I'm looking for some guidance and much needed help for a project that I have wanted to do for sometime now. I simply don't have the skills or knowledge to pull it off...and wondering if anyone out there can be of assistance.
A bit of background before we start...
My wife and I simply love to play games. One of my wife's favourite games is the old Simon Says electronic game. I think we all had one of these in our house if you grew up in the 80's. Fast forward to today and there are a number of different renditions of this basic but oh so fun game.
Christmas is rapidly approaching and I have thought about making my wife a custom version of this game for sometime now.
I saw this a few years ago on youtube for the 2014 Toy Fair
Super-Sized Giant Simon Swipe game. Apparently it was a one off made for the toy fair to introduce the Simon Swipe product launching soon.
Here are some youtube videos showcasing the real one:
I would desperately love to build this gain sized game for my wife..and wondering how possible this is.
Here are the issues that I can see:
-the code
I can find code all day long for the normal more traditional Simon Game
but nothing the the Simon Swipe version (which I assume is using some sort of touch sensor)
-how to make/fabricate the plastic game housing
my idea was to perhaps 3dprint it
as one could easily duplicate the design of the game in a 3d file to 3d print.
-Issue is due to the giant large size...this would mostly likely be costly and time consuming
wondering if breaking it up into multiple 3d prints that assemble together would be better? ?
-How to power it
worst case would be to drop the Simon Swipe game and just make a giant traditional Simon game
that might be easier??
I don't have the bandwidth available here to watch the videos so I'm still in the dark how the "swipe version" could be different. Do the colours have to be swiped in a specific direction? Red-down, red-up, green-down...?
3D printing is great but it's prohibitive at this scale. The standard domestic printers can print 200mm wide to 300mm wide. Each one of those prints could be 10 hours, depending how thick the object is. So you are looking at maybe 120 hours of printing plus the gaps when it finishes and you're not nearby to pop out the object and start the next print. Commercial printing may work better for this but I don't know where to start for that.
Make it out of wood. MDF (medium-density fibreboard) is fantastic. You can sand it into smooth shapes and some gloss paint on it makes it look like plastic. $100 worth of wood and a $49 jigsaw can make this whole thing.
Power, yes there's a few watts there but it should not be prohibitive. A reasonable size wall-wart or a laptop supply might be suitable.
Build it with addressable LEDs: WS812 or whatever. Then try to make a whole segment light up as one. Use that to build the plain Simon game. Then expand it to whatever "swipe" does. The user interface should probably be just the buttons from a regular Simon game to get it started, then change over to the big sensors when you've proved the basic LED stuff works.
Thanks for your reply
Thought I had notifications turned on for this post...but looks like I did not. Sorry for my late reply
Yes, I think the game requires a swipe in a given direction
The 3d printing idea was to break the overall design up into many individual pieces. Then some how join them/assemble them together. Which would allow each part to be smaller in size
Yes, it most likely would take allot of hours. Using a commercial printing service this could mean mega dollars to print.
I think that I like your idea of using MDF wood painted to look like plastic
I'm afraid the rest of your post makes no sense to me. As I have no electronics background or experience.
Wondering if I could find someone that I could hire to help me bring this to life.
The MDF wood should be easy enough to find someone local to make.
It's the electronics and code that I would need help with.
Any ideas where I could find someone to hire?
My other idea was to contact Hasnro and see if they would make one for me. But I doubt it or the cost would be crazy expensive.
