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I know, we have featured a few of these Guitar Hero robots here in the last while… But they are so interesting, this Slashbot Guitar Hero Robot by Texas A&M Electrical Engineering uses similar principals as Auto Guitar Hero did. The main difference is that Slashbot actually presses the keys as it plays. Video after the jump. "Slashbot is especially cool because it literally plays the guitar controller using mechanical actuators. The robot implements a National Instrument PXI box to digitize the composite video signal. Then, using NI LabVIEW, the luminance of specific pixels are monitored to detect "notes" on the screen. This information is then passed to the robotic actuators through a reconfigurable I/O FPGA in the NI PXI box. Currently, Slashbot is able to average very close to 100% accuracy in Expert mode. It is also possible for a human player to challenge the robot in multi-player mode. So far, the robot has always been more accurate! This system was created by four Texas A&M University undergrads: David Buckner, Mitchell Jefferis, Vinny LaPenna, and Michael Voth. The project was developed over the past three months for their Electrical Engineering Senior Design class."
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David Randolph from Systm cracks open a Guitar Hero and hooked up a show controller that would allow him to program in all the key presses for a particular song. It isn’t as high tech as the last Guitar Hero hack we saw but it should allow a flawless performance after quite a bit of work.
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There have been lots of Guitar Hero hacks since it came out but I think this is the most elegant I have ever seen! Auto Guitar Hero (AGH1000) simply connects to the composite video of the game and "looks" at where the colored pucks are and presses the associated button. The idea was thought up when a father couldn’t compete with his son at the game. If you want to ace the game why not build your own, full schematics and code are provided. "The AGH1000 is connected between the Wii’s video output and the TV or monitor’s video input. The Wii’s video output format is NTSC Composite Video. This means that all the information to properly drive a video monitor is present on a single wire - typically the yellow RCA connector. We used this composite video signal to generate signals that electrically press the correct notes and strum button at the correct time. The system consists of four sections - the Analog Processing Board, the Digital Processing Board, the Driver Board, and the Opto-Isolator Board."
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I could see a Tresling machine in pubs across the country. You have to move your hand to correctly orientate your Tetris pieces, this will most likely not be the orientation that your opponent desires. "I give you Tresling: Not just a two-player version of best game on earth, not just a fist-pumping, back ally arm wrestling match to end all matches… but a mash-up so heroic Zeus himself could not imagine it."
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MAME cabinets can be lots of fun. Check out this one by Stuart, the creative use of some old computer joysticks allow him to interface the authentic buttons and joystick to the computer with ease. You can purchase new arcade housings that are made just for MAME systems but Stuart decided to dig into an older system and bring it back to life with some elbow grease. "I put this machine together years ago now - its only got an Athlon 1700+ PC in it with XP Home ed. But this spec is good enough to run MAME! The cabinet was a generic one hosting a real Rygar game board and other gubbins, ALL ripped out, including the very old cathode ray screen, one that looked like it might have given me cancer, and replaced with a 17" iiyama. (I still have the very old game board). The cabinet was in a bad state when I got it. Needed a re-spray, and the whole front control panel was rebuilt from Pinewood as the old one was rotting. Some lengths of CAT5 cable link up two USB joypads with the authentic arcade joystick and buttons, lots of hot glue seal it all up so it doesn’t come loose easily. See the photoset for more info. Recently I even added some WiiMote interfacing software and a homebuilt sensorbar - use it as a gun for the ‘Point Blank’ game - a classic! It works reasonably well but for some reason you have to move the WiiMote left and right a lot more than you should need to to move the cursor. The WiiMote isn’t very good as a light-gun imho."
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FPGA chips are very powerful, have a look at this FPGA video game implementation that used to require a custom board and complex circuitry to make work. "The original Pac-man arcade game, implemented inside a single Xilinx Spartan-3E chip on a Spartan-3E Starter Kit. None of the extra hardware on the board is used, the chip in the middle implements the complete arcade board of the original game!" 
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The Wiimote has again proven to be a great resource for the creative hacker! If you are lucky enough to have some motorized blinds you might want to have a look at this Wii Remote Window Curtain Control project.
Video after the jump.
"The curtain control system is an existing system from Goelst and is called "G-Rail 6200". Normally it is controlled by infrared or wallswitches. However, it can also be controlled with a CAN bus. I used this CAN bus to interface with an old PC."
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