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Pinewood derby car with webcam

Mark Frauenfelder at 1:45 pm Tue, Jan 24, 2006

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One of my favorite memories from Cub Scouts was building a pinewood derby race car. Mine was red and my mother painted an incredible likeness of Snoopy on the side. My dad and I weighted it to the maximum limit by hollowing out the bottom and inserting a big steel ball. My car won 1st place in the troop competition.

That was over 30 years ago. Today, Mark Seremet emailed me this photo of the racer he and and his son Matthew built.

 Weblog Racer1We wanted to do something entirely different and decided on mounting a very small camera to it along with an LED in the back to look like a jet engine. It was powered by a 9V battery which also served as the car's weight. The car broadcast wirelessly to a receiver which we recorded on mini-DV. We won 7 prizes and finished 4th in the races.

Dig that wild paint job! Link

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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