CUBOLOCO

CUBOLOCO

Hi ! We are a group of two students working in this project. Our idea of a FreakCube was born as a Idea for the Final Project to the "Electrónica Creativa" Asignature in Electronics Engineering 4th year module at the University of Malaga, School of Telecommunication (http://etsit.uma.es/index_en.html).

Why FreakCube?

This idea arose looking for something atractive to sell, because we know that if we try to get founds in kickstarted (for example), we needed to design something that calls the attention, and what is better than a game?, full of leds and arcade push buttons, so thats why we chose this.

The game is really simple, we follow the rules of "Simon Says" in a Cube of 9x9 on each side, one of them is going to turn on with 8 leds, so you need to push the button of this side, and if you push it correctly in a determined time, another side is going to turn on, but now you´ll have less time... Exciting.

So we´re going to give you a few steps to build our project.

Materials

• 48 LEDS.
• Arduino.
• Case of the game ( we´re going to give you after all the information of this).
• 6 arcade Push Buttons ( you can find them in aliexpress.com).
• Pins strips (male and female)
• Resistors 330Ω (aprox 25).
• 24 screws (3mm cylindrical head).
• 2 m flexible wire.
• 1 m Thermofit.
• Predrilled Shield ( we´ll show you after what is this).

So if you have everything ready we´ll show you how to do it :D

We decided to design the Case to be printed in a 3D printer (SolidWorks), so with that we can make all the modifications that we needed in a really easy way, so, with help of a student in one University of Mexico, we did it.

If you open the .pdf file in the .rar that we put here, you can find how the cube is designed, and we even put the file where you can edit or modify the cube, in case you find something that could be better in your proyect (: .

After that you printed the Case, just be sure that all the Arcade Buttons and Leds fit in their correct position

( We had a little problems putting the leds, so thats why whe recommend you to check this before)

We did the program before and checked it only with the leds and two of the PushButtons, in this step you´ll find the program that we did.

The program its about generating one random number between 1 and 6 ( one for each side ) and waiting for the button that you push, finally comparing if you push the correct one, all of this in a determined time that is getting smaller and smaller.

If you push a wrong one ( as you can see in the video ) , all the sides are going to turn on and after a few seconds the game is going to start again.

.Maybe this is the step that is going to take you more time because they are 48 Leds to be connected.

Here is where you need the Predrilled Shield ( you can see what it is in the photo of this step ).

You need this as an easy way to electrify the Leds, we divided the shield in small pieces, one for 4 leds ( because we use one digital out for 4 leds, so we avoid problems with current and voltage).

Also we used the shield to put the resitance ( you can use one of 100 Ω, 220 Ω, 330Ω, etc) .

You can see in the first picture how you have to do it, just wire all the GND pins of the 4 leds and the same for VCC, and where you put VCC, put the resistance to connect to the other hole of the shield.

We put as well a little diagram of the connections to help you to do it.

After you´ll have all the connections ready.

After you wired all the Leds, you just need to connect the "vcc" out of the shield to the digital outs of the arduino ( so they can turn on when its necessary) and wire all the "gnd" outs together and connect it to the GND pin of the arduino.

After Wiring the Leds you´ll have almost ready (:

The next step is getting all the push buttons wired, for this step we used the adapters the we show in the photos, these were really helpful because we avoided problems of short-circuit in all the terminals.

The push button is just a arcade switch, so is really easy to connect, you just need to connect the "COM" pin to VCC, the "NC" to GND and the "NA" to the analog in ports of the arduino, so with that the program is going to detect GND when you push the button.

We used the Shield here as well to wire all the VCC and GND pins of the 6 Push buttons to get only one to the arduino.

We used adapters as well to connect the wires to the arduino, because we had problems to hold them correctly , so we recommend you to use them, we show you them in the last picture

Before you close the Cube we recommend you to test everything to be sure that is correctrly wired, because after closing the cube is a little difficult to reopen it.

We used this external battery to power the arduino, so the cube could be completely closed ( no cable ), is a regular battery to charge cellphones and you can find ones that are cheap because we don´t need a strong one.

Finally just screw the cube and be ready to use your own build game :D.

Be careful if the screws are long, because you can damage the cube, we recommend you to buy the shortest ones to avoid this problem.