Gigantic “Toothpick” Is a Clever Electronic Balance Game

If someone gave you a stick and told you to make a game out of it, you might decide to see how long you and your friends can balance it on an open hand, or perhaps even a foot or forehead. Taking this idea much, much further, hacker “pepelepoisson” decided to automate this concept with Stecchino, a word which conveniently translates to toothpick in Italian, giving it a distinctly Arduino sound.

Stecchino is competitvely balanced like an “analog” stick, but is made out of several layers of laser-cut wood, and displays the score as a series of programmable LEDs that build up from the bottom.

An Arduino Pro Mini is used for control, and an MPU-6050 accelerometer enables the device to sense what’s going on balance-wise. Power is provided by a small LiPo battery, carefully managed via software and hardware to allow it to last for weeks at a time.

Since its beginnings on a breadboard, Stecchino is now up to version 4, so unlike many maker projects, this one has undergone some testing and refinement. If you’d like to build your own, you can find plans and code on GitHub, and more information is available in English via Google Translate, or in its original French form if you prefer.

[h/t: Hackaday]