Four-way Pong coffee table

Posted in Games by Conner Flynn on September 13th, 2008

Four-way Pong coffee tableCoffee tables just sit there and do nothing. They just wait for the stray drink and the occasional pair of feet and that’s about it. If you want a more adventurous coffee table, you could get yourself SparkFun’s LED coffee table, which took two years to build. It kicks the legs out from beneath other cofee tables with it’s ability to play a four-way game of cooperative Pong.

It uses 64 RGB serial matrices, 4 Atari controllers, and an LPC2106 dev board to create said game of Pong. Since it’s a one of a kind piece, you can’t just pick one up at the store. But if you’ve got about 2 years and some electronics experience, you can make one too. Or just admire this one.

Homemade Pong watch

Posted in Watches by Conner Flynn on August 31st, 2008

Homemade Pong watchPong is hip again. Or should I say wrist? The Homemade Pong Watch was created by John, a lover of Pong who managed to compress all of the electronics for the watch into a trim 10mm-thick case. The 96×64 OLED display runs continuously and as John points out, there is no need to press a button to see the time. Battery life is 25 hours, so recharging is done every night. It looks absolutely worthy of my wrist in action. I would watch it play all day and get nothing done. Check out the video below. Excellent work.

Animated Pong T-Shirt shows your geek side

Posted in Apparel by Conner Flynn on June 26th, 2008

Animated Pong T-Shirt shows your geek side
So on the rare occasions when you venture out and get away from your mom’s attic, how do you geeks recognize each other? I’m guessing that one big giveaway would be this animated T-Shirt that plays old school Pong. It’s battery powered and it plays pong right on your chest.

Just make sure that you remove the battery before washing! Venture forth my geek friend and as you journey out into the world, you and your shirt will collect fellow nerds as if you were the Pied piper of Pong.

2,400 LED Pong table for gaming & dining

Posted in Furniture by Conner Flynn on May 28th, 2008

2,400 LED Pong table for gaming & dining
Pong has taken many strange twists and turns through our culture since the 70s and has somehow endured, despite it’s simple nature. Well, it’s back again and this time the game takes place on a table, allowing you to play and then dine. Or dine and then play a game for dessert. It’s from the mind of Moritz Waldemeyer. The table uses 2400 LEDs for display and has 2 trackpads.

Turned on, the trackpads let users control the paddles. Turn it off and it’s just a plain table again. It was part of MOMA’s Elastic Mind exhibit. I for one would love to see it go into production, but somehow I doubt it will. For one thing, it would force you to clear the table everytime you want a game and that’s just a bit too much if you love Pong and dining.





Other blogs from the Topic Soup Network that you might like:

PopTherapy.com - A therapeutic guide to popular culture

WeathyReader.com - Where reading pays off.

HealthyReader.com web site

Botropolis.com web site