (Austin M.)