Controlling Real Objects Using Minecraft

Most augmented reality takes images of the real world and superimposes virtual data on top of them. [Michael Winston Dales] went a different direction, using the virtual world of Minecraft to control objects in the physical world. In the video after the break you can see him use switches that he built inside the game to turn the LEDs pictured above on and off. You’ll also notice that in-game sign instructing a player to stand in one spot to Tweet. Since Minecraft is written in Java there are some mods that allow you to hook onto in-game events. [Michael] does just that, triggering his own scripts to send data to an Arduino, or use a Twitter API. Now this something that should be used with the Minecraft ALU. It takes the sandbox method of gaming to a new place, doesn’t it?

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yo dog, we heard you liked simulations

16 Bit ALU In Minecraft

We love games here but we don’t often get a reason to write about them. This, however, is worth mentioning. The indie hit Minecraft is eating the entire internet right now. The game itself is hit and miss amongst our staff, but this project is unanimously accepted as awesome. [Theinternetftw} has created a simulation of the ALU section of a 16bit processor.  He can set it in motion and run around watching as the states change. This is part of an even bigger project to create the entire processor as shown in the book “The Elements of Computer Systems“.

For those that are wondering how long it took him to place all of those pieces, he actually imported most of it from another program. You can get more details on how they pulled this off in this forum thread. Be sure to catch the video after the break.

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