Week 5 - Journal

The first time we spoke about this game for the assignment as an example of a simple electronic that can be made with just a buzzer, led, wires and adapters I was surprised in the beginning, that this childhood game can be easily done and without even using any processing or control from boards like Arduino for example.

Tinkercad

Used to simulate electrical circuits and components, so you can calibrate your circuit calculations and needs before even going to the hardware steps.

So first I started with listing my project main points:
A. Action outputs.
B. Triggering event.
C. Circuit design.

- Action outputs:
We wanted a buzz sound and a red alerting flash every time the player coil touch the game wire, so basically we have 2 output components
Buzzer - For buzz sounds.
Red LED - For alerting flashes.

- Triggering event:
We wanted those output actions to be performed once the player coil touch the game wire, and since there is no brain here in this circuit (AKA Arduino or any microcontroller) then the idea is to have this circuit open and make the interaction between the coil and the wire as a switch to close the circuit and so will trigger the buzzer and led.

- Circuit design:
For this circuit we used a 5V adapter as a power source, and as listed above, a buzzer, a red led and a 220 ohm resistor.

So after finishing the board in Tinkercad, I made sure to implement this using my hardware kit in the breadboard, just to see all the necessary connections needed for this in the real world scenario.

Then built the enclosure body using cardboard, a pretty simple design, just a plain cardboard piece, with a flexible copper wire from popping up from the cardboard to the other end just to increase the competitiveness when playing the game, and adding a touch of chaotic while playing the game.

Then closed the body from below and made most of my connections below the body so it can be easily considered as the same circuit on the breadboard, just increased the connections using some more jumpers and wires.

The components were fixed on the top of the enclosure body using double face tape from below.