Play Chicken Scream with an Arduino

You’ve probably heard of a ‘bot’, automated software that performs repeated tasks. They turn up everywhere, from Twitter to video games. At one point, bots were a particular threat to the integrity of online games (automating many tasks that other players had to do manually), to such an extent that users employing bots were often banned.

But would you employ a bot to play popular mobile game Chicken Scream? Probably not. But you could, and as ever, that’s the most important thing when it comes to conceiving and building a project. At the very least, this project demonstrates how to use an Arduino with sensors.

This build is essentially an example of a hardware bot, an automated alternative that ‘plays’ the game on your behalf. Admittedly there is an element of chance about it, but the interesting thing about Chicken Scream is that it is controlled using your voice. However, it doesn’t have to be a noise emanating from your vocal chords. Other sounds can be employed, such as a buzzer connected to an Arduino UNO via a breadboard. Also used is a resistor, an LDR light sensor, and some plastic dominoes to hold the phone in place and mount the sensor.

With the buzzer mounted next to the phone’s microphone, and sensor positioned just above the display, and the phone’s brightness set to maximum, the code (which can be found in the video comments) uses the light sensor to detect a hazard (specifically a gap) that the chicken star of Chicken Scream must jump over. Once the gap (detected by being lighter in colour to the rest of the surface) is detected, the buzzer is sounded, prompting the chicken to jump!

This is certainly a unique approach to using an Arduino, but does it stop with Chicken Scream? There’s every chance that similar games could be controlled in the same way, for example. On the other hand, you could use an LDR plus buzzer set up to build your own light-sensing alarm clock to wake you at the crack of dawn. As ever, the possibilities are endless!