For my interaction lab midterm project, I chose to do a cornhole game with Hailey. Originally, we planned to do a toll gate with an ultrasonic sensor, but due to the idea not being interactive enough, we quickly switched to a cornhole game with almost the same mechanics used in the toll gate to minimize the amount of change we had to do for the project. Truthfully, the other bigger inspiration came from a friend whom I was hanging out with right before meeting with Hailey to change the project who used to plan parties. He basically told me he wanted to throw a “frat-style” party in Shanghai for a school club and was going through the plan with me to see how “entertaining” we could make it. I will spare the extra details, but out of the blue, he said he wanted to add party games and brought cornhole into the equation. While still on the half idiot mode entering class, I was hit with a rejection for the toll gate idea by Prof. Garcia which I had no idea about because I didn’t check Slack. The midterm was due 2 days after Hailey and I got out rejection from the professor, so I decided to just pitch the cornhole idea completely expecting Prof. Garcia to shoot it down again. After I pitched it to Prof. Garcia, Prof. Garcia just looked at me for 10 seconds, paused, and then said it was a fantastic idea.
After two days, we half finished the project and were able to present a “concept” during class. Originally, I was supposed to get there 30 minutes earlier to do some finishing touches on the project was ended up in a traffic accident so the project didn’t look good, but it got the idea across. For the next couple of days after the project, Hailey and I decided we had to step it up and make the project a lot better.
The building process wasn’t difficult, but it did take a long time. The original project was built as follows. To start off, we had to cut the cardboard. Due to the size and focus on the cardboard being complete, we had to look around a lot to find the perfect piece of cardboard. After we found it, we decided to try and do a stand. The stand that was first built fell apart pretty quickly, so we had to build a new makeshift one quickly slot the cardboard together, and rely on the cardboard’s original integrity and friction to hold it all together. The Arduino, wiring, and coding were pretty simple and standard. We had an LED that would turn on when a sandbag was thrown into the hole.
The second version was drastically different. Not only did we build a box to hold all of the wiring and sandbags, but we also made the game more rewarding by using three LEDs that would simulate destroying planets which would shut off one by one with a sound. When the three LEDs/planets were “destroyed”, it would play a sound and raise the flag signaling everything was destroyed. The stand and integrity of the project was also drastically improved. In addition, Hailey decided to Picasso the project cover which made it look fantastic.
Overall, it was pretty successful except for a couple of hiccups with the hardware when presenting. The night before presentation day, the hardware was working perfectly, but the project fell apart on presentation day due to some of the wires becoming undone. We tried to fix it but ended up blowing up a couple of the LEDs, so we decided to just keep it as is. Next time, there will be a bigger focus on keeping the wires together and securing all of it perfectly so nothing happens on presentation day.
Code is Attached Below:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RUYvs-3DcrWgcMk3-IxnLF-g2OYTa1MHCyW14oO_S5A/edit?usp=sharing
