Crushtoberfest – Can You Pwn Tom Selleck?

[flickr video=http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmillerid/4055251585/]

On rare occasion, the celestial bodies that control engineering and design awesomeness move into alignment and cast their blessed star dust upon a hacker. Today, we can witness the glorious outcome of such an alignment. Although almost unheard of, it’s a good omen that such a blessed hacker also be adorned with a wickedly furry face.

[Joel] wanted to up the ante for a yearly work gathering. He set out with the concept of Crushtoberfest, a test-your-strength game where a stake is hit with a mallet and the resulting force rings a bell. But bell ringing is for normal projects, [Joel’s] muse required LEDs and fire as a reward for success. In fact, Tom Selleck (god of all things mustache) becomes angry at successful contestants to the point that his eyes will flash red and flames shoot out of his ears.

The mechanical input is a clever design. The stake used as the target is a 6×6 block with some old tire tread affixed to the top of them. The stake rests on a piece of radiator hose that is sealed on one end and connected to a pressure sensor on the other. Radiator hose is resilient, so it takes quite a blow to cause much compression, which is then translated into a value by an Arduino via the pressure sensor. [Joel’s] gone to the effort of building gravitational deceleration into the progress tracker of the vertical string of LEDS. Too bad he didn’t have access to an addressable LED rope to make this easier, but he did pull it off nicely. He also goes into detail about prototyping and building some fireball modules.

Go now and read his blog (oldest at the top, newest at the bottom). We can call the experience nothing short of delightful.

11 thoughts on “Crushtoberfest – Can You Pwn Tom Selleck?

  1. Cool

    I’d have used propane and a spark gap myself to save reloading the ears but still fun in a bun :).

    Hate Arduino though , ok it’s simple but there are far easier and better ways to program micros than Arduino, it viral advertising gone mad.

    Arduino this Arduino that Hackaday make it sound like there is nothing but Arduino.

    I never use em , no need.

  2. @therian: “jimmys if you not trolling, Im really sad for you”
    @therian-almost every arduino post there is, you have to troll . your 2 cents are not making a difference in anyone’s opinion so honestly we don’t know why you even bother posting anything. If you don’t have anything constructive to say then keep your “opinions” to yourself where they belong.

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