Wizard Duel in Real Life With W.A.N.D.S.

If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, one of the coolest things these wizards-in-training could do was to cast spells using their magical wands…

Hackster Staff
7 years ago

If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, one of the coolest things these wizards-in-training could do was to cast spells using their magical wands. Obviously, magical wands don’t exist in real life though… or perhaps they do if using “sufficiently advanced” technology.

To this end, Allen Pan recently created a pair of wizard dueling rigs. He calls them “Wizard Analogue No-Maj Dueling Simulators,” aka W.A.N.D.S. Each one features a Raspberry Pi running a Python program that uses the Google Cloud Speech API to listen for spells, along with an Arduino board that controls the spells via an infrared LED.

In addition, the setup includes an IR receiver. When a participating wizard is hit by an offensive spell, another Arduino activates a TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) unit, so that when his or her muscles are “stimulated” accordingly. A NeoPixel ring also illuminates confirming the hit.

To avoid spamming, each spell — Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Tarantallegra, Petrificus Totalus and Protego — is programmed with a recharge time and available spells are indicated via an LED strip on the wand. Check out around 3:00 in the video below, where Pan battles fellow YouTuber redRomina in a simulated wizard duel.

[h/t: Raspberry Pi]

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