The rise in animatronic pets available on the market leads to a new wave of creative people making more ... non-standard uses of them. One exciting and possibly dangerous example of this is the fire-breathing animatronic pony. Using an Arduino Mega board, a Wii Nunchuk breakout board and other hardware, the people from "Lvl1" created something which was most definitely not designed to be:
In building such creations you should be careful with working with open flames (and also wearing utilikilts). However with the appropriate safety measures, and a fire extinguisher at hand - a lot of fun could be had. In creating the modified pony the designers used an Arduino Mega - which could be replaced with a Freetronics EtherMega:
... which includes full Ethernet support. This could lead to a powerful, web-controlled fire-breathing pony, that lets you know when it has run out of fuel. In the meanwhile visit the site for more information and detailed instructions here.
