The project I
chose to do was a chutes and ladders game. "Chutes and Ladders" is
a board game that when you roll, you moves that many spaces. If you
land on a ladder, you go up to the indicated space, and if you land on
a chute, you go down to the indicated space. Whoever gets to the
100th space first wins.
The physical
aspect of the project is a rather simple design. I have two motors
moving an electromagnet underneath a transparent board controlling the
x- and y-axes. The electromagnet is activated and pulls a game piece
that has a magnet attached to it.
The programming
part of the project is a pain. Keeping track of where each piece
is, and calculating how many pulses to go in the right direction was hard
to write. I needed to learn something called "records" to keep track
of all the spaces.
The making of
this project was hard and stressful at times, but very rewarding.