Mini Wack-A-Mole
Have you ever played whack-a-mole at an arcade and thought to yourself, "I wish I had one of these at home?" Well, now you can! With this mini whack-a-mole game with a timer and light-up buttons, you can bring the fun of the arcade right to your living room.
Supplies
Electronics:
- 14 segment LED HT16K33 Backpack
- Fixed Address NeoPixel LED Fairy Lights
- Adafruit 0.56" 4-Digit 7-Segment Display with I2C Backpack - Red - STEMMA QT / qwiic
- Adafruit LED Arcade Button 1x4 - STEMMA QT I2C Breakout - STEMMA QT / Qwiic
- STEMMA QT / Qwiic JST SH 4-pin to Premium Male Headers Cable - 150mm Long
- Mini LED Arcade Button - 24mm Translucent Red
- Raspberry Pi Pico W
- Alligator Clips
- Data USB cable
- Small speaker with headphone jack
- I2C wiring
- Pin wires
- SD card
- SD card reader
Misc:
- 1/8 in birch wood
- Packing tape
- Duct tape
- Wood Glue
- Super Glue
- Parchment paper
Box Creation
- Make a Console2 box through boxes.py with front height set to 60 mm and angle set to 25 degrees.
- Laser cut rectangles and desired designs along the side of the box (so the lights can be seen from the inside).
- Laser cut 4 holes on each side of the top of the box for the mole buttons and one in the middle for the start button.
- Laser cut a rectangle above the start button for the time LED backpack.
- Laser cut a small hole in the back for the wiring.
- Put the box together using wood glue.
Set Up the Box
- Line the inside of the box with the LED lights using duct tape.
- Place the buttons and LED backpack in their respective places.
- Super glue the buttons down and duct tape the backpack from the inside.
- Daisy chain the Botton board and the LED backpack together.
Code
- Copy Code from above
- Download the corresponding libraries from Adafruit Bundles
- Use sd card with desired sound effects for the "play_sound", "play_sound_defeat", and "play_sound_high_score" functions
- Upload code into Mu and save as code.py.
Put It All Together
- Attach the Pico W to the breakout board and connect the wires of the data cable, STEMMA QT, LED lights, speaker, and start button to their corresponding pin holes.
- Line the rectangular holes with parchment paper and tape with see through packing tape.
- Place all components inside the box and have fun!