Snake charmer

Old nokia phone snake game hacked to be controlled by recorders

An old Nokia phone keyboard hacked, connected to an Arduino through series of relays, which was controlled by Max/MSP. What are all these pains good for?

Of course we wanted to control the old Nokia Snake game by recorders! Since the old times many games came out with better graphics and sound but Snake is still unbeatable in a way. But what can add more to the classic game? To actually control the snake with real wind instruments!



We could have written a snake game but we didn`t. Instead, we hacked an old Nokia 6110i to keep the authenticity of the game. Soldering the buttons to some 5V relays that close the circuits with the help of an arduino were all we needed to do. We didn`t have a pungi (the instrument snake charmers use in India) lying around so we used cheap recorders for the input control. The pitch detecting and the arduino controlling were a piece of cake with Max/MSP.



Oh yeah, we are playing in pairs because we suck at playing the recorder, but hardcore snake charmers can play on their own!

(most of this text was written by László Kiss)