Team: Xuedi Chen, Andrew Siegler & Tarana Gupta
Our midterm project is a memory game much like Wack-A-Mole. The game board is made up of 14 cups filled with water. A GIANT button will be pressed to begin a game. Once in game mode, the cups will light up in a sequence and play an accompanying sound. the player will have to follow by dipping his/her finder into the cup to trigger the “switch”. The game can run on endlessly until the player messes up. Once that happens, Jim Carey laughs at you :P
We envisioned each cup having three components: 1. The analog “switch” in the cup of water which reads a delta in capacitance value when a finger is put into the water. 2. LEDs on the side of the cup which lights up when the game signals which cup is in play. These LEDs also light up when a finger is put into the water. 3. Vibration motors on the bottom of each cup to give another layer of visual (and unexpectedly, haptic) feedback.
The Construction Process
Cup layer: 1/8″ masonite laser. Lasercut 14 holes for cups. Cups were installed and the joints were hot glued to seal off water that could possibly leak through from the cups.
We had a solder party one night and finished all the wires, motors, LEDs and connections needed for the cups.
Sadly we had to abandon the motors pretty quickly. While they worked great when we tested just one cup, it completely messed up the readings when we scaled it to 14. When one of the cups turned on and the motor got triggered, the vibration carried through the entire board and affected the analog values in all the other cups, making the Arduino think that all the cups were “on”. Since all the cups were glued onto the same board, there was no easy way to isolate each of them.
The cups have a box! We built a box out of basswood to enclose the whole board and left enough room for all the wiring and the Arduino to live underneath. Holes were cut out to create easy access for the external power and USB cords. What’s more??? We designed and laser cut a nice cover for the box to make the game even more appealing.