Experimental gameplay with experimental hardware

Just as middleware and open source software have been having radical affects on how we develop games, the availability of pre-designed, pre-fabricated circuit boards have greatly simplified the development of hardware. Amongst the biggest drivers of these changes has been what is often referred to as the Maker movement, and the advent of open source hardware (which is conceptually very similar to that of open source software). What is perhaps the biggest advantage of this is that, for what could potentially be completely incompatible, a surprising amount of open source hardware is usable together, or even designed to work together from the start.
This post will serve as a brief overview and introduction to hardware development leveraging these pre-designed pieces, and I hope will inspire you to learn more and try out your ideas for cool new controllers, haptic feedback, and other such things that can provide richness to the gamers experience. I’ve submitted a proposal on this for GDC 2012, and with a little luck it’ll get the go ahead soon to move on to the second round!

Perhaps the best known open source hardware is Maker SHED