Team 1.21 Jigawatts of the Red Bull Creation contest built a submarine simulator! How cool is that?

The structure of the submarine was drawn up in Sketchup, and cut out on a Shopbot CNC machine. We then salvaged nearly everything you see on the submarine, from the LCD display, to the pipes, and the metal grating on the floor. The whole submarine rocks back and forth with an old hospital bed actuator. We even have a built in vibration motor that shakes the submarine when you get hit by a torpedo.

On the electronics side, we have the whole thing powered by three Arduinos. We chose to use three Arduinos instead of something like an Arduino Mega, because we have each Arduino running a specific task on their own, and then communicate with each other to trigger events. One of the events is if enough people tweet #firetorpedo while the game is in play, red lights start flashing and warning sounds go off letting you know a torpedo has been launched (you can even see the torpedo incoming on the LCD radar screen). You get a voice command telling you what you need to do to evade (press buttons in a certain order, pull handles, or crank valves). If you are too slow, you will get hit, the whole sub will rock, and a bunch of valves will break. You will then have to close them manually. We use an Arduino Ethernet to communicate with Twitter, and an Adafruit Wave Shield to take care of the sound effects.

[via Adafruit]

Photo credit: Justin Evidon