My pool noodle and his robo fishy.
I was going to put this one up a lot sooner but got a little distracted. Had it all written and just needed a nice sketch to go with. Got some great news. I have a surgery date now! There have been a whole bunch of doctor visits this month but it's all looking up. Also thought of trying a different style of drawing and it's taking a lot longer. So I'll just toss out my progress so far and a sketch of the fish. Speaking of, let's get to the story I wanted to tell at the start of the month.
I have had a little HEXBUG fish that is on a remote for a while, kind of a whim purchase. I showed it to Λ and he was as excited as I expected him to be when I asked if he would help me make it better, so I could play with him in the pool. I am only 50/50 on recommending them. They are a cute idea, and probably great for little kids in the bath, but we had to do a lot of modifications to get it were we thought it should have been out of the box.
If you have a Krait then it is an amazing little toy. A little fish friend for swimming that glows in the dark. Comes in a bunch of fun colors, not too pricey and I have faith that a few models down the line they will be crazy cool. Plus, with a few supplies you can let your Krait go to town on it and not be out much money.
The biggest problem was the controls, they are pretty rough. Fortunately it uses infrared for it's remote so we can parse the binary rather than break the fish open. While I like to play with this stuff, I have not tried to make anything watertight before. I would rather trust a factory that is designed to do that than hope I did it right after gutting it.
The second thing we ran into was the limited range of the remote. It wasn't really designed for someone sitting on the far side of a pool. My uncle taught me how to make an infrared reflector using electrical and aluminium tape to boost the range of TV remotes back in the day. It worked just fine for this remote too. It's a small boost mind you, so it might be less effective if you have a larger pool or in a lake.
Finally, the fish can have some buoyancy issues but a screw, some glue and a little magnet works wonders. We might get a second one and see if we can adjust the buoyancy internally, but that is for when we try to see if we can program them to swim in a school.
Really don't recommend the fish for open water because it will swim on its own in a straight line when not receiving input. So if you guide it out of range you won't be getting it back unless you can catch the thing. The fish isn’t too fast so a Krait could catch it just fine, but humans might not feel like jumping into the water just for a cheap toy.
One of Λ’s favorite games with it is follow the leader. He loves to swim in corkscrews around the fish while I steer it around the pool. The kids in our building have come to enjoy this game too and will swim after Λ in their own splashy way.
I have gotten some more traditional toys for Λ as well. All the basics like sinker rings, pool noodles (the foam ones), a pair of ducks and frogs who squirt water when you squeeze them. Not as much fun to talk about but still great for pool time.
P.S.
The castle is my favorite, a pretty famous one, but I thought a grassy field and some champion in the foreground would look great for a fantasy picture. Line art is so hard, all my praise and hero worship to those of you who make it look easy.










