Fun & Games

The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.

GPS-enabled puzzle box opens only at Île-de-Bréhat, France

GPS-enabled puzzle box opens only at Île-de-Bréhat, France

The first presenter at last Thursday’s Dorkbot Austin was a gentleman named Mikal Hart, who described his “Reverse Geocaching Puzzle.” Designed and built as a wedding gift for an old friend moving to France, the box incorporates an Arduino with a custom shield. A prominent button on the lid, when pressed, returns a distance, in kilometers, on the LCD display (if a GPS signal can be acquired), and counts button-presses up to 50 atttempts. No directional information is provided, so the box must be moved about in order to triangulate the location it wants. Mikal also included a cunningly-disguised back door to allow it to be opened in the event of battery failures or bugs.

Street View’s embedded videos

Phil Clandillon has a cool new video project featuring Google Earth mashups with panoramic images of specific locations relating to the background of the music on The Editors’ new album.

To promote UK band Editors’ new album, In This Light And On This Evening, we’ve created a hacked version of Google Street View which allows users to preview the album in the areas of London which inspired it.

Users can travel to areas of the city where we’ve hacked in our own custom locations. The new additions consist of our own custom panoramic images, shot at night by photographer James Royall. Within each location the user will hear music from the album, which was inspired by the mood and magic of London at night. Each of the nine tracks on the album has its own location.