cathoderaydude
@cathoderaydude

just found out that one of my Core Threads was only ever posted on twitter. a rare occurrance. hell

my parents were gigantic nerds and when i grew up i had A Robot In The House - heathkit's HERO-1, a simple (6800-based?) 8-bit robot with a number of features including a light sensor, ultrasonic rangefinder, an articulated arm, and an incredibly crunchy voice synthesizer. when you turned him on, he would immediately report "REA-DY."

he was fully programmable, and even had a hexadecimal keypad on top! his ROM also contained a number of preloaded routines, including two games: in one, you would try to adjust the light level in the room while he complained "TOO BRIGHT. TOO BRIGHT. TOO DARK." in the other, you'd try to find the right distance from him while he reported "TOO CLOSE. TOO CLOSE. TOO FAR." Good times

but he also included the ROBOT REMOTE.

i had no idea how to program HERO-1, but i did know that he had some level of autonomy of his own - and i also knew that the remote completely overrode it. just by turning it on, you could take Direct Control of all of HERO-1's physical capabilities, drive him around, operate his arm, and program him remotely.

it turns out that HERO-1 was not too far removed from actual industrial robots. they, too, have remote controls, except they're called teaching pendants,

these instruments are incredibly intimidating to look at. they radiate power and seriousness. the design language says "this is not a toy," and indeed, you use these to instruct machines that can tear you completely in two, so, they are not to be fucked with. note the enormous E-stop button; don't forget where that is. it may save your life.

these are unfathomably cool, but what i want to know is how the robot fetishists haven't picked up on them. it boggles the mind. this is perhaps the most powerful symbol of domination i've ever seen. notice how they aren't control pendants or override pendants; they're teaching pendants. they're how you tell the robot the facts of life. this is what you do. this is when you do it. this is where you stop - you never go past this point.

i'm just saying. Draw Your OC


cathoderaydude
@cathoderaydude

they made a manual specifically for the arm and the graphic design is absolutely otherworldly


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in reply to @cathoderaydude's post:

there is a photo of me as an infant in my dad's house playing with a HERO 1, but i'm told it was just on loan from his workplace. there's another photo of me even smaller with an even more prototypey lookin robot with a bare PCB under a transparent brown bubble dome, but i've never been able to determine what that one may have been. either way, i'm now for the first time mildly troubled by my father's willingness to put me directly in their path and allow me to touch their uncaring robotic heads

as an adult i am regularly defeated by moderate winds, but it's good to know that if they send a robot back in time to eliminate my infant self, i might have a fighting chance