By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Common hostage situation (well, at least on TV; I’m obviously not a real-world expert) would be someone holed up in a building or house with a hostage … and no way to see what’s going on inside. Short of getting close to plant something, how can you get some “eyes” into the house? This device tries to solve that problem.

Police officers stepping into hostage standoffs and other dicey situations now have something new to throw into the mix a baseball-sized camera that can be hurled from afar, survive the landing and wirelessly relay video and audio back to base for two hours.

The EyeBall camera weighs less than a pound and is protected by a rugged rubber and polyurethane housing. That allows it to be thrown through windows or bounced off walls. When it comes to a rest, the ball stabilizes itself, then begins transmitting footage and sound up to 200 yards away. Source: AP via ABC News

We Say: This is yet another idea that will help the police in situations where they couldn’t previously see, much like the Fido Camera System I wrote about earlier. I’m wondering just how “rugged” that housing is, though. If I were a criminal and saw that come through a window, I certainly wouldn’t let it keep transmitting if I could break it.

The idea reminds me of those “remotes” we sometimes see in cartoons or science fiction movies that fly around autonomously and send info back to their users. When I first saw the picture above, though, I thought of a different remote … for some reason, it reminded me of the remote Luke practiced against while wearing a blast helmet on the Millenium Falcon in Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope.