A cellular-connected Pokéball for finding rare Pokémon
Guys, we did it. We achieved complete nerd-dom.
Behold, a home-made Pokéball (that you can build yourself) that wiggles when a rare Pokémon is nearby. It’s connected to a cellular network — powered by a Particle Electron—and has a GPS chip inside. It asks the Pokémon API what Pokémon are nearby, and if there are any rare Pokémon, it wiggles to let you know to pull out your phone and start hunting.
As we all know, the Pokémon Go craze has taken the world by storm. The game has more paying users than all other mobile games combined, and Niantic, the company behind the game, is apparently now worth more than $3Bn. The Twitter-verse has had lots of things to say about the game, such as my personal favorite:
But the game has problems. It will drain your battery in two to three hours of use, and staring at your screen while walking or driving can be hazardous to your health.
Enter the internet-connected Pokéball.
The Pokéball was created by Particle community member TJ Hunter and published as an open source project on Hackster. TJ’s instructions for the project include the circuit design as well as the software necessary to report the ball’s location, wiggle the ball, and check the Pokémon API for nearby rare Pokémon.
The results? The first wiggle of the Pokéball led to TJ catching one of these bad boys:
Interested in building your own Pokéball? Check out Particle’s store to buy your own Electron or Asset Tracker and follow TJ’s instructions to build your own.
To discuss this article, go check out Hacker News.
