This Horsie Race project, developed for my recent workshops in Colorado, creates a carnival midway-style horse race using a wireless audio input with Arduino and XBee that transmits each player’s yells and cheers to a base station radio. This base station is connected to a computer where the noise advances their horse on the screen using the Processing graphical programming environment.
Yell, cheer, chant or plaintively moan into the microphone on your sensor board to make the horses move. Your yelling will also be picked up somewhat by your neighbor’s microphone. Since you’ve gone wireless, physical strategy is key. The direction you face and whether you hide in the coat closet will influence the speed of your horse.
First horse across the finish line wins the race! Shower the lucky jockey with champagne, then race again! Full instructions, diagrams, schematics and code for this example are freely available on my site.