Gaming With Fidget Spinner Controllers

At this year’s PixelPop Games Festival, designer Rob Santos surprised visitors with an arcade game called Flock Off.

This game — which is a sort of variation of Flappy Bird except with a whole flock of birds instead of just one — is eventually intended for mobile devices with touch controls. The arcade version, however, features a much more unique scheme, combining yesterday’s Flappy Bird fad with today’s fidget spinners.

Yes, that’s right, his pair of arcade controllers feature spinner control. Three magnets embedded in the spinners activate a Hall effect switch three times per revolution, and your success depends on how fast you can spin your device.

These RPMs, along with signals from five “traditional” arcade buttons, act as inputs to an Arduino, feeding serial data to the game through a USB interface.

The fidget spinner’s RPM controls the “power” of your flock (size, damage rating, point multipliers, etc.) and the arcade buttons choose the height at which you launch birds. The player start buttons open upgrade menus navigable with the colored action buttons.

You can delve deeper into the flockin’ awesome project here, and see a demo of it below!