Thursday, February 01, 2007

First Hand always the Right Hand

Our assignment was to create a game. I was inspired to do something like fencing seeing that they use electricity to determine who wins. If you aren't familiar with fencing, the entire hit area on their armor is metal, and the rapier is wired to the buzzer machine, and there is actually some guy winding up the wire as the go down this runway which is grounded. So I tried to think of a similar game but on a smaller level... and I recalled a childhood game a frequently lost due to my small hands (and short thumbs)... thumb war!

So my first project game a electronic thumb war game (some call it thumb wrestling)... you know, "1,2,3,4 I declare a thumb war!" I bought a pair of men's gardening gloves with grips and added on my own custom built sensors. It was challenging to create a sensor that works really well. I ended up wrapping foil around some sliced up erasers. I think if I made a real prototype, I would probably use fabric that conducts electricity, but i'll worry about that later.

Intrestingly enough, there exists a TV show on Nick on thumb wars.

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