Using A Watch To Control Ms. Pacman

Recently, [Alan] broke out the ‘ol Atari 2600 to relive his childhood with a bit of Yar’s Revenge and Adventure, but after looking at his new TI EZ430 Chronos watch, he figured he could add a bit of motion control from this classic game system. He used the accelerometer in this watch to play Ms. Pacman by tilting his wrist, an awesome build that really shows off the power of his new wrist worn device.

The watch is running stock firmware and communicates to a PC via an RF module attached to his computer’s USB port. The accelerometer data is fed into a VB.net app to convert the movements of the wrist into up, down, left, and right commands. These commands are then sent out over a serial port to an Arduino to translate those commands into something the Atari joystick port can understand.

Sure, it may be a roundabout way of playing Ms. Pacman, but considering the TI Chronos has been used for very serious work such as stopping SIDS and helping out soccer referees, we’re happy to see a more frivolous application for this neat watch.

You can check out [Alan]’s video after the break, or get the VB and Arduino source here and here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcZBFHLC4U4&w=470]

4 thoughts on “Using A Watch To Control Ms. Pacman

  1. Hmm… Makes me wonder about using an exercize machine of some kind to drive the pac-man.

    Like a bike or treadmill. Maybe with a steering interface to steer?

    If the level of exertion could cause the pac-man to go faster, that would be a huge incentive, I think. Though, obviously, the ability to go faster is not part of the normal gameplay.

  2. This is really nice but does anyone find it humourous that his game controller has far more computational power than the machine he’s playing the game on? Next, RC Car, nah screw that, REAL CAR!

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