Spark Fun’s centerpiece at Maker Faire back in May was this LED coffee table. They just recently posted about how it was constructed. The surface is made from 64 8×8 RGB LED matrix boards totaling 4096 LEDs. The eight rows are connected to a custom router board so that one SPI line can control the entire display. The main microcontroller is an Olimex LPC2106 dev board. It runs a four player cooperative pong game where multiple balls are added over time. Each player gets a classic Atari paddle for control. You can see a video of the table running a screensaver after the break.

For many of the tables on the list, more means integrated lights that react to the user in fun ways, like KLOSS’s DeLighTable, which creates light patterns on its surface in response to being touched or having objects placed on it. We can’t argue with the design behind such tables, but if the tech upgrades are practically useless, at least they should be genuinely compelling, like this table that simulates endless space, or the embedded LED pong table. Of course, the list also contains tables that consider utility first, doubling as media centers or embedding a multitouch surface.

Still, to us the best ones weren’t even on the main list, but in an honorable mention category: a sweet coffee table made from a pinball machine, and our very favorite, a giant working NES controller. We understand that these are not as aesthetically pleasing (arguably) or as useful as some the tables on the list, but our priorities are ingenuity first, then utility, then design.

[via Neatorama]