Project Description

I designed and constructed an electromechanical game controlled by an Arduino. It’s a two-player reaction game where alternating blue and green lights eventually flash red, at which point the player must press the button as quickly as possible. If the player manages to press the button in time, the scoreboard will update and a celebratory white box will move up and down with joy – I had larger ambitions for the aesthetics of this game, but unfortunately, it didn’t get the attention it deserved. There are five levels of increasing difficulty. The game begins with the easiest level where the lights alternate the slowest and finishes with the hardest level where the lights alternate the fastest. In the video above, I managed to beat the fifth level which is virtually impossible – however, it wasn’t as thrilling as I had anticipated since I was playing alone in a room by myself. The game runs through each level twice where each turn updates the corresponding scoreboard.

The project was inspired by the LED strip that had been left in my house by the previous tenants – if the LED strip didn’t look the cleanest, this is why. I used MOSFETS to control the brightness of each color, these can be found on the protoboard stuffed into the right side of the box. A brushed DC motor powers a Scotch Yoke which is more clearly shown in the images at the bottom of the page (in the image on the right, there are pieces of wood protecting the Scotch Yoke from the other hardware). Note that clicking on the images below will enlarge them – just scroll down.