Arcade-Style Puzzle Box Mini Game

as I've been learning more about circuits and microcontrollers I've been having lots of ideas about how to make my projects more interactive I don't know if this is a common sentiment but I have this deep-seated desire to turn every knob and push every button and flip every switch that I see I think this is a lingering desire from when I was a kid and I wasn't allowed to do any of that but it certainly hasn't subsided in adulthood so I got this idea that kind of fleshed itself out over the course of several weeks during my commute to work and in the shower and right before I fall asleep every night and I eventually reach a point where I just had no choice but to try and build it and see if it would work so this idea is to make a simple handheld puzzle game that looks like something your parents told you not to mess with when you're a kid and in this video I'll give a brief overview of how I made it with a demonstration of how it works at the end by the way I've made the code for this project open-source and there's a github repository linked in the description if you'd like to try and make one yourself since this is a prototype I really have no idea if it's going to work at all and especially if it'll be fun or interesting as a game I ordered this basic black plastic enclosure for the project originally but I knew immediately when I got it I could do better I've got nice tools and there's just no excuse not to put them to use and make something attractive and that way if I fail at all the electronics and programming part at least it can be a conversation piece or a desk toy and as a civil engineer I don't really trust my own sense of style for good reason so I took some inspiration from 1970s era audio equipment where lots of things were made from wood and came up with a design I liked i milled this walnut into thin panels the front panel will be tilted so I needed to bevel the front and back face I glued the whole thing up using just butt joints normally I'd go for something stronger but this is a pretty small box so I'm hoping it'll be fine in this case next I glued some blocks into the corners where the front panel we'll screw into countersunk the holes for the front panel using one of the screws heads with a notch cut into it with a dremel I learned this trick from John Isis channel then I drilled out all the cutouts for the components the last step was just a sand and finish I'm modifying these panel meters by installing LEDs into the face these are just hot glued into place I've already got resistors soldered to each LED which are necessary to keep them from burning out to make these look a little more congruent with the rest of the project I had the idea to replace the original face plates with maple veneer when the box is off these meter faces will look blank but the LEDs can shine through when it's on I got this big red button which although very satisfying to push didn't really fit with the aesthetic of the rest of the project in the same vein as the panel meters I decided to make some ligneous modifications so I turned a new button out of walnut on the lathe then I turned some trim out of maple and I went 0 for 2 on catching the stuff I was parting off I did some Dremel surgery on these plastic parts and then we glued it all together using CA glue and it works just like new still just as satisfying to push like the enclosure I originally bought some plastic potentiometer knobs for this project but as a man with a lathe my whole world is getting rounder I knew the plastic just wouldn't do so I cut some scraps of maple to make into knobs I drilled a hole put in a plastic insert and then used a homemade screw Chuck to put them on the lathe I did my best to make them all the same size this is actually a pretty quick fun project if you've got a guitar or stereo system that needs jazzing up there's a lot of creative possibilities out there but I just kept it simple for this one the electronics for this project are pretty simple if you're strictly into woodworking which I know a lot of you are I'm sure you have your doubts about the simplicity of this tangled mess of wires and components but there's really not much to it the whole thing is driven by an Arduino microcontroller board there's almost no circuitry here it's just stuff plugged into the board if you want a detailed wiring diagram you can pause here or visit the github project page in the description each of the two panel meters have a resistor in series with a trim pot so they can be calibrated after installation there are three potentiometers connected to the Arduino analog inputs and 10 LEDs on digital outputs there's also a button and a vibration motor my last soldering experience went terribly and had me a bit discouraged about the prospect altogether honestly it was keeping me up at night to know that there was something I was that bad at after talking to some people who actually knew what they were doing though I realized my experience was probably on account of a crummy soldering iron and not me being a crummy solder er so I got this new soldering iron and it is a dream to work with and I think getting over my fear of soldering is going to open the door for me to try some new things in the future that I may have avoided otherwise honestly the most complicated part of this entire project for me was the programming but don't worry I'm not going to show a clip of me furiously debugging a simple mistake in my code even though I did do that about a thousand times but this really took me quite a bit of thought and I'm pretty proud for getting it all to work it's probably not anything remarkable but not being a programmer myself I was really happy when I got it finished but programming does not make nice youtube videos so if that's something you're interested in feel free to visit the github repository and poke around and I'd be happy to answer your questions in the comments here's the thing I'm learning about electronics projects if you start off with a plan to do it cleanly you probably still end up with a mess but if you plan to make a mess if right off the bat you say to yourself this is all going to be hidden anyway no need to do a neat job well this is what you end up with so I want to briefly apologise to anyone in the future who might need to take this front panel off I'm sure I'll get plenty of comments from people who casually use OCD to describe their general preference for tidiness I got a little bit wild with my new soldering iron put a wire wherever it was needed with no regard for basic design principles or at least what I assume are the basic principles this is all new to me anyway but it all fits somehow and I was right the mess is completely hidden so I'm happy so finally I'm going to show how it works the first thing that happens when you plug in the box is the panel meters go through a quick test sequence just to show that everything's working correctly this is mainly for my own peace of mind but it was kind of fun making this little dance the basic premise of the game is a random LED will light in each of the meters each of the three knobs will have a unique and random relationship to the needle of each meter so turning a knob to the right might make the needle go left or it might make it go right it might move it a whole lot or it might just have a tiny affect on the needle the goal is to adjust each of the knobs so that both needles point at their respective LED at the same time and when you get it right the vibration motor buzzes to let you know and the puzzle resets to a new random configuration this button just resets the puzzle so in a mathematical sense the goal of the game is to find the intersection between two three dimensional planes which to me is really awesome and it didn't even occur to me the mathematical analogy of the game mechanic until I was well into the programming I understand this is probably not a selling point for most people but to me it was a nice surprise is the game very fun it sounded more interesting in my head and it was a fun challenge to write the code but in reality it's actually pretty easy to solve and probably not something that would hold your attention for very long but here's the thing the enclosure and components on this project are pretty much fixed but their behavior is not and that's what's cool about using the Arduino I can reprogram it to do whatever I want and I already have ideas for different game mechanics that could take advantage of all these parts in differ waise but if you have any suggestions for a more fun or interesting game I could code into the box I'd love to hear them I hope you found this project interesting I had a lot of fun making thanks for watching and let me know what you think

Channel: Practical Engineering

Views: 241,218

Keywords: puzzle box, arduino, arduino game, arcade mini game, arcade-style, puzzle box mini game, arduino puzzle, arduino woodworking

Id: V0pq7LTtdRo

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2015