Alternative names include:
Noughts and Don’t-Cross-Me
Exes and Ohhhs
Xs and Nos
My concept was a nervousness-inducing tic-tac-toe board. I initially wanted to make a board where certain parts on the grid were bugged, so if you placed a tile there, the board would start vibrating or you would hear a nuclear siren sound. There were parts of this project that were successful and others that were failures, so I will start with the latter.
- Nuclear Siren Sound
For this, I needed to procure a speaker that I could load sound onto and that I could connect a reed switch to. The initial speaker that I sourced connected to my bluetooth module but functionally it was more of a glorified buzzer, so I tried to find a new one. The second speaker I experimented with I could load sounds onto, but it wouldn’t connect to a reed switch. The third time I decided to simplify and just use a buzzer instead, but for some reason the buzzer stopped working properly before I could take a video of it. Nevertheless, I have taken photos of all three circuits. I decided to forgo the idea and make a wizard-of-oz prototype for this instead – when someone places their tile on the right part of the board, I will play the sound through my phone speaker.
2. Vibrating Element
This was another facet for trial and error. I initially bought some small haptic motors to create the vibration element. However, the motors are really small, and so while I expected them to shake the board up and down, they actually just created a rattling sound. I still thought they were fairly effective because the sound is strange (and rattling!) so I kept one in.I also tried to use a simple motor and attaching a protrusion to it in order to create more of an effect on the box. I used a less powerful one and a more powerful one, and experimented with different amounts of batteries to see what was optimal power. It worked out well – I created four different motors for the four corners of the box and then it was time to assemble everything in the box!
3. The Box
Making the box was pretty easy! I made a file in illustrator and cut it out of wood, using wood glue to glue the sides to the base. I kept the top loose and made a small platform for it to sit on, because I wanted the vibration inside to shake the top up and down (the more earthquake-like, the better!) I also made small cardboard holders for the motors to hold them at the correct height to sit inside. I also embedded magnets inside certain tiles to play with.
The hard part was fitting in all the electronics – since I was using reed switches, they would turn on if there were magnets close to the switch. This was extremely difficult as the randomest things are magnetic – including some of the motors I was using inside the box. I had to solder and re-solder more times than I can count because the first few times the motors turned on, they were super powerful and would get all tangled up with each other. Even though I had tested them outside of the box, placing them inside was a whole other ordeal.
Final + Reflections
I think next time, I would figure out a way to make the speaker system work. I would also use a different switch system – maybe using a light sensor instead of a reed switch. Initially I didn’t want to do this because I only wanted the tiles to set off the box, but I think the reeds are too finicky to use. I also didn’t use the Arduino Uno to the extent I wanted to – and so I would implement a time delay to the motors setting off next time, because otherwise you know what tile caused the vibration and can just remove it.