This project might look familiar if you were one of the millions watching Super Bowl XLIX. Ken Gracey, CEO of Parallax, was tasked with the dream job of creating a life size PacMan game for a Super Bowl advertisement.
The project consisted of a life-size maze that was built exactly to scale of the original video game. The four ghosts wore light up costumes and rollerblades to give the effect of floating through the maze.
How do you connect and synchronize lights between 4 rollerskating ghosts?
In the costume of each ghost is an XBee connected to a Propeller 1 MultiCore Microcontroller. The microcontroller controls 4,000 LEDs in each of the ghosts’ costumes. Commands sent from a laptop via XBee adjust the flashing sequence in all of the costumes.