Hello,
My son is dying to get a pair of these "eskrima" sticks, which light up and make sounds, but as you can see they are selling for $1100, which I think may be a tad too pricey for an 11 year old's toy.
Having dabbled with Arduino in the past, mainly just with LEDs and an ambient light sensor to make an R2D2 night light, I thought this was something that we could make as a project together.
I was thinking of using an accelerometer to gauge when the stick is stopped suddenly, or swung quickly and having LEDs light up in a sequence and an "electric shock" sound play as a result.
Here is the tentative parts list I put together for at least a prototype (Sparkfun Wish List):
Arduino Pro Micro - 5V/16MHz
Triple Axis Accelerometer Breakout
Audio-Sound Breakout (For playing sound effect files)
Surface Transducer - Small (smallest speaker-type thing I could find, thinking I could put one in each end of each stick)
Mono Audio Amp Breakout
Does this seem like a reasonable set up to at least get started? I am thinking these parts will fit in a 1-1.5" diameter PVC or other plastic pipe, but I can figure that out if I can get it working.
Finally - I am comfortable in C#, Ruby, and javascript and less so in C. I have seen demos for prototyping where you run Ruby or Javascript on a computer and interact with the arduino to read from sensors and control it. This seems like a good quick way for prototyping, knowing that I'd then have to translate to C for the final version that will be embedded on the Arduino. Do you think this is a good approach, or should I just bite the bullet and do all my work in C directly on the board?
I'm looking for tips on reducing initial cost and time investment to get a proof of concept working, and then I'll start spending/working on the final build once I have the code and electronics functional.
Thanks!