Simon Says 80s Power

During my child age I lived with a robot named Percival (see the foto and the video).

Percival was a robot walking that has a robotic sound voice and 4 big coloured lamp on the head for comunicate and game with me.

One of the games that you could do with the Percival head was Simon. Simon was a great 80's game (see the foto). The scope of the game was remember the sound and colors sequences. After the sequances played randomly by Simon your scope was repete all the steps.

Some days ago I was working on a project and the idea for the interactive installation was near to Simon game. For that I've rebuilt the portable game Simon Arduino based! The 80's Power !

The list of materials are really short. For the prototype phase you can use a breadboard and connect all the components to breadboard like in the figure. After the first test you can solder all the components directly to the Arduino Nano board and programming the device.

Pay attention when choose the position of components on the plastic box. Try to choose a good position for switch, leds and also for the internal of the case. all the game is composed by Arduino Nano board, 4 momentary switch ,1 ON-OFF switch and a 9v battery with connector.

You can buy all the materials on Amazon Store. I've putted the link directly to the product. You can choose also different colors for led and switch and printing in 3D the case and the buttons.

- Arduino nano board (https://amzn.to/2Y5X4VI)

- Plastic box or 3D printed case (https://amzn.to/2FmCM2Z)

- 4 led 3 mm (https://amzn.to/2TIMmpE)

- 4 1K Ohm resistors (https://amzn.to/2UE9sdw)

- 4 led holder iron (https://amzn.to/2TKK3CI) or 4 led holder plastic (https://amzn.to/2UInQ4H)

- 4 Switch red blue yellow green (https://amzn.to/2HvE7H8)

- 1 ON-OFF switch (https://amzn.to/2HFAP4i)

- Some cables (https://amzn.to/2Crx3Hk)

- 9V battery connector (https://amzn.to/2Hvg5w2)

Software

To program, compile and charge the software for the Arduino board you must use the Arduino IDE.

In the Arduino IDE you have all the features that the project require. You can also visit www.arduino.create.io to program, compile and upload online your code.

Make sure that you must have also the Random library. Follow the link inside the code to download and install library.

Arduino is an open-source hardware and software company, project and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices and interactive objects that can sense and control both physically and digitally. Its products are licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or the GNU General Public License(GPL), permitting the manufacture of Arduino boards and software distribution by anyone. Arduino boards are available commercially in preassembled form or as do-it-yourself (DIY) kits.

This is the official page https://www.arduino.cc

<|> Download and install the Arduino IDE from the download page;

<|> Download and install the Arduino True Random library (https://github.com/sirleech/TrueRandom);

<|> Follow this tutorial to install Arduino Library (https://www.arduino.cc/en/guide/libraries);

For the Hardware you must connect just the leds and the switches to Arduino Nano board.

Also you can connect the Arduino Nano board to 9v battery power source. For that Arduino Nano has a VIN pin that is connected to a voltage regulator component that reduce the input voltage from 9v to 5v.

The switches uses the resistors pull up of Arduino Nano board. For that reason you must connect the switches for connect the GND pin to INPUT Arduino Nano pin. When you connect the GND to INPUT_PULLUP pin you can read a 0 boolean value on the pin.

Follow the instructions of the schema. Choose a great value for resistors like 1kOhm.

Well the core part of the project is the code!!

It's a really simple code Arduino based. You need Arduino IDE program or Arduino Create online platform.

You can download the official Arduino IDE from the official site (https://www.arduino.cc) or use Arduino Create Platform (https://create.arduino.cc).

You can download the code from GitHub: https://github.com/masteruan/simon

You must do simple actions:

<-> Light the leds in a sort of W.A. Welcome Animation;

<-> Generate a random secret sequence;

<-> Control the switches pushing;

<-> Control if the switch is the same of the sequence if is wrong play a W.A.S. Wrong Animation Sequence;

<-> If the switch is the same for 10 steps play a sort of G.E.A. Good End Animation;

This is the Simon Game Arduino based. This is a battery game then you must provide a 9v battery to power the board. With a single 9v battery you have 15 hours of enjoy.

The game has 4 mini led and 4 switch. Start with a led animation after click on the power switch. You must repeat the light sequence. After 10 levels you win! And you can see the final led animation.

The next upgrade

In the future I will add audio source and different kind of game interaction.