Okay so today I wanna talk about this little project I did called “bebe simon”. Basically, it’s like that old Simon memory game but smaller and, well, homemade.
Starting Simple (Like Always)
I saw some tiny LED lights and cheap buttons online last week. Like really small ones. Got me thinking – could I squish a Simon game down to fit in my palm? Figured it was worth a shot. Ordered the stuff: small LEDs (red, green, blue, yellow), tiny push buttons to match, a little speaker, batteries, and the cheapest small microcontroller board I could find.
The Messy Setup
When everything arrived, I dumped it all on my kitchen table. Didn’t have a plan drawn or anything, just wanted to start. First step: hook those LEDs and buttons up to the microcontroller board. This was fiddly as heck. The pins are tiny! Needed my reading glasses and tweezers just to see. Made a few mistakes trying to push the wires into the little board holes – hooked up green where blue should’ve been once. Had to yank it out.
Coding Headaches
Then came the software part. Pulled up the free coding software on my laptop. Started writing some basic code to make an LED light up when I pressed its button. Sounds easy? Took me like an hour. The LED wouldn’t turn off half the time! Kept fiddling with the code, changing numbers, refreshing it onto the board. Got annoyed when I accidentally spilled coffee on my keyboard. Big mess. Wiped it up, kept going. Finally got one button and LED working right. Did a little victory dance.
Making the Game Part
The hard bit was making the computer remember the order. Wrote another chunk of code to make a sequence start short, then get longer each time you copied it right. More trial and error. Lots of errors. Sometimes it wouldn’t play the sound when the LED lit up. Sometimes it would light two LEDs at once. Had to check the wiring again. Took another afternoon. Kept adding bits of code, testing, groaning, and fixing. That speaker was real tinny too, sounded weird.
Stuff I Used Was Basically:
- One cheapo microcontroller board
- Four small colored LEDs
- Four small push buttons
- One tiny speaker
- A battery holder for small button batteries
- Lots of hookup wires
- My coffee mug (and some spilled coffee…)
Trying to Make it Stick
Didn’t even try to make a nice case. Too lazy for that today. Taped the battery holder to the back of the board with duct tape. Ugly as sin. Felt flimsy. Pressing the tiny buttons felt weird too, not like a real toy. But hey, it kinda worked!
So… Success?
I tested it. Held the whole mess in one hand. Started it up. Beep… lit the red one. Pressed red. Then it did red again and added blue. Pressed red, then blue. It kept adding more lights. Messed up on step five. Actually felt proud of my little ugly mess. It works! But man, it looks like junk. If I showed someone, they’d probably laugh. Guess I proved I could make it tiny. Not sure why I needed to, but there it is. Maybe I’ll clean it up someday… probably won’t.
