The Ghost Buster

Inspiration

We were inspired by the 1980s Ghostbusters game and wanted to create a more immersive toy, reminiscent of that era.

What it does

The Ghost Buster is a game that uses two beacons and a radio (the tracker) to find invisible ghosts within your home. The beacons send out a signal and the radio wants a specific signal strength from each. The position where this is true is where the ghost exists. The goal is to score as many points as possible in one minute.

How we built it

We used ESP 8266's to act as beacons that send a constant WiFi signal. The radio utilizes an ESP 32 S3 Mini to receive the signal and calculate how close it is to the right position. The closer it is, the higher the frequency is. This makes a buzzer have a higher pitch, the LED screen to show more bars filled, and the fan to spin faster. When it reaches a certain frequency and stays, a point is scored and then another position is randomly chosen.

Challenges we ran into

The first issue we had was figuring out how to choose the positions. Originally, each ghost was going to be a physical sensor that the radio would have to get near to, but this defeated the purpose of having invisible ghosts. We realized from one of our past experiences, that bluetooth and WiFi can be used to get a position based on signal strength. Another challenge we had was halfway through the build, the ESP 32 WROOM broke (this was our original tracker). As a result, we had to switch to the ESP 32 S3 Mini, which caused our code to change slightly. It took a bit to fix it, but we decided this was better than potentially wasting time on the ESP 32 WROOM, which would need a more lengthier fixing process.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Accurate position sensor that allows ghosts to randomly appear throughout the room. Multiple sensors allows for people of all abilities to use this product.

What we learned

We learned to act quick on our feet based on failures we made. We learned more about the ESP system. We had to adapt to changing circumstances but learned that as long as we were decisive, we would have a good final product.