Physical interactive prototype

The physical input idea for the board game is to make a alphabetical wheel which allows the player to select and choose different letters by spinning the wheel:




Draft & Paper prototype:
















The physical prototype consists of three parts:

1) The pointer wheel

2) The interactive base

3) The alphabetical wheel







1) Pointer wheel

This is the only part the player allowed to spin. While player spins the wheel, the pointer on the wheel would trigger the conductive parts on the interactive base, which indicates which way the player spins. On the bottom of the pointer wheel, there would be a conductive area where enables the "push" function. Making a complete circuit between pointer and the base.




update:

To develop the interaction method, the pointer would be split into two part, where each part would be connected to different button. By doing this, the making of base could be easier, and the wires could be less messy.









2) Interactive base

A wheel larger than the pointer wheel. It is supposed to have 26 conductive bits around the edge, however, in order to identify both direction spinning, there should have 26*2 conductive bits.

There also need some way to stabilise the pointer in the middle of two conductive bits, the stabilised part need to be soft and inductive.




Update:

To split up two part at the pointer, it doesn't need this method to tell the difference of spinning direction.




3) Alphabetical wheel

This wheel is just an wheel telling player which letter is being selected, and it does not necessarily need any circuit-activities involved. This could be drawn on a paper and used as the base of the other two wheels.







Circuit management

The pointer wheel should be connected to different button inputs:

Pointer part A: button "A"

Pointer part B: button "D"

Pointer bottom: button "Space bar"




The interactive base should be connected to the ground (earth) output, which makes each contact between two wheels would make a complete circuit.










!!! IMPORTANT update:

Instead of building entire part of pointer wheel and interactive base, I found an old game controller (Playstation DJ Hero game board) which could be developed to the two interactive parts of the prototype. However, the game board would only be used as the base of the prototype, in other word, no existing wiring or programming system would be used for the interactive prototype.









Tearing the console apart is very satisfying...






The metal wire is made of Tin and Lead, which both are conductive.



Two wires were bent as a circle and stuck together for holding the nails later


Nails were put along the circle, and each nail indicates a certain letter.

The bottom sides of the wheel:
The wire on the left is ground wire that connects to a metal ring, the wire on the right connects to the "Space Bar" button and was attached to the spring. When the whole pointer wheel is being pushed down, the spring and the metal ring would get contact with each other, which makes a complete circuit.


The first version of the pointer:
The conductive part of the pointer is made by aluminium foil, the two side of the pointer was separated by some cardboard paper.
However, this pointer is still too soft for going through the indicator made by zinc nails, so after several tests, the paper pointer broke down pretty soon.

The second version of the pointer:
The two conductive parts are made by thick metal wires, two wires were separated by some layers of cardboard paper and tied up by duct tape.
This made the pointer harder and less likely to be damaged by the indicators.

The completed prototype