Millions of people have experienced the satisfying feeling of pulling back their digital angry birds, releasing and sending them flying into those rickety pig-built structures on their smart phones or computers. It almost makes you want to light up a cigarette afterwards.

But after playing through the hundreds of levels that Roxio has released you may find that original satisfaction waning somewhat.  We have seen the videos of “real-life” versions in the past, but most of us lack the space and resources to do it ourselves. Well now, some ingenious fans have found a great way to add a fresh kick to their Angry Birds addiction using a real slingshot.

By attaching a small circuit board to a real slingshot and attaching some sensors to its rubber band, it’s possible to feel the Angry Bird action flow through your very hands and onto the computer screen via USB. Judging by the demonstration video posted on YouTube, it works really smoothly.

As they say; the best things in life are free and this slingshot is no exception, the code and instructions to build it are all open source and freely available on the web.  The catch is, you have to build it yourself.  These slingshots are not sold anywhere (yet), so if you want to take your Angry Birds game to the next level you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves, and take some classes in soldering and computer programming.  I’m strongly considering it myself.

Source:  IT Media (Japanese)
Building Instructions and Code: mbed.org (English）