This year, for World Maker Faire in New York, I thought it might be nice to do something custom. It has been a while since I’ve brought a fun circuit to Maker Faire. I tweeted out my concept and got a quick response from Joel Telling, known as the 3D Printing Nerd on Youtube.
What he wanted sounded like a fun challenge, and I was immediately envisioning a nice numerical display counting upwards as he high-fived his way through Maker Faire.
The first step to any project is to see if someone else has already done the hard work. A quick google search brought me to this high five collector on Instructibles. The design was nice, but I wanted the numerical display instead of just lit LEDs.
A bit more searching and I found the reaction counter on the Adafruit learning system. This is basically just a circuit that counts how many times you press a button, which happened to be exactly what I needed! I didn’t change anything, only left off the tiny LEDs they have placed around their button.
Ultimately, my project is simply a mashup of the two existing projects that had been done. I think that is a wonderful thing, anyone could have made this and the only skills they really would have needed would be a bit of soldering and an understanding of how to copy and paste arduino code.
I will have to remind Joel that the counter will go up if you squeeze your hand or smack it on a counter. I should have made it a double switch. You can see as I give a thumbs up that I increment the counter.
Note: I’ve decided to do this modification, so that Joel can enable it only during high fives. I’ll add a picture after I get it soldered in place.
Keep an eye out for Joel at Maker Faire so that you can help try to max out this counter. Of course, you’ll need tickets to the faire to get a chance to see it!
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