This Controller Turns the Chrome Dinosaur Game Into a Workout

Like many of those reading this piece, Clifford Jay (AKA “fridaay”) has been at home for the last two weeks or so. Also, like many of us, he’s been keeping busy playing a variety of video games that he admits he’s not so good at. However, one game you might have overlooked up to now is Google Chrome's offline dinosaur game. In this masterpiece, one simply has to hit the space bar over and over to allow the protagonist t-rex to jump over obstacles that come into its path. It’s a nice distraction for a minute or two, but not one that eats into companies like EA and Valve's sales.

To spice things up a bit, Jay decided to create his own custom controller specifically for this game, using an accelerometer hooked up to an Arduino Uno to read actual jumping movements. Data is transmitted to another Uno connected to a laptop via a pair of nRF24L01 RF modules, which is programmed to hit the space bar when the system detects jumping.

While this setup doesn’t seem to enhance the user’s dinosaur skills, it does look like a fun distraction. It could perhaps also be a pretty good workout, given how tired Jay seems to be after using it.

Of course, one could always just bounce the controller up and down by hand, analgous to how the Power Pad was often misused for various hijinks on the original NES. Code for this dino jump rig isn’t currently posted, but is available upon request, per the video description.