Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Add Light Up Effects to Backyard Games”.
Backyard games like cornhole are a lot of fun, but you can make them even better by adding some simple electronics that way. Whenever you score the board will light up and play music first, you need some kind of game board. I’M using a cornhole board that i made a while back to detect when someone scores i’m using a basic light. Sensing circuit, a laser pointer, is set up on one side of the hole and the light detector is set up on the other.
The light detector that i’m using is a basic voltage. Divider that’s made with a photoresistor wired in series with a fixed resistor, when the light from the laser pointer is interrupted. The voltage at the center pin changes.
This change is detected by an arduino microcontroller, which activates the lights and sounds the laser pointer can be powered directly from the arduino, but the lighting leds require a lot more power, so we need to use external batteries and a transistor to turn them on and off. The simplest way to set up the lighting leds is to use a string of battery powered lights, to be able to control them with a transistor. Take two wires and put a piece of card stock between them.
Then insert this between the spring and the negative. Most terminal of the battery pack, the spring wire, is connected to the drain. Pin of a power mosfet and the negative battery wire is connected to the source pin the mosfet is then connected to ground and digital pin 6 on the arduino. This lets the arduino control. The lights, you can get a copy of the arduino code that i used at the link in the description box to play the sounds: i’m using an adafruit wave shield to set this up. You need to first download the wave hc library and copy it into your arduino libraries directory.
Then take your audio track and convert it into a 16-bit mono wave file with a 22 kilohertz sampling rate, put this file on an sd card and insert it into the wave shield now you’re ready to put all the parts of the system together. First, prototype the light sensor and the transistor circuit on breadboards, then, once this is working, you can solder the components onto a piece of perf board. Now you need to attach all the parts to the game board start by gluing, the laser pointer and the light sensor to opposite sides of the hole then attach the rest of the parts to the underside of the board.
Wherever it’s convenient to attach the lights. I hot glued one set of leds to the inside of the hole. Then i took a second set of leds and mounted those in a circle around the first set now you’re ready to play a game.
Whenever you toss a bag into the hole, it will interrupt. The beam from the laser pointer, then the lights and sounds will play. I did this with a cornhole board, but you can do it with other games as well.
Thanks for watching and check back next week for more diy hacks and how to’s you .