Half Baked Ideas
===================

The Simulacra-cycle
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Bicycling with a light-weight (and functional!) helmet embedded with with 360
fisheye camera coverage. Also collect rotation/acceleration data and
post-process out movements to give a stable 360 video image which can be played
back with 3D goggles (or a basic computer/tablet interface?).

Enhanced version would also record bike vibrations, pedal turns, audio, and
handlebar positions, and this could be played back on an artificial bike.

Solar Autonoma
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An audio "artifact": a CD jewel case with a photovoltaic panel powering a
generative digital/analog electronic music box which outputs hundreds of years
worth of non-repeating audio to an 1/8" headphone jack.

One crude output algorithm could be the raw position of a turning machine
(probably a busy beaver) tape position over time. Another is interpreting a
meta-stable cellular autonoma's cells as notes; perhaps the combination of
these two ideas? 

Should be engineered to last at least a few decades without repairs, which
means compensating for PV cell degredation. 

Techno-cyption
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Robustly encode arbirary data into techno, similar to image-based stenography
techniques. Should be able to recover the data from audio recorded live at a
concert or rave; perhaps in real-time?

Leads to "verboden" music which is illegal to broadcast and listen to?

Robotic Mouse Cursor
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An omni-drive robot encased in a mouse, controlled by a touchstick or touchpad.
Should translate very quickly, so the user feels like they are "mousing" and
selecting over the floor. 

"Nest for Lighting"
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Auto-dimming lights to react to ambient light levels. Could also do the
opposite and stochastically vary the light level to give cloud-like effect in
window-less rooms. 

Sciduino
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Open Hardware LabJack competitor. Compatible with wiring, Lua scripting, full
free GCC toolchain. Support/drivers for Octave, Matlab, Mathematica, UNIX /dev
points, EPICS, ROOT, ROS, RTEMS. "Industrial Quality" for $80-100, "Commercial
Quality" $50. Characterized and well-documented analog interfaces.

General Purpose Laptop CardBus FPGA Interface
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Computational acceleration (compression, codecs, crypto, real-time
modeling/simulation), external digital interfacing (logic analyzer, USB
debugging, HDMI, networking, etc), host debugging (watchdog, timing, console
interface, bus sniffing, peripheral emulation, kernel unit tests). High-density
pins to many different cable types (extra $$$) with logic-level shifters:
"universal digital I/O". $100.