WALL-O-TRON, The Interactive Rock Climbing Wall

Last April, hackerspaces around the country received a gift from RedBull for their creation challenge. The hackerspace teams were charged with creating, ‘something with LEDs’ and let loose in their workshop for a chance to win a trip to NYC and build some cool stuff. Of course, RedBull couldn’t bring all the teams to the big apple and a few incredible projects were left by the wayside in their home hackerspace.

One such project was the WALL-O-TRON from Team Rabbit-Hole and home base for the Tymkrs. It’s a huge wall embedded with LEDs that turn an ordinary rock climbing wall into a game called WallSweeper – climb a path to the illuminated hold, but don’t touch the ‘hot rock’ or your game is over.

The hand holds are illuminated by over 300 of LEDs connected to a Linux PC. The sign above the wall is controlled by RedBull’s TurBULL Encabulator, and the giant ‘WALL-O-TRON’ letters are huge pieces of foam with five meters of RGB LEDs embedded inside.

A great project with the possibility of being upgraded in the future with more games. Perfect for the rock climbing playground it’s situated in.

11 thoughts on “WALL-O-TRON, The Interactive Rock Climbing Wall

    1. Been done before yes and no… Digiwall uses dedicated custom holds so not much variation. Our main goal was to make a wall that could be used with standard holds and appeal to seasoned climbers and beginners alike. With the ability to use any climbing holds without modification, not just custom jugs, it opens up the ability to use pinches, slopers, and the like to make the wall a challenge for those who want it.

      Since the video we have added a touch screen kiosk to the side of the wall for picking and setting up game settings. (difficultly level and max height). There are some pictures of the the touch screen at the bottom of my page here along with some hardware details.
      http://wire2wire.org/Climbing_wall/Climbing_wall.html

      Taking a break from upgrades at the moment but working on a new larger LED marque for the top and have a buch of new ideas for games I am hoping to work on later this fall / winter when the weather turns nasty again.

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