Blinky Seesaw Has ’em Queuing At The Playground

How long has it been since you were on a seesaw? Perhaps the plank-and-fulcrum toy of your youth no longer holds any interest. But add some blinky lights and a fancy enclosure and folks are lined up to get back in the saddle.

The video after the break gives just a glimpse of what’s inside of this thing. There are 33 sets of LED strips wrapping the plank from on end to the other. They’re covered in a translucent shell (we’d guess it’s acrylic that has been heated and bent). Judging from the children walking in the middle, it’s engineered well enough to hold up to some abuse. The seesaw can sense a change in orientation and sends light cascading from one end to the other as if aided by gravity.

We really like the clean lines of the installation; the spartan center mount, the use of half a tire as a ground bumper, and fact that the very end of the plank also lights up. If we happened upon this (it’s in Melbourne, Australia so not likely) we’d wait a while for our turn!

http://vimeo.com/44005246

13 thoughts on “Blinky Seesaw Has ’em Queuing At The Playground

  1. In New York City, there are NO seesaws in any New York Parks playground.

    I am one of millions of Americans who survived despite the “dangers” of the seesaw.

    The nanny state is sickening.

    1. Yup. Playgrounds around the country have been losing seesaws, slides, and other “dangerous” things, and it’s really sad for the kids not to experience them. (They lost merry-go-rounds first, but those were not only dangerous, they also needed maintenance or they’d stop working on their own.)

      Also, you’ll see a lot of apartment swimming pools that used to have diving boards, but those got taken out for the same litigation-paranoia reasons.

  2. Indeed, seesaws are practically forgotten in the USA. Sure, there are soldi plastic, safety approved devices at Toys R Us or Walmart, but nothing like from the days of my youth. This was realized after we built Cecil the Seesaw: Seesawing is fun! See Ceil the Seesaw at above link :-)

    1. I am pretty skilled with electronics and good with other tech ideas. Feel free to contact me if interested on brain-storming/teaming up for similar projects. I live in San Jose, CA (USA). I’d love to start up a new line of business with similar concepts.

  3. Where I live we still have all the normal playground equipment in our city parks. None of it is plastic except for most of the slides. I think the static electricity from sliding your ass on one of those is way more fun than burning yourself on a metal one.

    Must be a big city thing.

    1. In NYC the slides were metal and tall (~8 feet high?) and if they didn’t let you slide easily we would take sand from the sandbox and rub it all over the metal slide. That let us slide at a fast speed.

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