ScramDuino

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  Finished Product

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  Playing the Game 1

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  Playing the Game 2

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  Playing the Game 3

Inspiration

Our group wanted to create a hardware hack that was both educational, retro, and fun to build. Based on the hardware available to us in the provided Arduino Kit, we decided to pursue a word unscrambler game.

What it does

This is a word unscrambler game built into an Arduino. The game presents a scrambled word from a word bank and asks the user to unscramble it. The user enters the unscrambled word using telephone-style numeric keypad. Visual and audio feedback is provided when the user inputs the word correctly/incorrectly. The game has a built in scoring system that allows you to beat the game once you have unscrambled a certain number of words correctly.

How we built it

We first assembled the hardware setup consisting of an LCD display, a telephone-style numeric keypad, and a passive buzzer (speaker) connected to an Arduino UNO. We then coded the software logic for the unscrambler game using C++ and repl.it so that we could play the game on our laptop. We then ported the software logic over to the Arduino IDE and implemented the hardware-specific libraries so that we could play the game on our hardware setup. This involved using the "keypad", "LiquidCrystal", and "pitches" libraries for the keypad, LCD display, and passive buzzer respectively.

Challenges we ran into

We had quite a difficult time wiring together the circuit, as we had little to no experience working with the Arduino hardware. We had a very difficult time porting the software logic over to the Arduino. We did not consider the low memory capacity of the Arduino, and that we could not load many of the libraries we wanted to use for the logic of the game, such as the algorithm library for randomly shuffling the word in the word bank. We ended up creating a separate word bank of scrambled words using an outside tool with indices that matched up with the unscrambled word bank.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our team had little to no experience with Arduino hardware and Arduino programming, and we managed to create a fully functional hardware product and a fun educational game to play on it. Our team is especially proud of our logic to convert numeric input on a keypad to alphabetic characters to an entire string.

What we learned

Our team learned how to wire components to an Arduino, and how to program an Arduino so that it can run a fully functional educational game with limited IO options.

What's next for ScramDuino

We will create a multiplayer mode that allows 2 players to face off against each other and see who can unscramble the most words first. We will create a way for the user to specify how many words they want to unscramble successfully to win the game. We will find a way to code in a shuffling algorithm to the Arduino's limited memory so that the same words will be shuffled differently each time. We will 3D print an enclosure to hold all of our hardware and possibly add in a battery so that the game can become portable.

Built With

• arduino
• c++
• hardware