Childhood Fantasies Come True: Wild Planet Spy Video Trakr
Plenty of people must have been like us- we always wanted a remote control toy/vehicle that they could help us view distant places and bring us closer to our dreams of being a secret agent. Anyone who wants an R/C toy this holiday season and has fantasies of spyhood will fall in love with the Spy Video Traker, just as we have. You might have already done some gift shopping today, Black Friday, but reserve some space on your Christmas list for this nifty gadget.
The Wild Planet Spy Video Trakr is a remote control vehicle that kids, kids at heart and those who like to modify their gadgets will love. It comes with many features that will make all three groups fall in love with it.
We love that the Spy Trakr is able to transmit live color video and audio to the LCD on the remote control directly from the camera that the car comes equipped with, thereby letting the holder of the remote control see and hear what is going on elsewhere. It’s the sort of thing that makes you imagine lots of potential uses, some of which of have potential privacy concerns. And a small speaker allows you to talk to the person at the other end, as well as hear them.
We only had a few issues with the Spy Trakr, the first was the inability of the onboard camera to move- no tilt or pan, except through manual manipulation, thereby limiting what we could do and see with it. The second was that we couldn’t easily record what we saw and heard because that required a SD card that is not provided with the box- no onboard memory is provided, nor any way to stream to your laptop or PC unfortunately. You’ll also need ten (!) AA batteries, for the remote and the vehicle itself.
The Spy Trakr also comes with three pre-installed apps that increase the use, capabilities and fun gained from the Spy Trakr: night vision, path mapper (which lets it memorize and retrace its route) and throw your voice.
The Spy Trakr can be kind of connected to a computer through its onboard USB port and the cable provided in the box- not to control it though. This allowed us to access one of our favorite features of the vehicle: the ability to create new apps for the Spy Trakr through the software development kit. The development kit allows users to create new applications and increase the functionality of the vehicle, and is compatible with Mac, Windows (XP, Vista, Win7) and Linux. The entire unit is easy to open and quite hackable, and though there are not many killer apps out there right now, it’s easy to see the potential.
The Spy Trakr is a toy that will be fun for all ages and with addons coming next year the Spy Trakr looks like a toy that we will be getting a lot of use out of. We believe you’ll get as much fun out of it as we did. Available widely, including online from Amazon for around $100.
