Ouija Board Engineering

[neutrino_cannon]

Ouija boards seem to work best when the surface is finished to a very high polish. The less friction there is, the better the users can preserve the illusion that they're not pushing on the thing. This, however, is the 21st century, and we can improve quite a bit on 19th century parlor tricks! I should think so anyway, I mean, I'm not ignorant. I watched Scooby Doo. We should be throwing technology at this problem!

The first line of attack that occurs to me is to arrange the board on an air hockey table so that the pointer really does float. It has been further suggested to me by a friend that the air currents on the table randomly oscillate in strength so that it jiggles a bit, and you could have a hands free ouija board! My preferred solution is the use of magnets because a) you can't feel them and b) magnets have way more woo-credibility than random jets of air.

All this takes away from the simplicity of the original design, I think. Who's going to play with a ouija board you have to plug into a wall socket? Something more elegant would be appreciated. So, what say you all? Teflon coated, perhaps? Rotating elements? Are there materials with directional friction coefficients? How would you design the ultimate ouija board?

 

[Lanzy]

I built a Plancette over a wireless mouse and put a gui of the board on my screen. I then wrote a program to allow the letters to appear on the screen if the plancette paused for 2 sec on any letter. Thinking about putting some bearings around the base to get easier movement. I did have to put a "space" for better readability.
Odd to me though, nobody liked it, everyone preferred the regular one.
Maybe I should tie in a Text to speech?

 

[uruk]

I found an online ouiji board. http://www.witchboard.com/online-witchboard/

I wonder what IP address the spirits use?

Maybe they use etherialnet protocols.

Ba dum bum *crash*.