If you’ve played any of the Splinter Cell games you’ll remember the PDA that [Sam Fisher] carried around with him. What if you could have one of your own when playing capture-the-flag? [Brad] has created the ZephyrEye as an electronic command and communications device for real-life games.
Each player carries around their own unit. The ZephyrEye has a GPS module, Xbee module, LCD screen, and control buttons. This allows a player to setup one of several different games, map out the game field including base locations and flag locations, and monitor a time limit and scoring. Other players can join the game in progress. The best part? The GPS modules report tracking to each handheld and act as radar for your team and the enemy team. We’ve got a couple of demo videos after the break.
Words can’t describe how delighted this would have made us back in the day. We don’t play outside with the other neighborhood kids anymore (insert dirty-old-man joke here) but that might change just because of this device. We may end up joining [Barney Stinson] for some amazingly awesome laser-tag games after all.
[Brad’s] posted hardware information and source code so that you can use to throw together a dozen or so units. We think the next version should incorporate a wearable display.
