Tag: Remote Control

PS3 owners rejoice! There’s finally a low-cost solution for operating both your PS3 and your other home theater components from a single universal remote control. For those of you out there who have put their PlayStation 3 at the center of their home entertainment system because of its stellar Blu-ray player, you know what a pain it is to control both your PS3 and your other A/V devices because of Sony’s choice of Bluetooth instead of IR as their remote communication protocol.

If I saw this giant creepy spider scurrying across my ceiling in the middle of the night, I’d be on the phone to Orkin faster than you can say “spiderpig”. Now you too can freak the hell out of your significant other with this oversize remote-controlled spider with glowing LED eyeballs.

Live in a rat-infested fleabag of an apartment? Well even if you don’t, you can still scare the beejezus out of your roommates with your very own remote-controlled rat. With its light-up red eyeballs, I wouldn’t necessarily call this rat-on-wheels “lifelike”.

Winner of the 2008 red dot design award, the Shake Control presents a unique and environment-friendly way of controlling television sets. It may also be frustrating enough that people won’t want to watch TV anymore. Instead of using batteries, the Shake Control is indirectly powered by the user; a magnet generates current whenever you give the controller a shake.

Is that a lightsaber unit in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me? That’s the question your friends will be asking when you whip out this tiny little motorized R2-D2 and he starts tooling around your desk between your coffee mug and your iPod dock.

First we had the watch, and now we have a model. The 6-foot long remote-controlled RMS Titanic is a faithfully reproduced 1:150 scale model. It took 400 man-hours (that’s about 1600 dog-hours, or 879,592 mosquito-hours) to assemble.

Just because you’re a robot in disguise doesn’t mean you have to be huge. These tiny little versions of two popular Transformers autobots prove quite the contrary. The latest in TakaraTomy’s Robo-Q series, these palm-sized Optimus Prime and Bumblebee robots are just too cute to be capable of any real destruction.

Nope, this spiky orb-shaped device isn’t some sort of controller for the latest Sonic the Hedgehog game. It’s actually just a universal remote control – in a really weird package, with a really weird secondary purpose.

Bug Labs’ very geeky product is the perfect Modder’s Day gift. You see, BUG is a set of tools that lets you mix and match its components to build your own gadget, like LEGO but a hundred times geekier.

Modder-friendly electronics company SparkFun Electronics recently held what they hope will be an annual event called the Autonomous Vehicle Competition, which is basically a race of proto-Autobots around one of SparkFun’s buildings. The contest was initially employees-only, but SparkFun realized it would be much more fun to have their customers join so that was what they did.

I’ve been waiting all my life for the day that somebody came up with a gadget that would finally combine my passions for radio-controlled race cars and breakdancing. That day has finally arrived. You can certainly drive this R/C car around the floor just like any other, but the real fun kicks in when you kick it into Breakin’ II Electric Boogaloo mode.

Fresh off the boat from Japan, these miniature remote control cars let you tool around as the characters from Mario Kart. These Q-Steer cars from TakaraTomy let drive around using a pocket-size infrared remote control. Each one features the likeness of one of your favorite characters, and they can run on different frequencies so you can race against your friends.

Sick of losing your remote between the couch cushions? With this bigger-than-a-breadbox remote control, there’s no chance you’ll misplace this one. The Chunghop RM-A4 remote control measures in at a whopping 8.26″ wide x 11.69″ tall x 1.35″ thick.

Maybe it’s just me, but this wireless remote light switch makes me think of the button you’re supposed to press when you want to keep the money on Deal or No Deal. You know, the one that most of the losers on that show don’t bother to take, even when the offer is well into the 6-figures and they’ve been living on welfare most of their lives.

This robot kit from Japan lets you build your own ball shaped robot that can pull off all sorts of wild and crazy moves as it gyrates around your floor. While the Tornader robot from Elekit can drive slowly around the floor like most remote-controlled vehicles, the real fun starts when you set the Tornader into one of its insane spin modes.

Wanna scare the living crap out of your roommate? Just put this giant furry black widow spider on top of their blanket while they’re asleep, flip on the remote control, and watch the mayhem ensue. This massive R/C black widow spider is designed to be an “educational toy”, but if I had one of these in class when I was a kid, it would have ended me up in the principal’s office for sure.