Simon Says
A close up of the Simon Says device.
After the desktop sanitizing robot, my new team of four people got to pursue any project of our choice. So, we decided to do an electronics-centric project for occupational therapy purposes. We made a Simon-Says toy for the sake of improving the memory of those suffering from dementia. The device had five buttons that can light up, a 16x2 LCD screen, and a piezoelectric speaker. After turning it on, a green light blinked and the screen prompted you to press the green button to begin. Once you press the button, a random light blinked. If you pressed that light, the buzzer would ping and the screen would say “You did it!” The device then prompted the same light and added another random light to the sequence. As you clicked the right buttons in the right order, the sequence grew until you misclicked. Once you failed to match the sequence, the buzzer chimed and the screen told you your score.
Electronics Wiring
A snapshot of the circuit’s wiring diagram.
In my group of four members, I took charge of designing the electronics behind the project. I specced the components and created wiring diagrams before soldering up a solution. I decided to use spare perfboards to connect an Arduino Nano to a shift register, the buzzer, and the LCD screen. With the shift register, I was able to program the five lights individually by sending bytes of data to instruct which lights to engage. I also wired 5V to each of the buttons and used resistor-based voltage dividers to assign a different voltage output for each button. This way the Arduino could differentiate between five buttons on one analog pin.
Prototypes to Final Design
A close up of the buttons in the test case.
A clip of the buttons lighting up within the wooden case.
A close up of the wires inside the case with added side handles.