Dealing with distracting coworkers in an appropriate way is difficult. This hack gives you a motion-activated countdown timer that lets coworkers know in no uncertain terms how long they have to say what they need to say before they should leave.
The video above does a great job of explaining it. While this project may not be practical for most offices, it’s definitely fun and creative (if not a little passive aggressive).
Here’s how it works: When your distracting coworker comes into your office or sits down at your cubicle, they activate the motion sensor on the NES, which starts a countdown clock. As the seconds count down, the Super Mario theme plays. When it gets to 100 seconds left, the “hurry up” music kicks in, giving visitors the cue that they need to wrap up what they have to say to you. When their time is up, the Mario death tune plays, telling them their time is up.
The best part of the hack is that the NES plays whatever music you have on the SD card that you load into the cartridge slot, so you can swap out the Mario theme for whatever you like. The Mario theme — complete with the “Hurry Up” music — is perfect for getting irritating coworkers out of your hair so you can get some work done.
You can grab all of the code, audio and other files you need to make this project yourself at Dropbox here. Hit the Adafruit link below to see a full parts list.
8-bit Annoying Person Remover- NES Hack [YouTube via Adafruit]
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