Set To Obliterate Nervous Engineers

As hackathons provide endless stress in a short amount of time, what better way than to give a taste of it (and fun!) in 30 seconds to the layman?

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Inspiration

The STONE (Set To Obliterate Nervous Engineers) was built with two key goals in mind: modularity and fun. Built with Arduinos that leverage I2C Communication and plug-and-play compatibility, the STONE is an interactive game inspired by the online game "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes". Instead of online gameplay, we wanted physical interaction with the device and your friends, enhancing the thrill and stakes of the game.

What it does

The briefcase contains 4 modules, each with a puzzle. The answer to these puzzles is provided to the Engineer, who can only describe the bomb, while the Defuser must listen to the Engineer and follow their instructions to prevent their "obliteration". The puzzle hints and solutions must be deduced in the manual, available on our GitHub.

How we built it

Each module is equipped with an Arduino, which all connect to each other through the I2C protocol. This allows us to determine when all modules have been solved and determine whether the STONE has been defused. The program logic was coded in C++, and the internal casing was built with an acrylic sheet as the floor support and a recycled case as the outer casing.

Challenges we ran into

Originally, we aimed for our modules to use magnetic pogo pins that automatically snapped together and allowed simple customisation of placement within the case, as well as fuss-free connections without wires as a potential point of failure.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Within such a short period of time, we aimed for at least 3 modules to be delivered, but ended up delivering 4 of the modules. We were also able to adapt quickly to the unfortunate difficulties we faced with pogo pins, switching to jumper wires instead.

What we learned

We learnt that only so much can be done in so little time, and some trade-offs have to be made when eventual adversities are faced. Despite not having every single feature we imagined, we are definitely proud of what we've made, as well as working with some power tools and electronic components we did not use before.

What's next

We hope to work on getting the pogo pins to work, and see it as a very important feature that would enhance the fun and interactivity of our project. We also aim to complete the final module, which leverages an accelerometer to determine the tilt direction and requires a series of moves to be made to be solved, as described in the manual. Finally, we were unable to integrate every module into the main alarm timer due to a noisy signal line. Ideally, every module's mistake would contribute to a strike system but only Simon Says ended up contributing.

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