Late last year, I shot a podcast with a local developer/architect/IT manager named Tim Higgins. I was intrigued by a device he built called The Water Hobo. It's essentially a water cannon with a motion sensor that detects when people are cutting through his yard and it shoots a stream of water at them. What's more, the software that controls the motion detector and the actual firing of the weapon (including a setting called "The Holy Hand Grenade") was written in C# and hosted on a PC in Tim's garage. For all the social and technical details behind the invention of The Water Hobo, please have a look at the podcast. It's not only informative, but entertaining (hopefully).

Today, I got a note from Tim that he'd made a few updates to the Water Hobo recently. While I didn't have time to run out and run film on it, I thought I'd share the photos with you. If you watch the podcast, you see the cannon is clearly visible over the fence line. The Water Hobo III was obviously built for stealth and power:

Noooo, that's not a high-pressure, .NET controlled water cannon. It's just a harmless creeping vine on an innocent looking fence in just another suburban neighborhood.

During the podcast, Tim said he was looking to implement the ability to activate and fire The Water Hobo with his Xbox 360 using the XNA Studio. I haven't heard back as to whether or not this phase is complete, but I'll be sure to keep you up to date. If he has, please don't cut though Tim's yard!

Well done, Tim. Looking forward to the The Water Hobo IV!

And by the way, if you've built something interesting or just plain weird using .NET or some other Microsoft technology, please drop me an email or leave a comment below and let me know about it. I'd love to shoot an episode of Weird Code with you and show off your work!