While we’ve seen some maker projects use two or three Arduino or Raspberry Pi boards at most, we’ve never seen that number climb as high as 130… until now, as this art installation by Robert Mordzon does.

Using 130 Arduino Nanos and a single Arduino Mega acting as the “central brain”, this electronic crossword puzzle was made for the National Museum in Warsaw. It fits into the “Anything Goes” exhibition which had displays curated by children.

Under each square on the table there is an RFID reader, some LEDs and an Arduino Nano. Once a letter, which has an RFID tag embedded inside of it, is placed down, the LEDs will light up depending on whether or not the correct word is formed.

Blank squares glow white and change to green for correct words, and red when it’s incorrect.

This project really did fly under the radar, as it was uploaded by Mordzon last year. It’s too cool not to feature now, and we’d love to get in contact with him and find out more about his decision to use so many Arduinos, and what happened to the project after the exhibition was over.

While we shoot him a few emails, make sure you watch the two videos below. One is a short snippet of kids trying the crossword out, and another is a timelapse of the build which only took one week.

[Source – Robert Mordzon Via Arduino Blog