There are many different ways to test one’s reaction times; a simple way is to simply drop a ruler and see how far it falls before you can catch it. Take that same concept to a greater level, and you get this impressive “Catch The Stick” game.
The creation of one [Romain Labbe], the build has a wooden frame that holds up several sticks roughly seven feet off the ground. When the game is triggered, a beeper counts down, and then sticks start dropping. Each stick is held in place with a small solenoid-controlled latch, and the game simply energizes the solenoids in turn to drop the sticks randomly. On easier modes, the sticks are released gently, one at a time. On higher difficulty levels, they’re released in a near-continuous stream that would tax even a team of several players.
It’s not a complicated build, but it is very nicely executed. It certainly looks to be good fun to play with friends. Alternatively, you could try out this more distributed-style build. Video after the break.
[Thanks to Keith Olson for the tip!]
I see a potential pub game to rival darts and pool :-)
Hopefully it won’t start releasing those wooden beams in the ceiling!
B^)
I’ve seen a video with a commercial version of this game, it looks fun but, how hard is it to reset after you play/can it automatically reset?
Just SWAGing here, but I was at a bowling alley recently and it used a system where each pin was attached to a cable, and it just hauled the pins up to reset them, letting their cables untwist as needed. Do the same thing, but with a thin/strong cable (aircraft wire) to each stick.
Use a conductive stick and the cable as a touch sensor so the machine can determine when the poll was grabbed, or better a multiconductor cable and accelerometer, to get the timing (another question here, I think)
Just electrify the cable and award a point for catching the stick, and well, snooze ya lose!
Would be nice to measure the time it takes you to grab the stock and count points…
If you grab a stock before it increases in value, you have your points.
But release it before the next stock market “correction”.
B^)
Hehe
s/stock/stick of course. Stupid autocorrect… (or thumb)
bruh can i get source code for this game? for arduino