A Remote Controlled Automatic BB Gun?

This morning, while aimlessly wasting time on the web, I came across a recently designed gadget that has to be one of the weirdest things I have ever seen: an automatic BB gun turrent, designed to defend your house from intruders. Connecting to a computer by USB, it allows the user to aim the gun with a mouse or joystick, lining up your target with the included webcam. Upon finding your target, you can shoot a stream of plastic pellets fast enough to do quite a bit of damage. Cool? Yes. A nifty gadget? Definitely. Useful? I sincerely hope no one thinks so.

The company that makes it, vCrib, posts a video of the turret in operation on its website. (watch it here). In the video, the turret, which looks to be the strange sort of cobbled-together engineering which would emerge from the basement of someone who watches too much science fiction, was mounted in a window. The user then turned on his computer, and saw his front lawn through the turret's scope. Moving the mouse around, we saw the gun turn, (noting, of course, its great accuracy) to come to bear on a bush. Clicking and holding the mouse button, the guy blasted the heck out of the bush. Definitely pretty neat. In case shooting up bushes wasn't a sufficiently useful purpose, the guy proceeded to point out that, since the window was left open, he could swivel the gun around to shoot anyone in the laundry room.

Many security devices alert you to the presence of intruders, the guy said, but they don't let you do anything about it. Using this device, however, you can "deny them access to your house," giving them an interesting show in the process. The turret's webcam is apparently hooked up to some sort of motion detecting device, which lets you know when something suspicious (say, the neighbor's cat, or the neighbor himself, for that matter) wanders across the field of view. The software then calls the cell phone of the vacationing home owner, who heroically runs to a computer, turns it on, logs into the appropriate piece of software, and proceeds to shoot up the intruder, who would have had to have stayed put for several minutes, by this point.

Although I can't see this new gadget having any earthly use, I must say that it would make quite a fun toy. What twelve-year-old that you know wouldn't love to have a real live video game that actually shoots?

Sources:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/23/usb-bb-gun-sports-barrel-mounted-webcam-ensures-home-security/

http://www.vcrib.com