By now, no introduction is needed: when the Internet drops, Chrome’s dinosaur appears, and we proceed to waste a good amount of time trying to get as far as possible. The game has only two commands, and that means one thing: DIY! With an Arduino module, a bit of code, and a couple of sensors, you can control the dinosaur using your own body.
The concept of a “time-waster” is truly irresistible. Candy Crush, Flappy Bird, even classic Windows games… some breaks are mandatory, and if we decide to stay in front of the screen, one click follows another, and another, and another. One of those “breaks” is the Internet connection dropping, and with it, Chrome’s dinosaur appears. Two commands (jump or duck), different obstacles, and get as far as we can. It seems simple…
But what if we turn it into a real challenge? For example, using our body to control the dinosaur. The first thing that comes to mind is a hacked Kinect to track every movement, however, the solution by “Ryan Chan” on YouTube is much simpler. He took an Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board, set it up as a keyboard, and connected two sensors: a force sensor attached to a sandal, and an elastic one hooked to his t-shirt, each with a voltage divider.
I imagine the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 is not required, since other Arduino variants (Leonardo, Esplora, Zero, Due) can also work as keyboards and are much cheaper. Both the diagram and the code were published on Hackster.io (link below), and I admit they are very easy to follow. It is likely the code will need a tweak or two to set the sensor thresholds.
https://old.neoteo.com/keecap-captura-de-movimiento-de-codigo-abierto-con-arduino/Now, Ryan admits that part of the game is impossible to pass by jumping (too fast), so he decided to cheat until reaching the phase that requires ducking. The rest of the work for anyone interested will be to create a cleaner circuit and an enclosure to avoid having a breadboard hanging from the waist...
Access the project: Click here
