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Modder turns candy canisters into gaming console, retro Pong paddles (video)
This is the second time this week we've covered a modder getting an old-school game to run with the help of some unexpected hardware. And arguably, it's the simpler of the two tales. A fellow named John Graham-Cumming fashioned a game console out of little more than a pair of metal canisters, an Arduino Pro board, and a potentiometer -- all so he could play Pong on his TV. The rig (cutely dubbed the Cansole) actually consists of two controllers, with the secondary one housing just a potentiometer. The first has one, too, but also houses the Arduino Pro, along with a battery, A/V controls, and a button for selecting and firing in the game. Et voilà! 1970s arcade-style tennis for two. For a 90-second nostalgia break, head on past the break to see these vintage-looking paddles in action.
DoDoNA's S-100 mp3 player doesn't need no stinkin' ergonomics
Clearly, skinny jeans aren't yet as popular in Korea as they are in Western lands. For if they were, we'd never see chunky cube-shaped players like this S-100 here, and the world would definitely be poorer for it. Taking its design cues from the mesmerizing Mintpass Cube, with a smidgen of old school iPod buttonry, this device boasts a 1.1-inch OLED display, FM radio, built-in speaker, voice recording, and a slightly pedestrian 4GB of integrated memory. No, it's not exactly sterling value at nearly $170, but we have the suspicion that the S-100 was never targeted at the unimpulsive analytical types anyway.
Man builds master-slave control suit for robot; master plays tennis, slave makes funny faces
The robot in the video below doesn't swallow humans or look particularly daemonic; as a matter of fact it looks perfectly subservient. User rodmanLT over at the RoboSavvy forums has created this master-slave suit consisting of a dozen "big fat" potentiometers, apparent leftovers from the Soviet Cold War military might. The armbands and associated tethers allow the operator to control the upper-torso of a Kondo KHR-1HV, even engaging in some tennis and a quick game of Catch the Tigger. See for yourself after the break, then hit the read link for some earlier testing vids. Surely a robotic interpretation of Twentieth-Century Vole's iconic The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights can't be far away.
