Control the NES R.O.B. with your PC

There are a lot of mods out there for the NES controller that claim to be practical, but if we admit it they're only just thinly veiled excuses for mature adults to relive their wasted childhood. This latest mod, that makes Nintendo's Robotic Operating Buddy or (R.O.B. for short) controllable via a Linux PC, makes no claim to functionality: basically a guy called Fred managed to get R.O.B. to follow commands sent to it from his Linux box -- kind of the opposite of what R.O.B. is used to doing: interacting with a NES deck. We're not exactly sure how he did it, but we are certain it involved a lot of coding, soldering, and enough coffee to get Fred's doctor to class him as a technical insomniac -- but who needs sleep when you've got a little grey chip-hording robot to order about?

[Via MAKE]

[billy @ Apr 7th 2008 10:03AM]

Hey Rob is useful just not in the way that you think he has been holding my beer cans for me since 1998 before that he was in my attic collecting dust as I did not have any use for him.But for the note Rob came with my nes control deck fyi the nes is still kicking but never could make that damn robot play the games worth a crap.

[steve @ Sep 25th 2006 7:41PM]

what's the point of rob in the first place?

[Kevlar @ Sep 25th 2006 8:07PM]

His only purpose is to lose at Mario Kart DS right?
But seriously, the original ROB did seem kinda pointless. I never owned one, but didn't he just stack/sort rings on those pegs and stuff?

[Trae @ Sep 25th 2006 9:01PM]

Rob's purpose was to market the NES as more than just a gaming console. Stores were afraid of carrying video games after the market crash.

[Ryan @ Sep 25th 2006 11:02PM]

Probably no soldering involved. The ROB was sent commands by flashing encoded messages on the TV. I'm sure if you could reverse engineer the (probably extremely simple) command scheme you could write an X app to do the flashing.

[jiay @ Sep 26th 2006 12:01AM]

Good!

[Donnie @ Sep 26th 2006 8:01AM]

Oh R.O.B. was a pain in the ass to use, but he was so sweet for playing Gyromite. What's missing in the photo is the plastic that holds the controller. So like Duck Hunt, etc, in Gyromite when you'd press a button to make something happen, the TV would flash and R.O.B. kicked into gear. He'd pick up one of the discs, drop it onto the spinner (the short tower looking thing on the right) for a few secs to get the RPM up then pick the spinning disc back up and drop it with precision on the controller that was being held directly in front of him. ALL OF THAT just to open a stupid ass gate in Gyromite, that you could have just easily pressed on the other controller without all of R.O.B.'s arrogant hoopla. Still... ROB was awesome.

[Brian from Texas @ Sep 26th 2006 5:15PM]

Haha, you're so right. Very nostalgic.

[Lee @ Sep 26th 2006 10:34AM]

I for one, re-welcome our peg-stacking, Linux-controlled, Nintendobot overlords.