Pokemon X & Y has been out for a while now, and there’s been a lot of catching going on in my immediate environs. But it’s still hard to catch rare Pokemon, no matter how much of your life you dedicate to that repetitive task. A new hack using an Arduino Micro microcontroller board, developed by Arduino in conjunction with NY-based Adafruit, makes it possible to cycle through random encounters in search of Shiny Pokemon, which for those not in the know, are like regular Pokemon only with an animated sparkle (and thus more desirable).
Hack creator dekuNukem created the system, which uses the in-game fishing mechanic to encounter aquatic Pokemon in X and Y, chaining the action until it finds a shiny, and then alerting the user via a simple buzzer and LCD readout attached to the Arduino Micro. You still have to catch the shiny Pokemon yourself, but using detection of the blackout period displayed on the bottom screen when an encounter starts, which differs ever so slightly when a shiny appears, it’ll set you up for the catch without fail.
Of course, me and fellow staff Pokemaniacs Chris Velazco and Matthew Panzarino wouldn’t resort to such tactics, but if you’re frustrated with the process of catching shinys int he game, check out dekuNukem’s code here to build your own.
