Crave felt a wave of nostalgia this morning as we caught wind of a brand new product from Meccano. Meet Spyke, the Wi-Fi spy robot. Okay, so he's a blatant Johnny 5 rip-off, and he's not made of old-school Meccano metal girders, but he does come in kit form.
Meccano has fitted him with an 802.11b/g Wi-Fi card so you can control him via software at home or over the Web. We love that his motion-sensitive webcam lets you see whatever's in his line of sight -- now we can go to work and still keep an eye on our bonsai.
Better still, you can put him on sentry duty so he only reacts when there's motion in the room -- if Spyke detects an intruder he'll make laser shooting noises and beep like a deranged R2-D2.
The robot has a built-in speaker, which can play MP3s stored on your PC -- including podcasts like ours. He's also compatible with Skype 3.0 so you can use him as a VoIP speakerphone. Like all good robots, Spyke's smart enough to return to his charging dock whenever the batteries run low.
He's available in time for Christmas and you can can pre-order now from Gizoo for around £200. -Rory Reid
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