Week 19: Applications and Implications
Propose a final project that integrates the range of units covered, answering:
What will it do?
Who's done what beforehand?
What materials and components will be required?
Where will they come from?
How much will it cost?
What parts and systems will be made?
What processes will be used?
What tasks need to be completed?
What questions need to be answered?
What is the schedule?
How will it be evaluated?
projects can be separate or joint, but need to show individual mastery of the range of skills covered.
Where possible, you should make rather than buy the parts of your project.
Final Project proposal: Remote Game Controller
What will it do?
My project is a wireless, battery powered hand held controller for self made games with unity 3D.
It will take user input in form of motion and button presses and wirelessly transfer that input to a computer, where it will be translated to commands.
Who's done what beforehand?
There are many remote game controllers in the world. Best example that comes to mind is Nintendo Wii's Wii Remote. For DIY models, there are less. In instructables.com there is for example
a bluetooth game controller with accelerometer and it is done with arduino. Few similar projects like
wireless DIY remote controller for robots, Wireless joystick
and a bluetooth modified NES controller.
What materials and components will be required?
Plastic liquid for casing. Accelerometer, regulators, Atmega328P microcontroller and smaller standard fabinventory electronic components. PCB for board. 3D printer plastic for button mechanism. Commercial bluetooth master/slave pair.
Where will they come from?
From Fab Lab inventory except bluetooth modules, which have to be ordered.
How much will it cost?
One bluetooth module costs about 8€, everything else combined 10-20€, making the price range of 26-36€.
What parts and systems will be made?
PCB board. Small mechanical parts as well as the casing. Vinyl decorations.
What processes will be used?
Electronic design and production.
Embedded programming.
2D design and vinyl cutting for decorations.
3D design and printing for button mechanism.
Molding and casting for the case.
Input devices: accelerometer, buttons.
Output devices: RGB and normal LEDs.
Network: wireless serial communications with computer through bluetooth.
Interfacing to make it work within Unity 3D.
What tasks need to be completed?
Electronics design and production.
Embedded programming.
Case design and manufacturing
2D design and vinyl cutting for decorations.
3D design and printing for button mechanism.
Interface.
What questions need to be answered?
How to reduce lag in Unity/serial response?
How to automate bluetooth pairing?
What is the schedule?
By May 29th: Electronics design and production.
By June 1st: Embedded programming.
by June 3rd: Case design.
By June 5th: Case manufacturing.
By June 7th: Interface.
By June 9th: Assembly/testing/troubleshooting.
By June 10th: Panic.
By June 11th: Presentation materials.
How will it be evaluated?
Project will succeed if I can provide nicely packaged realtime controller for a simple game/demo in Unity 3D.
Command set needs to include at least left/right/up/down swipes and 2 buttons.
