Invention, Intellectual Property and Income

TASK 1:
(plan and document a final project that integrates the range of units covered)


- what will it do?
It will be a board game inspired in LUDO or Parkase that will be interactive and electronic.


- who's done what beforehand?
We made a research and what we found were some electronic games that looked more like prototypes. The interactions we are expecting to create for our game we haven´t seen yet in any other game.


- what materials and components will be required?
The board will be like a box – inside will be the electronics and outside the surface to position the tokens;

- acrylic in the colour of each team (red, green, yellow and blue) and a crystal colour for the game track that doesn´t belong to any player;

- An array of white LEDs that will be spread alongside the board interior according to the position of each square;

- 16 tokens that will be 3D printed (ABS filament);

- Electronic components (resistors, capacitors, microcontroller, regulator, etc.);

- micro camera to recognize the position of the tokens in the board and send this information back to the board;

- 4 buttons to switch the random 1 dice combination.


- where will they come from?
The acrylic we intend to buy from the manufacturer that already provide the material for our Lab.

The LEDs, the micro camera and the electronic components we intend to find in specialized shops or through websites of companies like Farnell.

To 3D print the tokens we will use a 3D printer that we have available.


- how much will it cost?
It will depend on how many parts we will divide our game. If we will make a traditional game (with four teams) we are going to spend less to buy the acrylic and the electronic parts. The micro camera may be the most expensive. We are using the camera instead of ID Sensors for each token in order to make the price lower. The price of each sensor would be something like U$15 and we would have to use at least 16 sensors and this would make our idea impracticable.


- what parts and systems will be made? / what processes will be used?

- the board as a box
The board will be built of acrylic parts that will be laser cutted according to a CAD design model do be draw in Rhino 3D.

- a board with an array of LED in it
The LEDs will respond to the position of the tokens and will signalize options of possible movements in the board for the player and will also respond to actions like: stepping an opponent token and reaching to the finish square;
The circuit board will be designed in Eagle and printed via FabModules in a Modela MDX-40A. The LEDs and other electronic components will be soldered in the board that will be positioned inside the box. There will be tests and a debugging phase to check the circuit board and to program it we will use a Fabduino, a AVR-MKII or an Arduino.

- a camera placed in the top of the board
The camera will recognize the colour of each token and its position on the board. This information will be sent to the board that will respond by lighting the specific LED. The structure of the game will have a support to hold this camera high above the top center of the board.

- the coloured tokens that will be recognized by the camera
The tokens will be 3D printed so they can be customized. The colours will depend on the ABS filament of the 3D printer but if we are unable to find the 4 different colours the solution would be to paint them.

- the automatic roll the dices
Each player will have a button + 6 LEDs positioned near to his staging area to mimic a rolling of the dice. When the player press the button, the LEDs will randomly light according to a specific value (1 to 6).

- package Design
We are planning to create a package for the game that will accommodate the board, the tokens, the camera, and the instructions. For it we will use Inkscape, Adobe Illustrator or Adobe InDesign.


- what tasks need to be completed?
First thing we need to find a solution for a good structure for the box/board. This will depend of the disposition of the electronic components within the box.

The task we are working now is to separate this box/board in four different parts that could be connected according to the number of players (2 to 4). The communication between the active parts that will engage in the game are being studied.

We are also studying the issue when two tokens are on the top of each other, how the camera will recognize it, this would be easier to fix if we would have chosen the expensive sensor.

- what questions need to be answered?
How many players are the maximum for the game? (from this decision depend the board design and structure).

How to program the circuit board inside the box so that it would follow the inputs given by the camera and also the rules of the game.

If we decide to separate the board in various parts, how the parts will communicate with each other? How the network between the parts will happen?

Will it be possible to add sound response to the tokens movements?

- what is the schedule?
We are planning to solve the programming part of the game during the next week, but if it won´t be enough time we are planning to extend our work and use some days in June to accomplish those tasks.


- how will it be evaluated?
I believe the project will be evaluated by demonstrating mastery of the main areas of the past assignments. We tried to make the game cover almost all the subjects learned through the Fab Academy course.

We decided to do this project as a team of two people and show individual mastery of all the skills learned through practice and theoretical documentation.

TASK 2:
(develop a plan for dissemination of your final project)

LudoVegas is an interactive board game based in LUDO, featuring 1 camera to detect the tokens position on the board and an electronic board with controlled LED lights.

The goal is to build an electronic game that will be interactive and intuitive for the user using the machines of the Fablab.

Our idea is that it will be constructed in a way that we can use digital production methods that can be found in most fablabs.

We think this will be a very interesting game with hopefully unique electronic interface. We are working on ways to make it cheap and easy to reproduce.