After Instructables user R0RSHACH’s son won a place at the World Scout Jamboree in 2019, the maker decided to create a fairground-style game for fundraising. 

The resulting device is akin to a Whack-a-Mole or Batak game that can be found at high-end gyms, and features eight large light-up buttons per player on a wooden frame.

When activated, an Arduino Mega turns on the button-lights in sequence to test how long it takes participants to push each one. While it can be made in a single-player version, the two-player game looks like a lot more fun, allowing participants to compete on opposing boards. 

Code and instructions are available here, and you can see it demonstrated in the videos below.

Certainly everyone remembers passing time in a boring high school class playing games on a graphing calculator. Whether it was a Mario-esque game, Tetris, or BlockDude, there are plenty of games out there for pretty much all of the graphing calculators that exist. [Christopher], [Tim], and their colleagues from Cemetech took their calculator game a little bit farther than we did, and built something that’ll almost surely disrupt whatever class you’re attempting to pay attention in: They built a graphing calculator whac-a-mole game.

This game isn’t the standard whac-a-mole game, though, and it isn’t played on the calculator’s screen. Instead of phyiscal “moles” the game uses LEDs and light sensors enclosed in a box to emulate the function of the moles. In order to whack a mole, the player only needs to interrupt the light beam which can be done with any physical object. The team made extensive use of the ArTICL library which allows graphing calculators to interface with microcontrollers like the MSP432 that they used, and drove the whole thing with a classic TI-84.

This project is a fun way to show what can be done with a graphing calculator and embedded electronics, and it was a big hit at this past year’s World Maker Faire. Calculators are versatile in other ways as well. We’ve seen them built with open hardware and free software, And we’ve even seen them get their own Wi-Fi.