One of the coolest presents I got for my birthday this year was a USB missile launcher from Shantell’s parents. Naturally, I needed to write a program for it. Fiero was probably less excited about this present than I was.
The controller is C# on .NET 4, using UsbLibrary to talk to the toy over USB HID. I made a small Windows Forms application for the directional controls and status display. The shared controller handles short timed movements, stop commands, and checking when the launcher has reached its movement limits.
Then I put a little HttpListener web server in front of the same controller. It serves a very simple HTML direction pad and turns its requests into launcher commands. Not a complicated web application, but a button on a web page making a real toy move is pretty entertaining.
My next idea is to combine it with a Kinect and its depth sensor. That part is still a plan in this version; the working code here is the USB controller and web remote.
Watch the original missile-launcher video.
Archive note: the original video is currently private on YouTube. The link is preserved here, but it cannot be played publicly until its visibility is changed.