A simple game is always much more fun when it is spiced up with some cool electronics. The wooden tilt maze game has been around for a long time. This Marble Maze that is Remote Controlled using an Accelerometer kicks up the original game by allowing the player to interact with the game using a controller that moves the real game according to user movements. Have a look at the project build details for all of the issues that were found during the construction.

Via: Trossen Robotics

"To control the servos I used a BOE development board with a BS2 microcontroller from Parallax along with a Memsic 2125 dual-axis accelerometer as the controller. The addition of the maze transforms this project from a electro-mechanical thing-a-ma-jig to an exciting hands-on game. For this project I choose to build a maze myself using balsa wood. This would allow me complete control of the maze difficulty and dimensions and also ensures the weight is kept to a minimum. I also found wooden balls to serve as the "marbles" for the maze. It just so happens that these balls and the balsa wood walls make a fun "thunk" noise whenever they collide."

Music selection is usually a boring process. It usually involves some common interface such as scrolling through titles on a portable player, using a remote for your stereo or a mouse on your computer. With this RFID Music Selection called the RFiDJ from Roteno Labs music is represented by tiles and the tiles graphically represent the music that can be expected. I can think of lots of opportunities for developing this much further into a very immersible system. Have a tap sensor so that a tap on the tile will play the next randomly selected song by that artist. I think having this at a party and have a system where guests can add their favorite song to a playlist is also something that would be very interesting!

"The RFiDJ project is my first attempt at an application in Imperceptible Computing. After work I like to listen to music/radio for a bit to unwind. This usually involves logging into my HTPC and selecting a playlist. For this project I attempted to change how I interact with my music and HTPC. Using RFID tags and photo frame coasters I am attempting to simplify the interface to my music."

If you like classic video games and robots you need to have a look at this Roomba Pac-Man system. At a glance it may look like a fun game where the Roomba cleaners are being controlled by a bunch of remote controls that people are controlling. That low tech scenario could not be further from what is actually happening here. There is lots of tech making these Roomba robots play!

"By utilizing service discovery and ad-hoc networking, all of the robots operate independently and autonomously. There is no centralized controller controlling the game, each robot makes its own decisions and sends its own commands. Pac-Man is the only robot that takes human input, and this is simply in an "augmented control capacity" where user input is limited to valid directions of travel (no passing through boundaries). The laptop and GUI provided for the operator provide no computational support for the game, its simply a node that allows the operator to issue commands. A good example of the level of autonomy in the robots is when a ghost kills Pac-Man. Upon determining that it has killed Pac-Man, it issues a command to Pac-Man to let it know it was killed, and then informs all of the other ghosts that Pac-Man was killed. Pac-Man performs his death, and then informs all of the other robots that they need to reset for another round."

Have a look at this beautiful Mini Acrylic Tesla Coil Project that our friend Daniel Eindhoven from Megavolts.nl put together. The build detail on this project might even rival the MV CoilMaster Mark1 Coil Gun!

"A small TeslaCoil fully made of acrylic plastic. The cool thing about this is that every part is transparent. This coil is driven by the power supply of my large DC Teslacoil. Total height 44cm, max output voltage +- 380.000 Volts (57cm arc length)."

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There is some great innovation coming out of the Elevator Space Race. The University of Saskatchewan’s Space Design Team has been in it from the start and has some promising technology. The video describes the monumental task quite well. It goes to show that with some prize money on the line a task as challenging as the space elevator is something that many will choose to pursue.

Via: Space Elevator Games

"The University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team (USST) is a team of highly motivated physics and engineering students and professionals. Building on a tradition of success, we aim to go higher and faster! The engineering challenges are great, requiring the skills of a variety of disciplines. Our success to date has relied on a multi-disciplinary approach, and expanding that approach can only make us better. Our climber makes use of solar cells to receive beamed power, and has an incredibly light superstructure. Although light, the compact design allowed us to handle wind quite well. The robot’s brain (the logic needed to follow the rules) is a microcontroller, programmed by U of S students. As the competition becomes more intense, the limitations of individual spotlights are becoming apparent."

This 5kV Induction Gun can shoot aluminum rings with some intense force. I have seen flying ring toys before which fly nice and straight. I wonder if the ring design is better than the typical bullet shaped projectiles we see on most of these guns.

"First portable induction accelerator in Russia. Capacitor energy 500j 5kV voltage, ring speed about 200m/s "

One way to learn lots about a protocol is by implementing a bit banged version. Openschemes shares with us his experimentation with the Arduino and the FT232 chip.

"We’ve been considering the synchronous bit bang mode of the FT232R for an upcoming project. The first steps towards something like this are always to build up a little debug board or test bench that can be used for debug and tweaking while the real boards are in fab. Luckily for us, the Arduino board contains an FT232R ripe for the hacking. For most users, all their dreams are fufilled by avrdude-jtag, which will allow them to reprogram the bootloader on the Arduino Atmega. As you may know, four of the FT232R’s GPIO pins are brought out to an unpopulated header on the Arduino board. The first (and easiest) job is to solder in a set of header pins for future connections."