Last April Trossen posted an April's Fool day joke video of a Keepon dance robot. It' created a big laugh in the robotics community and so I decided to join the fun and attempted to create my own version of the keepon robot dance video.

I have been changing frameworks on my site so often that I forget to re-post content that has been available in the past.  This is about 8 months old, but I thought It worthy of a re-post, and I'll start re-posting some more old videos of mine for your entertainment.  Thanks to Dishlock for the email and request that reminded me that these are in fact fun projects and I should keep sharing them.

Here is the original Keepon robot dance video by Marek Michaloski:

It's great! if only I had spent more time and dressed my robot project up in a yellow outfit, I might have created as much buzz as the original.

Of course, I had to give it a try. Below is my version of a keepon robot dance. 

Keep in mind, this is my own project coded 100% by me from scratch and from the ground up using the C# .NET language. Nothing fake about this.

Below is Trossen Robotics April Fools day video:

You have to admit, it is a great April Fools joke!

This is my first blog on blogengine about my robotic software I am currently working on.  This software is written in C# using GDI+. This is a hobby that I am working on.  More details later.

This project consists of two parts:

• A Phidget Text LCD and Interface kit.
• A service application that connects to the members statistics web page of the game WWII online.

The people involved in the game called wwiionline take their game very seriously. wwiionline is a world war II online simulation that involves the entire western front during World War 2 . I will say here that this is a sort of hack, and accept it for what it is.

The idea of 'fog of war' is implemented very nicely in wwiionline. However, the stat system allows me to connect to this system and provide me with detailed information that contains vital battlefield information.

The information that I can collect and display on a phidget TEXT LCD includes:
 

• Type of combat unit
• User Rank
• User name
• Deployed weapon

The problem with this stat system is that I am allowed to access this immediately, and display it on my phidget Text LCD, with out visiting and browsing the user base stat system.

What I simply do is: Request a HTTP request to the stat system. From there, I parse the information with a regular expression, and then display it immediately on my phidget TEXT LCD.

Now, This might not seem very exciting for a lot of people. But imagine for a moment if you will...

You have a full combat squad of members that are participating in a mission to infiltrate and attack a city. With this tool, I can know exactly the type of unit that me, or my fellow squad members have been killed by, and adjust our attack plan accordingly.

This can be, and is very much an unfair advantage.

In the spirit of fun and science, I just want to say that I do this only as an experiment.

My Phidget LCD is at the bottom of the photo and may be hard to see.