Recently I have been playing a new tabletop game with one of my friends. It is called Gaslands, and is effectively a car racing game using modified and repainted Hot Wheels cars. Cool!
While playing the game, I realised that there were a lot of dice and tokens getting in the way, and it would be way easier if certain information such as what gear each car was in, how much damage it had taken, etc. could be displayed on the cars themselves.
This would be a perfect Arduino project, although it would require me to miniaturise my circuits far further than before to fit into a Hot Wheels car!
I did some research, and found some drone batteries and tiny LCD screens that might fit with a car. Rather than using a whole Arduino board, this time I would just be programming a microprocessor (the microchip that does all of the computation) as space would really be at a premium. As processing requirements were so low, I was able to go for an even simpler version of the ATMEGA328P used in an Arduino – the ATTINY85. This would still run Arduino code, and can be programmed by connecting it to a full sized Arduino board to ‘burn’ on my software, so it could then be installed into my car.
Once the software had been coded and circuit built, this was all jammed into the car and some modelling work was done to bring the whole thing together. Now I just need to get round to painting it and playing some more games!
