Hacking a Chevy Volt Into a Mario Kart 64 Controller

If you grew up playing SNES, one of the games that really defined that system was Mario Kart 64. In fact, if you played enough you probably…

Hackster Staff
7 years agoGaming

If you grew up playing SNES, one of the games that really defined that system was Mario Kart 64. In fact, if you played enough you probably now have catch phrases as “mama mia!” or “here we go!” in your mind at its mere mention. Yet, you’ve likely never see it played like this: inside a Chevy Volt using the actual car as the controller.

YouTuber Gordon Hlavinka explains that his son Dan and friends Adam Ringwood and JP Smith modified a Volt to use the vehicle’s steering wheel and pedals to move the karts around on a dash-mounted laptop running an emulator. Their setup can also jump and throw shells via the high beam and windshield wiper switches.

A Raspberry Pi with a PiCAN2 CAN BUS shield serves as a link from the laptop to the Chevy’s OBD-II port, translating real-life inputs into computer signals.

We can only hope this hasn’t been tried while driving.

You can read more about the impressive project, which won the recent HackIllinois hackathon, here.

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