“Make a game”

Last spring, I was tasked to “make a game” for a class called “Gadgets”.

I don’t really believe in games, but I do love a good gadget. So here’s what I made:

It’s a secret message maker! I was also taking a type design class at the moment, and was inspired to make a pixel typeface for this assignment as well.

I primarily wired a rotary encoder to a LED array. You can scroll through the alphabet and click down to pick a letter. At the end of the alphabet, theres a submit interface option that can be clicked on when your message is done. A finished message will then blink back at you.

Reflections: As you can see in the demo video, the word “diez” blinks back at you. This is because it was very very late at night/early in the morning when I finished this project and I was very exhausted when filming. So I picked a really bad example. And then I didn’t film any better demo. That was my biggest regret. I hope to dig up and rewire this project one day and film a more deserving demo for it.

I also made another really great magical conversational hairbrush for this class, of which there is ZERO video demo for it. I hope to dig that back up and re-record it as well one day ❤