Boston College Interactive Sports Station - BC Campus School Project

As a Physical Computing class project partnered with the BC Campus School, we decided to build an enhanced sports sensory station for the school's students. A version of the station already exists, but it was brought to our attention that there was a lot of room to improve on the station's interactive components. To revamp this stand, our project combines Boston College sports with our learned computing and building skills. When certain sections and props of our station are touched, corresponding LED light animations and Boston College sports soundbites are activated, producing a dazzling moment with a simple touch. Furthermore, the sounds and light animations are customizable, allowing for endless interactions.

• Original Prusa i3 MK3S+ 3D Printer
• 1 1/4" PVC pipes (x4)
• 3 way 1 1/4" PVC pipe fitting (x2)
• 90° right angle 1 1/4" PVC fitting elbow (x2)
• Pool noodle
• Bead necklaces
• Sports props
• Wires
• Alligator clips
• Carbon conductive paint
• Auxiliary port mini speaker
• LED strip/lights
• Circuit Playground Bluefruit
• Circuit Playground Bluefruit battery pack
• Mu Editor Application
• CircuitPython

Our first step was brainstorming. We drew up many iterations of our stand, scrapped a lot of ideas, and finally, came to agreeable and feasible design. Next, we set out to the BC bookstore, Home Depot, and searched the BC MakerSpace for our materials.

After deciding where and how many capacitive touch points our station would have, we finalized our code in CircuitPython to create these touchpads and LED light animations. Each touchpad is linked with an animation and a sound! We additionally used the Audacity application to correctly format our sound files into a CPB compatible .wav format.

We wanted our hanging props to act as touchpads. In order to do that, we needed to ensure that they would react when touched. To accomplish this, we painted our props with black carbon conductive paint, cut and stripped wire, and sealed those connections to our props. Whenever a black portion on the prop is touched, the change in electricity is detected by the CPB and reacts with the code. We also created other non-reactive props to hang from the apparatus as well for decoration purposes.

With our code and props finalized, we moved into physical build. With the help of Kevin, we cut down our PVC pipes into the desired shape which gave us our shell to work with in reference to our designs. After completing this shell, we tested our code with our props to ensure that it worked before glueing anything in.

Our last step was to simply get our hands dirty and finish the build. We had spent many hours thinking about the best placement for our props and touchpads, and it was now the time to make our designs a reality. We broke out the hot glue gun and had to make leaps of faith--trusting ourselves--to stick things on exactly where they should be. After glueing everything down, we added a few more bead strands and decorations, tested the whole system, and called it a day. Happy making!