What an incredibly creative gaming controller! TWANG is a 1D Arduino-based dungeon crawler, inspired by Robin Baumgarten’s Line Wobbler build. In it, you control your character, a dot, across a strip of RGB LEDs, avoiding obstacles and slaying enemies by “twanging” an accelerometer, which is mounted atop a door stop spring. As shown in the video below, it’s a lot of fun, and the accelerometer/spring control method is especially innovative—perhaps ripe for other implementations?
You can build your own TWANG game based on these instructions, but for a head start on your own 1-D gaming experience, Bart Dring has come up with an Arduino Mega shield specifically for this purpose. This shield lets you attach the needed components to it via screw terminals, for an easy to set up and reliable gaming experience.
The kit comes with the needed accelerometer, speaker, and even a door spring, averting a trip to the hardware store. You will, however need to provide an LED strip, 3D-printed parts, and an Arduino Mega for control. And no, an Uno won’t work here, as the TWANG firmware is too big to fit on a ATmega328P microcontroller.
