By: Ashley Hrebik and Michael Hennessy

Overview

This is a game developed on an ARM Microcontroller (LPC 1768). We used a XBOX 360 Kinect, a touch keypad, a servo motor powered by an external power source, two LEDs, a speaker, an amplifier and a MicroSD card reader.

The goal of this embedded system is to detect a person and automatically launch a water balloon at that person. The mechanical system is created from PVC pipe which holds the water balloon slingshot in position. On the electronic side, an mbed controls the functionality of the servo motor and unlocking and locking features. The launcher can be disabled by entering a password on the touch keypad. When the system is ready to receive a password, the green LED will illuminate. If it is not illuminated, the user can press any key until the green LED is on. When a correct password is entered, the red LED will illuminate, and the launcher will not fire. When the launcher is not disabled, the Xbox Kinect will detect when a person is in range. This will enable a sound to occur and the servo motor will move to launch the water balloon. After launched the user can reset the system for another water balloon.

The code for this game was written in C++ using the mbed cloud complier. We also used C++ code in Visual Studio to program the Kinect. We made use of the Skeleton API to detect a person. We used CreateFile and WriteFile to communicate with the mbed micro controller over a Serial Com port.

Connections

Table 1: mbed to Touch Keypad connections

Table 2: mbed to Servo Motor with External DC Supply

Table 3: mbed to MicroSD connections

Table 4: mbed to audio amp to speaker connections

Table 5: mbed to Kinect through PC

Figure 1. Setup Closeup on mbed

Figure 2. Full Electronic System

Figure 3. Closeup of Launcher Setup

Figure 4. Full System

Demo

Code

Visual Studio Code for Kinect

/media/uploads/mhennessy3/waterballoonlaunch.zip