Personal Space Invaders

Inspiration

We wanted to take a seemingly simple concept like space invaders, and transform it into something that can truly transform people's lives and change their ideas of what is possible with an Arduino

What it does

A matrix of RGB LEDs connected to the Arduino is programmed to light up in the pattern of a space invaders game. There is the player and the enemy ship. The enemy ship is randomly placed on one side of the RGB board, while the player is placed on the other side. Using the joystick, we can move the player ship left and right. Pushing the joystick up causes the player ship to shoot straight up. Pushing down dims the brightness of the LEDs to make the visuals perfect for every user. While the player is shooting, the enemy ship is also shooting. Every time the enemy is hit, it changes color, till it response somewhere else. The color change signifies the life bar of the enemy. When the player is hit, it changes color each time, till it dies. When the player loses, the screen goes blank. Then, a random famous movie quote is printed across the screen.

How we built it

We built this by connecting the RGB board, the joystick to the Arduino. Then, we programmed the Arduino, after importing a library called NeoPixel, to light up the RGB board in the fashion of space invaders. For the joystick, we imported another library called Wire, to read the movement of the joystick. The joystick was then linking, in the program, to move the player ship. Finally, for the famous quote integration, we used terminal and wrote a python program to access a famous movie quote API we built.

Challenges we ran into

During the project, we ran into many issues. First, when figuring out what to do, most of our hardware broke down: our LCD screens and Arduinos. So, we worked with what we had. Second, when designing the shot of the enemy and player, our shots wouldn't disappear after it moved up the board. So, we would have a row of lights. Also, when designing the extraction of the quote API, and connection to the board, we couldn't establish a well-enough connection. This led to a mess up with the serial monitor and terminal, so our program would not reset properly.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of being able to import the right libraries for each specific component. Also, we were proud that we were able to pick a project even though all our hardware broke down, and we had around 15 hours to finish.

What we learned

We learned a lot more about Arduinos then we did in our Design & Tech Class. Also, we learned about importing libraries and use specific Arduino components.

Built With

• arduino