Steady hands or aim how to#
Steady hands or aim software#
Steady hands or aim tv#
Steady hands or aim free#

I found a short 10-pin ribbon cable used for some kind of internal computer connection, which was about to be thrown out. By using the Pi's internal pull-up resistors on the GPIO inputs, I avoid the need for any kind of resistors, capacitors or any other kind of component, we're just interested in electrical connections here. The main thing here was connecting the wires to the bottle tops, the threaded wire, and the Raspberry Pi.

For the connection to the Pi I needed four wires (start, end, bent wire and handle) so used two lengths of two-core speaker wire. For the collars I just sawed the plastic pipe to size with a hacksaw. These had to have holes drilled through for the collars, and their painted coating removed with a file, on the top and on the base where the wires were going to be attached, because otherwise there would be no electrical connection. Finally, to form the start and end connectors, I considered using nails, hooks, big washers or even metal thimbles, but finally settled on beer bottle tops. I also got a 1 metre length of thin plastic pipe to use for the 'collars' around the wire and for the handle. I wanted the wire to be fairly stable, so I got a 1 metre long 2mm threaded wire from the local DIY shop. I decided to feed the connections through the base rather than just have dangling wires on the top, so I drilled access holes through the wood. A plastic box would have probably been ok, but I came across a little piece of firewood which fit the bill. I considered that polystyrene would be easy to work with (and I had some spare from box packaging), but thought it would be too light and possibly prone to tipping over. In particular, one aim is to replace the polling with better event detection, and replace the command line with a PyQt GUI. This can be experimented with using simple wire connections to the Pi's GPIO independent of the other stuff. Software: the basis is provided by the article, with a simple python program using simple GPIO polling and command-line output.Ideally it should be easy to connect and disconnect this game from the Pi. But the connections between the game and the Raspberry Pi need to be considered, and the connections to the GPIO pins.

Electronics: there isn't much electronics here actually, just wires and electrical connections.

Steady hands or aim free#

The article describes a simple block of wood with nails, wires and a coathanger, but we're free to make it a bit prettier.

Steady hands or aim how to#

Hardware: what to use for the base (like a block of wood, or polystyrene, or a plastic box), what to use for the wire and the handle, and how to physically attach the components together.

The three main areas to consider, which can be more or less done in parallel at the beginning, are as follows: There are several aspects to a little project like this, and the descriptions in the MagPi article provide an excellent starting point. And the author, Mike Cook, has even produced a delightful video demonstrating his creation, containing additional sound effects which weren't covered in the original article. There's lots more about this, very well explained, in Issue 5 of the free MagPi magazine. On the screen you can see the output of the included python program, which just uses a terminal window to write out the current status. All four of those wires then get attached to the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi. It shows the bendy wire and the handle, with contacts attached to a block of wood for a base. This picture shows MagPi's setup, from the cover of issue 5.

Steady hands or aim tv#

You could of course just build the electronics side with the buzzer and not use a Pi at all, but the Pi lets us use the tv screen to guide the player to the start, time how long it takes to get to the other end, and perhaps impose time penalties for every time that the wire was touched.

The MagPi article starts very simply and gives a starting point for any Pi owner to take further. Typically it should have a buzzer and a red light on top which both go crazy if you accidentally touch the wire. It's called 'Steady Hands', and basically involves trying to move a small wire loop along a bendy wire without touching it.

Steady hands or aim software#

This electronics and software project was suggested by an excellent article in the MagPi magazine, issue 5.