I think the next step is to add a webcam, then some computer vision code. So you could stand next to it, take a photo of a picture with your phone, attach and email it to the gun -- then it would scan around until it found the picture in the attached photo, aim and fire.
I actually think someone could make this into a sellable product for companies running trade show booths. The main goal of a trade show booth is to attract visitors and get their contact information. This system is a creative way to do both.
BTW everyone was blown away by Rasberry Pi. It's one thing to read about it online, but the hands-on experience is something else. BTW every PyCon attendee this year received a free Rasberry Pi as a "secret gift", that's cool.
I have my own now, and I'm in a brainstorming mode. Idea #1 so far is to hook it up to a laser and try to draw something on walls. Unfortunately I am lacking the hardware skills for that.
Any ideas? Something more practical for a software person to build? :-))
It would be cool to turn one into a private key safe. The Rasberry Pi interfaces your normal computer over USB, but only encrypts or signs files and does absolutely nothing else. So even if your computer is compromised the attacker still can't get your private key.
This might exist already, but so far I've only seen smart USB drives that can be decrypted for a certain amount of time. Not the same thing.
We initially had automatic oscillation that you could turn on an off via email. We ended up turning that off because it turns out nerf guns by themselves are so imprecise the degree of difficulty added with the oscillation made it nearly impossible to hit the target.
The issue with allowing anybody to aim via email or other methods is that you'd have multiple aiming request over-riding each other. We'd need to have some queue for aiming as well and didn't get to implementing that.
It was definitely a minimum viable product at PyCon but we look forward to improving it over time with suggestions like these.
