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."

PJMonty from SoCalHalloween sure knows how to rig up some great animatronics! The bird and talking skull are funny and spooky at the same time! This project was entered in the Halloween Project Contest, which by the way there is still time to enter.

Via: HG Forum

"The electronics consist of two custom circuit boards I designed. The bottom one (most of which is obscured) contains the micro-controller and memory. It talks to the host PC via a serial port and has animation moves streamed to it on the fly. The top board has another micro-controller and is responsible for handling the time critical work of controlling the actual RC servos. It also has some interface circuitry on it for things like the LCD. Partially visible on the right is the power supply which powers both the circuitry and the servos."

SoCalHalloween - "Small Candy" from SoCalHalloween on Vimeo.

Dave Jones from the EEVblog did a review of the PICkit 3 Programmer/Debugger. Watch the video above but to sum it up he was not impressed with the new version. The video below is a video that Microchip made in response to Dave’s video review. Lets just say that I am VERY impressed by Microchip putting together this great video poking fun at themselves and on such short notice. Well done Microchip!

Who says you need a entire car to drive around in. This two seat car looks nice and comfortable. The only issue looks to be that it stops quite abruptly when reversing.

Hans Scharler has been busy making a DIY Steampunk Pumpkin that is sure to please anyone who sees it. He squished tons of parts in there from some of the best DIY providers. His own ioBridge, some sensors from Adafruit, some ThingM (designed by Tod Kurt) parts from Sparkfun.

"Using the ioBridge IO-204, I rigged up the fog machine to trigger when someone walked in front of the pumpkin. I used a passive infrared sensor from Adafruit to detect motion. The IO-204 has an upcoming feature that allows for on board logic, meaning you can break off of the Internet and have local controls take over. To integrate it with the fog machine, I tapped into the wireless remote control that came with the fog machine. This made it easy to control using a single relay. To light the pumpkin, I bought a BlinkM RGB LED Blaster from Sparkfun. The LEDs are high intensity lights that you can mix colors together."

Todd Harrison came up with a great way to scare anyone who dares to press the red button nose of his pumpkin. The Honking Pumpkin is sure to be a hit sitting on the front step of your house.

"Control board showing the two 555 timers, two MOSFETs, pot to control horn blast timing and other discrete elements. The first 555 timer starts when the red button is pushed and it turns on the red 12v bulbs through the 1st MOSFET (P10NK60ZFP). After 1 second this timer stops and cascades a pulse to the 2nd 555 timer which repeats the process turning on the horns through the 2nd MOSFET and relay."

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The guys over at Mana Potions have developed a cool new way to play the new AION and get some exercise at the same time. Looks like running and flapping at the same time may be kind of hard but it is a good idea to get a bit of a workout. I wonder how long it will be before more game consoles and game manufactures make exercise part of the required game play?

"We used a Targus Bluetooth adapter and installed Blue Soleil to connect our wiimotes to our PC. Blue Soleil is great, because it doesn’t require a passkey when you pair the PC with the wiimotes. Once the wiimotes were connected, we used GlovePIE to translate the data from the wiimotes into useful keypresses in Aion. The keys are a piece of cake to map, but getting the script to accurately represent flap speed using the accelerometers in the wiimotes required a couple lines of scripting. The script detects a flap as exceeding a certain acceleration in the relative y-axis of the wiimote, then decides if that flap happened soon enough after the previous flap to count. If so, it stops holding down the F (fall) key and starts holding down the R (rise) key until the flapping becomes too slow."