Do you know anyone who hasn’t played Angry Birds? I’m finding it hard to locate someone that hasn’t, and even harder to find someone who doesn’t recognize the name at least.

Like it or not, Angry Birds is uber-popular with casual gamers, but those who are veteran players may be getting a bit tired of the mechanics in the run up to the launch of Angry Birds Space. Fear not, there is a solution that requires a new skill for playing the game, and it comes courtesy of mbed who specialize in rapid prototyping with microcontrollers.

A company that sells microcontrollers and supporting software is obviously going to come up with a physical addition for the game, and mbed haven’t disappointed. They’ve managed to build a real slingshot that interfaces with the game over a USB connection.

The finished slingshot is recognized by a PC as a mouse. In reality, it takes the input of pulling back the real slingshot using a rubber stretch sensor and translates it into the expected mouse input. The angle of the shot is controlled by an accelerometer and all depends on the angle the slingshot is held at by the player.

The accelerometer and stretch sensors are hooked up to an mbed NXP LPC11U24 board that uses a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 Core. A USB connector is then attached to allow connection with a PC. All supporting code for the project was written in C++.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a proper slingshot without being handcrafted from a piece of wood. mbed selected an appropriate branch and bored out the insides so as to fit the electronics and USB connector. I think you’ll agree, the finished slingshot certainly looks the part.

The good news is, there’s nothing to stop you making this slingshot for yourself. All the components are widely available and relatively cheap to buy, and mbed have released instructions and code for creating their prototype at the link below.

Read more at mbed