Week 16
AI prompt:
"A cozy Fab Academy workshop scene with a smiling granny engineer finishing her "System Integration" week project: a purple 3D-printed joystick with OLED display controlling a PCB car-robot in a Unity maze game. The robot collects NFC coin tags with a timer system, surrounded by CAD sketches, wiring diagrams, Fab Academy notes, electronics, and colorful technical drawings in a warm hand-painted illustration style."
System Integration
Joystick controller — system integration
The joystick is the primary input device for the NFC maze game. It integrates a custom ESP32-C3 PCB inside a 3D-printed 2-part PETG enclosure, with a WiFi Conection with joystick, OLED display, wireless module, and LiPo battery with USB-C charging.
The OLED screen shows the coin count and timer received wirelessly from the car-robot, so the player can see their score without looking at the physical maze board. The Unity 3D maze game ( Week 15 ) also reads the joystick over USB serial for digital testing.
Car-robot — system integration
The car-robot is a 2-wheel and one Self adhesive caster wheels drive MDF chassis with a custom ESP32-C3 PCB. It receives wireless commands from the joystick via WiFi, drives 2 DC motors through 2× A4953 Motor Drivers, and detects NFC tags embedded in the maze floor using an RC522 reader at 13.56 MHz.
Each time the robot drives over one of the 10 NFC coin tags, it increments the coin counter and sends the updated count back to the joystick over the RF link so the OLED display updates instantly.
Final project timeline
Every weekly assignment contributed a building block toward the final NFC maze game. Click any week to expand its details and deliverables.
This week I brought together all the work from Weeks 1–15 into a single working system. The joystick need to sends wireless commands to the car-robot, the robot navigates the CNC-milled maze and detects NFC coin tags, and the collected coin count is sent back to the joystick OLED display in real time. The Unity interface also mirrors the physical game for digital testing.
The 3D-printed joystick enclosure (2 parts, PLA) gives the controller a finished product feel, with all components cleanly mounted inside on standoffs. The car-robot chassis has the RC522 sensor flush-mounted to the underside so it reads coins reliably as the robot drives over them.
AI prompt:
"And Generate image when she finished Week 16"