Hide and BLE-Seek

Seeker's glove
Hider's belt
Hider's belt
Hider's belt with hider!!!
Hider's belt with "seek" decoration shown
Seeker's glove
Hider's belt
Hider's belt

Inspiration

This idea came from some discussions that we had about a piece of technology that connects to a bluetooth low energy beacon to tell you how far away a specific person is. From there, we thought it would be fun to have a little game of hide and seek where the seeker gets a glove that lights up and makes sounds based on how close or far they are from the hider!

What it does

When the hider is wearing the belt and the seeker is wearing the glove, both with power on, the seeker's glove will make a sound (a tone) that gets higher (in pitch) as they approach the hider. Additionally the LED lights on the seeker's glove will light up, more or less depending on how close or far the seeker is from the hider. In the case where the seeker is far from the hider (>~30 feet), no noise will be made and no LEDs will come on.

How we built it

We used CircuitPython to create a BLE beacon on a computer chip which goes on the hider's belt. This BLE beacon is detected by another computer chip (on the seeker's glove) that is able to determine the rssi --the strength of the BLE beacon signal-- to get a rough idea of how far away the BLE beacon is. The signal strength is filtered through oversampling --we take 10 samples of rssi and average them.

This signal strength is mapped onto the interval (250, 1000) to determine the frequency of the tone, and mapped onto the interval (0,4) to determine how many of the LEDs turn on.

Challenges we ran into

-The rssi was difficult, given it fluctuated so much. Signal filtering with oversampling was helpful. -Setting up the BLE beacons was difficult, bluetooth is very difficult on simple Arduino chips. -Interfacing several softwares and hardwares together (CircuitPython and C and Arduino and many others!). -Calibrating the tones and LEDs based on rssi. -Correctly selecting the right hardware for this project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

-This! -The fact that this is a working, playable, interactive game! -Our ability to bounce ideas off of each other. -Our ability to work together!

What we learned

-Rssis are very difficult to understand and use. -Bluetooth is a pain to deal with. -Hardware brings a whole new layer of challenges, but it is very satisfying when it works.