Planet Arduino

Every arcade seems to have one particular game that appeals to the gamblers among us: the horse race game. That game has everal model horses and people can gamble on the outcome of their race. The results are either random or controlled by the players through some sort of input mechanism. In a new video, element14’s Lorraine Underwood explains how to recreate that game with an Arduino — but powered by people.

The game concept is similar to the horse race arcade game, except players run to influence the success of their respective racers. Those racers are little 2D people figures instead of horses. Everyone can run on their own schedule. Then, once everyone completes their run, the game shows the results by moving the figures across the track. This links to Strava, which is an app for tracking runs using popular devices like smartphones and smartwatches. Each player just has to complete a run as part of the group that Underwoodl set up for this purpose.

Because the game needs to pull run information from Strava’s API over the internet, Underwood chose to use an Arduino UNO WiFi Rev2 board. It controls the movement of each figure using a micro DC gearmotor with a belt. Those motors came from DFRobot and include encoders, which are helpful for ensuring the movement is exact. The game supports four players, so Underwood added a DFRobot quad DC motor shield to the Arduino to drive the motors.

The Arduino sketch connects to the local WiFi, then pulls the distance covered by each runner from the Strava API. It then scales that down to the distance of the game track and spins the motors until each figure reaches the corresponding distance.

The post Build your own human horse race arcade game with Arduino appeared first on Arduino Blog.

One of the most popular machines in any arcade is the Cyclone game, where a ring of LEDs illuminate in sequence and the player must push a button at the exact moment that a specific LED lights up. Get it just right and you can win a whole pile of tickets to spend in the arcade shop! But the machines in arcades tend to be rigged, with the timing altered slightly to make the game more difficult. This mini Cyclone game saves you a trip to the arcade and doesn’t employ cheats (unless you want it to).

This is the second Cyclone game built by Mirko Pavleski. The first was much larger, with a ring of 60 LEDs. The new version is smaller and simpler. It has a ring of only 12 LEDs. The original increased the speed with each round, but this version sets a random speed (within a predefined range) each time. It tracks the number of rounds completed by a player before they fail and saves that high score in EEPROM storage so it is persistent every time someone turns on the game.

The hardware is affordable and easy to find. It includes an Arduino Nano board, a WS2812B LED ring, a 16×2 character LCD with I2C interface, two buttons, a power switch, and a buzzer. Those components all mount to a basic stand made of PVC board and plywood wrapped in self-adhesive wallpaper. If you’re a fan of Cyclone games, this would make a great weekend project.

The post Mini Cyclone game doesn’t require a trip to the arcade appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Video games are great and all, but sometimes you just want the thrill of manipulating actual objects in addition to watching action on a screen. This must have been the reason why Nintendo’s Duck Hunt became so popular despite the simplicity of its gameplay. Prolific hacker [mircemk] similarly made a computer-plus-physical game called “Laser Shooter“, which somehow reminds us of the good old NES game.

The game is based on an Arduino Nano, to which five LEDs as well as five photoresistors (LDRs) are connected. When the game is started, the LEDs light up at random and the player has a limited time to “shoot” the corresponding LDR with a laser pointer. This time limit is decreased as the game progresses, and the game is over once the player fails to hit the target on time. The “Game Over” message is accompanied by a sad tune, but luckily no giggling dog.

Complete schematics and code are available for anyone willing to try their hand at replicating or improving this game. And no, you can’t simply sweep your laser across the five LDRs all the time, because you lose if you shoot at the wrong target. For more laser pointer-based games, try this Laser Command clone or this laser tag badge system.

If your kids (or you) have somehow gotten tired of playing with LEGO bricks, Lenka Design Workshop has a great way for you to breathe new life into this unused pile. 

Their game enclosure consists of a 32×32 LEGO baseplate, along with walls made of blocks to support a clear acrylic cover. This in turn holds four large arcade buttons for gameplay control. Five games are currently implemented to run on the game’s Arduino, with light and sound feedback.

We decided to recycle the unwanted Lego bricks and created an arcade game.

The code has been written in such a way that it doesn’t have dependencies and will compile on any Arduino board. And of course the games have been intensively tested by our kids.

How is this game different from many others that have been published before?

First of all, there are 5 games built into it:

• Memory Game (“Simon-Says”-like, similar to Touch Me game)
• Reaction game (similar to Whack-a-Mole game)
• Contest/Competition game (for 2-4 players)
• Melody Game (Push and Play free mode for toddlers and smaller ones)
• War game (for 2-4 adults)

Secondly, it has a great design (from our perspective) and can be easily repeated.

And thirdly, it is earth-friendly because it allows you to recycle the plastic.

You can see a short demo of the system in the video below, or check out the project write-up for more info. 

The BITalino is great for biohacking — hook up the sensors and play Classic Pong with a swing of your wrist.

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