Puzzles

GPS-enabled puzzle box opens only at รŽle-de-Brรฉhat, France

GPS-enabled puzzle box opens only at รŽle-de-Brรฉhat, 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.

Bead magnets follow-up

In response to our post of the “BuckyBalls” magnetic beads, Mister Zed pointed us to this cool Bill Beaty demo of super magnetic beads and the behavior of their magnetic fields in loops and chains. Bill also shows how you can make a simple compass with the magnets. Lots of other cool info and vids […]

Online index of mechanical puzzles

Online index of mechanical puzzles

John Rausch’s Puzzle World website showcases some incredible and ingenious objects from Rausch’s own puzzle collection, and from those of others. The site is divided into categories like interlocking solid puzzles, impossible object puzzles, sequential movement puzzles, etc. It’s a nearly inescapable click-trap. Shown here are two of my favorites, so far. Above is Stewart […]