Sick of people coming into your office and talking your ear off? There are plenty of ways to get them to leave, but I’ve never thought of using an old NES system to hurry them on their way.
Mark Rober and his pal Chad Grant hacked together this NES console – dubbed the “Annoying Person Remover “- which plays classic sound effects from the game when a person enters your space. When they first come in, it plays Mario’s pipe sound, and then the familiar level music and sounds as they hang out. But they only have 400 seconds to complete the level before they’re booted from your office, with that lovely Hurry Up tune that plays when you’re running out of time, and the Game Over tune when it’s time to GTFO.
The build is actually pretty simple, using an old NES, an Arduino board (with Music and Sound add-on), a motion sensor, and a clock display. You can grab all of the information you need to build your own over on Dropbox, including a parts list, and Arduino programming files.
Just how many ways can one guy use the video capabilities of his mobile devices to entertain us with? Well if you’re tinkerer Mark Rober, I guess the answer is “plenty.” After amusing us with his iPad Halloween costume and Gorilla Cam, Mark is back with another fun hack – the animated ugly sweater.
By mounting an iPad inside of a sweater rigged with a fake fireplace surround, Rober created the illusion of a warm holiday fire burning in the middle of his gut. Here, check it out in action:
You can grab the fireplace animation as part of Mark’s DigitalDudz Christmas iOS app. Be sure to keep an eye out on Mark’s youtube channel in the coming days for a video showing how to make your own ugly fireplace sweater.