The Official Robosapien Hacker's Guide

Very good. A must have if you have a Robosapien. Came very well and carefully packaged.

This book was a delight to read. The author has an engaging style that leads you forward to further discovery. As others have noted, some of the detail is lacking. I don't know if that's necessarily a minus-- a circuit diagram alone leads to further research and discovery; providing a PCB layout and parts list would stymie further research. The projects are very ambitious and, though I might not use the components discussed in my Robosapien, I learned quite a bit about available, inexpensive technologies that I'll enjoy as an electronics enthusiast. I was a bit put off by the author's Mac evangelism, a religion that I respect but don't gravitate towards, but that's a minor quibble. Buy this from a third-party seller at remainder prices and it will be well worth your money. I bought a new copy that came in under a ten spot after shipping. I look forward to checking out some of the author's other books. The alternative Robosapien book makes a better all-in-one guide, but you can get both from third-party sellers for less than the cost of one from A.

Here are a dozen hacks which you can perform with Robosapien to make it more capable and attractive than it already is: a guide which packs in instructions on how to control your robot with either Mac or PC, and which provides insights into how Robosapien functions and how its uses can be expanded. Robot designer Mark Tilden's interview enhances one of the most in-depth Robosapien references in print.

With one and a half million Robosapiens sold in the Christmas season last year, this is the largest selling robot of all time. 99% of them will be played with a little, the novelty will wear off, they'll go in the closet with the rest of the old toys. But that other 1%, maybe that many, will be used as the basis for any of a number of other projects. This book shows how to take the basic Robosapien and convert, modify, add a number of alternative features and capabilities to it. Some of these 'hacks' include, controlling Robosapien from a home computer, adding any or all of several electronic features to Robosapien, adding a different processor to Robosapien. Several of these hacks would make a very good science project for a high schooler, and would even be a pretty good introduction to abeginning class in electronics.