While Angry Birds has been downloaded more than 700 million times and spawned countless parodies, someone has managed to add a new wrinkle to the bird-slinging action by building a USB slingshot controller. Created by Simon Ford, director of tools for mbed parent company ARM, it uses an accelerometer to measure the tilt of the controller and a “rubber stretch sensor” to measure how hard you pull back, and then maps those movements to the appropriate mouse controls. There’s also a USB connector and an mbed NXP LPC11U24 Microcontroller, and all of the electronics are embedded into a plain old slingshot carved from a branch. You can find all of the details on how to build one yourself — including the code for mapping the controls — in the source link below, but you should probably hurry if you want your own in time for the launch of Angry Birds Space.
Play ‘Angry Birds’ with a USB slingshot controller
A new hack lets you play Angry Birds with a USB slingshot — once you build it yourself, that is.
A new hack lets you play Angry Birds with a USB slingshot — once you build it yourself, that is.
is an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.
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