The Light Fantastic: TinyScreen+ powered Pinewood Derby car

beermat

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My sons Cub Scout pack has a Pinewood Derby 'open' race for family members, so I decided to enter this year. My initial goal was to 'add a few lights' to a car, but I had no set idea of what I was going to do.....but, a few weeks later,  after discovering the TinyScreen+ from TinyCircuits, Neopixels from Adafruit and LSM303 Accelerometer/Compass from Adafruit, (and with much research, learning and experimentation), I present "The Light Fantastic"! (The flicker on the TinyScreen+ display is an artifact of this video - in real life, it's rock solid)

The car plays through a sequence of Neopixel patterns with OLED bitmap displays, animations and text marquees, and can detect being tilted forward to switch to a "race mode" RPM-style gauge display. A menu can be accessed by pressing one of the microswitches, and the mouse pointer/settings/compass display accessible from there are controlled by tilting/rotating the car. Obligatory TinyScreen game Flappy Birdz is included and also playable on the car! The menu, along with selections of brightness configuration, displaying a compass and playing Flappy Birdz, are shown at the end of the video. Enjoy!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Pty_Ip0gw

Egon Beermat


lfreed

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This is fantastic! Love all the animations and the integrated motion control. Super, super creative project. I was glued to the video until the end. I'd love to make this into a TinyCircuits customer project feature - if you'd be interested in participating in something like that, toss me an email at lfreed@tinycircuits.com.

Lilith Freed


beermat

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