Our friend Jeri Ellsworth announced the Kickstarter campaign for her company's augmented reality system called Tilt Five, which takes tabletop gaming to a new level by giving players a shared 3D animated view of the action.

We decided to take a different approach at Tilt Five.

In this episode of Make: Talk, we'll be joined by Jeri Ellsworth, a pinball fanatic and hardware hacker. You might remember her as the chip designer who Easter egged a Commodore 64 emulator in a video game joystick. We'll also present some news from the world of making, and our favorite tricks, tips, and tools of the week. — Read the rest

Solenoids are common electromechanical devices. They're used in pinball machines to make the ball shoot away when they hit a bumper. If you've ever have the opportunity to touch an energized pinball bumper, you will immediately gain an appreciation for its explosive power. — Read the rest

Launched just hours ago on Kickstarter, the castAR virtual reality headset has already received over $300k and will reach its goal of $400k very soon. It was developed by Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson. Below, Jeri tells the story of the making of the castAR. — Read the rest

Legendary hardware hacker Jeri Ellsworth (world's most awesome C64 hacker and all round happy mutant), entertained attendees at the Maker Faire with her brilliant Commodore 64 bass keytar, which she played while wearing rollerskates.

Ellsworth noted via Twitter that it uses the SID chip and is based on an FPGA – a re-implementation of the Commodore-64 computer using reconfigurable logic chips.

[Video Link] Sean Michael Ragan says:

Responding to criticisms that their new no-trolling-allowed policy lacks teeth, Hack a Day writer Jack Buffington threw down the gauntlet Monday, announcing that, henceforth, anyone leaving a nasty comment about one of Jeri Ellsworth's projects will receive a visit from the Pain Fairy.

Geek heroine Jeri Ellsworth put up a YouTube video explaining how she might build a $10 version of the $5000 audible turn warning system recently installed on Portland public busses. In the comments, someone posting as "peterbartek" (the name of the CEO of TranCert Marketing, the company that installed the $5,000 systems under discussion) told Ellsworth that her video had "set back the progress of women 100 years" by criticizing the company's products. — Read the rest

Jeri Ellsworth created this remarkable Commodore-64-emulated-NES-in-a-handbag — she's also the hacker who reverse-engineered the Commodore 64 and came up with the C64-on-a-chip design.

Jeri's nifty Nintendo/C64 purse

(via Neatorama) — Read the rest