How-To: Wi-Fi Detecting Sting Hobbit Sword

In the shadows of Mordor, a sword that alerts you when Orcs are near is a pretty great thing to have. In real life, Sting (Biblo Baggins’ magical sword that turns blue at the detection of Orcs) would be pretty unnecessary. And boring. That’s where WarSting comes in.

WarSting is exactly what it looks like. It’s Sting, glowing bright and blue, but WarSting doesn’t detect Orcs. WarSting detects unsecured Wi-Fi networks. And when you slash WarSting through the air near a unsecured Wi-Fi network, WarSting jumps on that network and publishes a message: “{YOUR WI-FI NETWORK} has been vanquished!”. WarSting is made with two things: a toy Sting (this is the recommended one), and a Spark Core. Spark Core is Wi-Fi development kit with a reprogrammable chip that has a Wi-Fi module and can interact with sensors and actuators like the ones in the toy sword. It’s like a Wi-Fi connected Arduino. There’s some simple disassembling, soldering, programming, and reassembling required to make WarSting work, but then when your sword turns blue, vanquish away!