Neopixel Plinko Bottle Opener

Hello! My name is Alexandra Coston and I am a senior at Charlotte Latin School. For my capstone engineering project, I chose to recreate a FabAcademy final project and add a virtual piece to make it my own. Below I will detail my process of creating what I renamed the Neopixel Plinko Bottle Opener. The bottle opener contains an ultrasonic sensor that sets off a cascade of lights when the sensor is triggered. The virtual representation, which I did in Processing, mirrors the physical project.

Click here to view the supply list for everything but the PCB board.

Click here to view the supply list and process to make the PCB board (satshakit).

Laser cut all the physical pieces of the project from 1/8" plywood. Click here to get the folder with all the files to download. The pieces include the square and circle backboards, the side and base pieces, and the living hinge arch.

The neopixels will ultimately go face down on the square backboard. Label the direction of the connections on the backboard, solder the rows of the neopixels separately, and then turn them over and solder between the rows. To test the neopixels, I soldered an Arduino Nano and three female wires to the first neopixel. Arduino has a bunch of neopixel example codes to check your soldering abilities.

Using wood glue, glue the small wooden pieces onto the larger ones. For each piece, glue the skinniest piece at the front, leave an 1/8" gap for acrylic, glue one of the large pieces, leave room for another 1/4" gap, and glue the last big piece after the gap at the back edge of the wood. Use a piece of 1/8" acrylic to test the front gap while you're gluing.

Use wood glue again to glue the tabbed side pieces to the bottom piece. When the glue is dry, place the circles backboard on top of the square backboard (with the neopixels facing outward) and slide them into the 1/4" gap. It might be helpful to use a clamp to hold the backboards in place, and you can put a little more wood glue in the back if you need. Then, slide the living hinge into the tabs and place it across the top of the backboards. Use some glue on the inside to secure the tabs.

Cut 45 1.3" hot glue sticks. Check to make sure they are shorter than the first gap, which is where the acrylic will slide in. Do the first couple glue sticks, and if they are short enough keep going. Put them in the circles backboard. Next, drill the bottle opener to the center of the backboard, a couple inches closer to the glue sticks than the top.

Follow the instructions on the Satshakit website to create a satshakit. Mill the cnc board, solder the components, and I recommended using an Arduino to program it. Test the satshakit with an example blink code in Arduino.

Upload the final code from the folder to the satshakit.

3D print the case for the ultrasonic sensor. It takes forever to weed but the sensor should slide in perfectly.

Use wires to connect the Ultrasonic sensor to power, ground, and the respective digital pins from the code. Use the diagram pictured to glue a capacitor to the power supply, solder a resistor to the DIN wire, and connect the DIN wire to the satshakit pin. The satshakit only has one power and one ground, so you'll need to split the ground somehow. I had a really jank wiring setup where I soldered a bunch of male-male wires. The ultrasonic sensor slides in at the top of the arch and the wires can fit under the living hinge to the back.

Laser cut the two acrylic rectangles. The smaller one should slide into the bottom and the larger one should fit at the top (there should be a gap between the big and small one to retrieve the bottle cap).

For the virtual representation piece, download Processing and download the code from the folder. The image of my Fablab I used is called labphoto2.png. Once you're in Processing, you'll need to go to Sketch -> Add File... and click the fablab image you've downloaded. If you want to replace it with a different image, download and import your own image and change the name of the image in the code.

I ended up drilling holes in the side of the project to be able to plug in the satshakit (using FTDI) and the power supply easier. I cut a piece of acrylic to put over the back to cover the wiring, but you can leave it open if you choose. Whenever the sensor is set off (when you open a bottle), a cascade of lights will be triggered as the cap bottle cap falls down.