Gizmodo: daisy

Daisy, Robo Daisy, Spin Your Sculptural Propeller, Do

Kit Eaton — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:23:56 EDT

Yesterday we had one scary(ish) robot design, and here's another. Ok— not so scary, really, as all Daisy's slice'n'dice menace is just a sham. That huge propeller is simply a fiberglass copy of a cargo ship one. And all it does is flex and rotate its robot muscles, slowly. But it's massive, and it does have a built-in camera which allows it to track passers-by, and spin its blades at them as you can see in the video below.

Designed by Christian Moeller, the modded industrial robot arm is an installation artwork in Terminal 3 at Changi Airport, Singapore. Daisy's designed to "bring a smile to your face and a moment of comic relief to your trip." Or, of course, gentle sci-fi movie chills to your spine as you imagine it really gunning its motors and carving its bloody way into the news.

Considering the stressed-out rather than blissed-out state of mind of most people wandering through an airport terminal, I suspect more of the latter sensation goes on. [Bot Junkie and Dvice]

Home-Made Daisy MP3 Player Takes Us (London) Underground

AddyDugdale — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:40:00 EDT

Using a $115 Daisy open-source player, and a tin with a London tube map on it, Mchaceortiz made himself an MP3 player with a difference. The six way-retro switches on the tin control the volume, track selection and play and pause, and you can see another shot of it opened up after the jump.

[MAKE via Shiny Shiny]

Open Source MP3 Player By MAKE

Jason Chen — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 19:59:12 EST

Phil and the other do-it-themselfers at MAKe have hooked up with artist and designer Raphael Abrams to make their own open source MP3 player.

How it works: the Daisy, the mp3 player, can be interfaced and built pretty much however you like. It's licensed with "minimal protections reserved via a Creative Commons license", which means you can use it to build your own iPod look-alike.

People are meant to build on it, make it better, and contribute it back to the community so everyone can benefit.

Daisy's audio quality is as good as an iPod, can access 65,000 tracks, play 48khz WAV files as well as mp3s, and unlike an iPod, you can change the battery. But the really Big Idea behind the Daisy is the ease with which it interfaces with so many devices. Yes, even including the Make Controller. It is the perfect MP3 kit for Makers, for it easily integrates with kiosks, displays, art installations, or just about anything else the maker community can dream up.

– Jason Chen

Product Page [Make via Make]