BreadBoardWizard

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  This is a picture of our working product

Inspiration

Like some of the best ideas, the inspiration for our project came straight out of the blue, and then got refined into something almost unrecognizable. Beginning as a simple teaching tool, our program was conceived as the breadboard equivalent of a type-to-learn program, guiding users through a few simple circuit designs, and using an Arduino Uno to relay their designs to the computer. From there, it grew into its current form.

What it does

As it stands now, our project is a game in which the player must construct their own weapons on the breadboard. Although it still keeps to its original purpose of educating those who play it, it now features a significant improvement in gameplay over our original project, allowing users the satisfaction of defeating enemies with a weapon they learned how to wire up themselves on the breadboard.

How we built it

Ultimately, our process was a lot of trial and a whole lot of error. None of us came into this as even Arduino proficient, and we spent a lot of time trying, failing, and consulting with more experienced hackers in order to get to where we needed to be. But by learning as we built the project, we gained valuable experience in regards to how a beginner would approach the same problem we were designing for them. In the end, though, other hackers were what really saved us, offering advice and help when we were too sleep deprived or confused to power through.

Challenges we ran into

The most difficult part of this project was, by far, getting the Arduino software to interface properly with our program in Java. It was a many hour problem that even Sensei Google couldn't solve for us, and despite trying every library under the sun, we couldn't find any way to communicate with our device. But with perseverance, energy drinks, and the crowdsourced power of an entire hackathon, we were eventually able to solve our problem. F- for documentation, A+ for crowd sourcing and creativity.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

By powering through the night we were able to make up for the time we lost to our monster serial communications bug, and despite encroaching organ failure from over-consumption of energy drinks and small snack items, we made the final edits to our code just in time to make the deadline. Hard work pays off.

What we learned

Ultimately, the biggest lesson learned is to never trust a library that is more than a year out of date. But beyond that, we learned that if we put our minds to it, we can do incredible things in just 36 hours. We learned more than we have in a semester of classes, and I think each of us would do it again in a heartbeat. This experience certainly opened my up to a bunch of new fields, and new people.

What's next for BreadBoardWizard

Hopefully, we'll be able to spend a little time polishing our game now that the time rush is over. And who knows? The custom breadboard-based control system may well inspire a future project of ours. I know that I'll never forget our hacked together, wonderful little project.

Built With

• arduino
• java