Newbie - want to make "Mastermind" game.

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

Hi everyone, I am a complete newbie to hardware and stuff. I have done a very small project with my kid brother just on a breadboard to light up a few LEDs with a dimmer and an on/off switch.

I want to make a Mastermind game. This is a board game where you have one person make a row of four color pegs, and the other person guesses what they are. If they get colors right, and if they get the colors in the right spot, they get clues.

So to physically make the game I need to make about 11 rows of LEDs (1 at the top for the "answer" which shows up once it's solved or all guesses are used, and 10 rows for guesses), buttons at the bottom to cycle through the colors for the guess, a row of red and white leds along the side for each guess (red means right color, right spot, white means right color wrong spot), and an switch to turn it on/start a new game.

I have actually programmed the game in other computer languages so I'm not worried about the programming, just the hardware.

I picked out all the leds and buttons I need, I don't know what arduino to get now though. Any suggestions? I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing but I'm determined to learn :slight_smile:

Thanks for any help!

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So 11 rows of LEDs with 4 LEDs per row assuming they are RGB LEDs is equal to 11 X 4 X 3 = 127 LEDs
That is a lot to drive for a beginner's project. I would suggest you start off with a simpler project.

You need an LED matrix driver but the RGB capability makes it not so straight forward. Look for projects that drive an RGB matrix and use separate LEDs rather than a matrix.
Alternatively look at the shift out tutorial, you will need to cascade 16 shift registers.