If you’re like me, you find yourself fighting the urge to push every button, flip every switch, and turn every knob you see. This arcade-style puzzle box was designed to satiate those deep-seated desires. Powered by an Arduino, with completely custom wooden enclosure and components, this is a wood shop geek’s first foray into the world of interactivity.
In the 1970’s, wooden enclosures for electronics were ubiquitous. This project is a zealous return to that vintage aesthetic. Each piece of the box has been customized, from the maple veneer meter faces to the big walnut button. As for the electronics, there’s not much to it: an Arduino Uno, ten LEDs, three potentiometers, two panel meters, a button, and a vibration motor.
The basic premise of the game is that one random LED will light in each of the meters. The goal is to adjust each of the three knobs so that both the needles point to the LED. Each knob’s relationship to each needle is random every time, so you have to experiment to find out how to make the needles move to the right location. When you get it right the vibration motor buzzes, and the puzzle resets to a new random configuration.
For my fellow numberphiles, the game has a mathematical analogy: the solution is the intersection between two 3D planes.
If you’d like to build one yourself or just poke around in the code, feel free to visit the GitHub project repository.
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