Help making touch sensitive LED pegs

[superskid]

A friend referred me to this forum for help with my question, and after spending the last hour reading other posts I have definitely come to the right place. Here it goes:

I have invented this game we play every New Years called Drinko (it's a Plinko board with different shot on the bottom instead of $) Every year we try to make it a little bit better, and this year I want to add LED lights. I would like the PEG to light up when the chip hits it so you will see the light trail of it in the dark.

If anyone good help me out on building this it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[magnatro]

place the piezoelectric crystal on the peg and place the LED on to the peg.
Simple Knock Alarm With Piezo Sensor | Circuit Project Electronic
the speaker has to be removed..
NB: you have to use a whole lot of this for your need!

 

[superskid]

Looks interesting. Now I need to find some good clear pegs to replace the wooden dowels I am using now. If anyone has any ideas let me know. I'll make sure to post videos of the Drinko board once it's done.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Clear acrylic: CLEAR EXT ACRYLIC ROD - Plastic Rods

 

[birdman0_o]

How big is the "run". I have a version of drinko lol. Is the idea for every peg it bumps to stay on ?

 

[Boncuk]

Hi superskid,

here is a PCB layout of the circuit magnatro suggested.

The design is single sided and measures 2.1750X2 inches.

When interested PM me your email address. I'll then forward the Eagle files to you.


Boncuk

 

[superskid]

I don't think I want each peg to stay on, more light up as it gets hit. Will have to adjust timing to see what looks best if that is possible.

 

[birdman0_o]

How many pegs are there on your drinko board?

 

[superskid]

There are 128 pegs I believe. So making 128 of these may not be the best solution.

 

[birdman0_o]

How about this. Above each acrylic peg (which has a light in the back), you drill a hole and put a light sensor there, when the puck blocks out the light, you know which peg it is about to hit. This will be much cheaper as you can get about 100 light sensors for 10$
Anybody have any thoughts?

 

[superskid]

How about this. Above each acrylic peg (which has a light in the back), you drill a hole and put a light sensor there, when the puck blocks out the light, you know which peg it is about to hit. This will be much cheaper as you can get about 100 light sensors for 10$
Anybody have any thoughts?

This would have to be explained a little more to me, but anything that avoids me building 128 vibration sensors is a plus. What if I had the beg and board made of metal, and had them insulated from each other. Then when the metal chip hits the peg it completes the circuit between the peg and the board. The only scary thing with this is getting shocked when you touch both.

 

[birdman0_o]

If it's ~5V you won't get shocked. Thing about that is won't it make an awful sound? Besides that brilliant idea! But how does light come into play?

 

[superskid]

I would have to have the led on the end of the peg if it was metal, so I guess it wouldn't look as good. Not sure what awful sound you are referring to? I was going to not use the speaker on the vibration alarm, and if its the sound of the chip bouncing, it should still sound ok.

Glad you like the idea, but I am an extreme rookie, no idea how to make it....lol

 

[ben7]

What about a capacitive sensing circuit that will light up an led when the peg is touched?

 

[Boncuk]

There are 128 pegs I believe. So making 128 of these may not be the best solution.

Really not!

So forget about my PCB design. It will fill almost the area of a dining table with 128 equally sized boards.

A better idea would certainly be to use an MCU with enough I/O expander chips to accept 128 "switches". (6 to 7 eight-bit-expander chips depending on the usable MCU I/O ports.)

There would be only one output channel for the sound.

Using a fast MCU you might get away with parallel in -> serial out shift registers for least pin count.

Designing the software the way as to read 8 bits in sequence to be followed by next 8 bits it should work pretty fast.

I designed an input key pad with 24 buttons (three 8-bit shift registers) and the keys are recognized in a split of a second at 16MHz clock frequency.

Boncuk

 

[superskid]

Really not!

So forget about my PCB design. It will fill almost the area of a dining table with 128 equally sized boards.

A better idea would certainly be to use an MCU with enough I/O expander chips to accept 128 "switches". (6 to 7 eight-bit-expander chips depending on the usable MCU I/O ports.)

There would be only one output channel for the sound.

Using a fast MCU you might get away with parallel in -> serial out shift registers for least pin count.

Designing the software the way as to read 8 bits in sequence to be followed by next 8 bits it should work pretty fast.

I designed an input key pad with 24 buttons (three 8-bit shift registers) and the keys are recognized in a split of a second at 16MHz clock frequency.

Boncuk

I like the sounds of this option. Could you explain a bit more how I would go about it.

 

[Doktor Jones]

For the metal board/metal peg idea, you could fit the acrylic peg with a metal sleeve that's just high enough up to make contact with the chip... that way you still have the LEDs mounted beneath the pegs so it looks good, but have the simplicity of the metal contact method.

Tie the metal board to ground, the sleeves to the (-) of the LEDs, and then the (+) of the LEDs to an appropriate-voltage power supply, and done!