I spent time this weekend trying to work on my final project’s hardware. My plan is to wire a cassette player to work as the game controller. More specifically, I decided that pressing the “play” button would function as the “shoot” button in the level, with the rewind and fast forward buttons being mapped to looking left or right. Currently, the play button works but I have to change stuff up a bit to work on the other two! Here’s my process:
I think after taking a part the player my main issue was planning how to get a switch or button to fit in the hardware. The buttons the way they were on the player weren’t actually connected to the circuit board, they mechanically move the gears. Because of that I needed to find a way to attach something to one of the moving parts when the button was pressed to press one of the mouse components. That was fairly do-able for the play button, there was a metal piece that came down upon pressing it where I was able to add a small piece of solder wire to:
after putting in the solder wire I just hot glued one of the mouse buttons to the button of the case, just about where the wire ends up if you press down the play button. It’s REALLY crude, but it works!! check it out:
This is where things stopped sailing so smoothly….
There isnt really a position where the rewind/fastforward buttons have enough space to allow me to put in a piece of wire and press a button.. I then moved to trying to just connect two pieces of wire but my tools were limited for such a small space and I haven’t had much luck yet. Also, I ended up destroying the solder pad of two of the mouse buttons passed the point of fixing them. I’ve looked up that an arduino can actually simulate a mouse press, so that’s my next step. Ultimately, I would like the arduino to be connected to the three buttons, the microphone, and (maybe) the motor of the player (i thought it’d be cool if you could feel the player running as you held it even if it wasn’t functional). (I am also not sure how/if the arduino can have all of those working at once). We’ll see tomorrow how my work turns out!
Looks really good! Glad to see someone else doing a project involving an Arduino. I also like the cassette player you used, it should make your final game very interesting.
I really liked that you created your own controller, it definitely made your game stand out. It looked like a lot of work piecing everything together, but it all worked nicely at the Plays The Thing night. I also liked the idea of walking around a target store and friendly deer coming up to you. All the elements in this game made it feel very dreamlike because it takes place in a store I’ve been in thousands of times yet there’s deer roaming around and I’m holding a cassette player.