Real (?) wizarding duels with Raspberry Pi and T.E.N.S.

Allen Pan of Sufficiently Advanced decided that Google’s voice recognition service wasn’t being used for the right stuff. So, he hooked up a Raspberry Pi to the service for a far more magical mission. Wizard Analogue No-Magic Dueling Simulator (W.A.N.D.S.) is Harry Potter-meets-Laser-Tag – the Pi detects the speaking of ‘spells’ and then triggers an infra-red tipped wand. The infra-red signal is picked up by an opposing player’s receiver and then an Arduino hooked up to a T.E.N.S. machine delivers light electrical shocks to various parts of their body. This gives a palpable sense of being ‘hit’ without doing any damage. There is a bit of a delay while the voice commands are piped to the cloud and received back again, making it not-particularly-instant, but it’s still pretty cool! See it in action in the video below:

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