xBot
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Machine used to unlock Xbox 360 Achievement Points
Just 60 of 'em. Yep, $60 for parts and a long day's worth of labor birthed the "xBot," a monstrous lil' bugger that latches onto the Xbox 360 controller and presses 'Start' and 'B' like, well, like a machine. Car mechanic David Harr assembled the xBot to unlock a pair of Perfect Dark Zero Achievements, which require playing 1,000 (offline) multiplayer matches in both Deathmatch and DarkOps modes -- each worth 30 points. Since matches don't need to be completed to register as "played," Harr calculated that it would take him roughly 40 hours to start, exit, and restart enough matches to unlock the Achievements; he would use just ten to assemble his xBot. Muahahahah!While some whine that Harr's 'workaround' is unethical, the Seattle mechanic argues, "This is not playing online on Xbox Live -- it is not playing against other people ... This is a one trick pony, getting you just 60 points. It's not stepping on anyone's toes." We say, let him have his 60 points.
A real Xbot grabs PDZ achievements
360 Fanboys, Xbots, Micro$ux, these are all words that are bandied about on your typical Microsoft/Sony flame war. We're naturally fond of the fanboy moniker (we're taking it back), but we've got a soft spot for Xbot, too. Xbot evokes the image of Bill Gates leading his robot army towards the impending Robot Apocalypse®, and that makes us smile. Imagine our excitement when we saw this video of a working Xbot. Unfortunately, it doesn't conquer the world, it just plays Perfect Dark: Zero. In fact, it doesn't really even play per se. Created by David Harr (gamertag: Diego Knyte), it just starts another match once the current match ends. Why, you ask? To earn 60 gamerscore points, of course! The robot was built specifically to complete the "Played 1000 Dark Ops Games" and "Played 1000 Deathmatch Games" achievements. It supposedly took 10 hours to design and build. All this to avoid 40 hours of gameplay. That's 30 hours saved! Good job, Diego Knyte![Via Live Gamer]
xBot dictates Xbox 360 controller, racks up gamer points
We've heard of using a Wiimote to handle home automation tasks, but building a device in order to create an automated Xbox 360 controller is another animal entirely. An intrigued and efficiency-minded individual set out to to achieve an additional 60 Xbox Live gamer points by trudging through 1,000 Death Matches and 1,000 Dark Ops rounds, all without him actually being there. Thus the xBot automator was born -- a robotic dictator that was programmed to simply hit the start and B buttons on a timed interval in order to progress through all the matches needed in order to snag the oh-so-coveted points. Essentially, the completely non-intrusive machine utilizes two rotational solenoids driven by a TTL (Transistor to Transistor Logic) controller, and while the actual programming steps were indeed a bit more in-depth, the creator isn't divulging all of his secrets just yet. So if you think you've got the DIY skills necessary to concoct one of these yourself, and would rather spend "around 10 hours" piecing together an automating machine rather than 40 (or more) hours in Perfect Dark: Zero, be sure to hit the read link for a few more deets on the whole process, and click on through for a live demonstration.[Via Digg]
