Real-Life Chrome Offline T-Rex Game

Working hard on getting the Firmware code ready, meanwhile enjoying the debugging process. Watch the video to see how it goes!

New laser-cut parts have arrived, and are now installed in the project. Additionally, I have made the big push button wireless, with a 3D-printed stand:

You can find the vector files for laser-cutting on github, as well as the firmware code for the wireless button.

When we built the original prototype of the game, it had a limitation: whenever a cactus gets to the end of the track, you manually have to move it back to the start of the track. We did have a second track, which went backwards, but there was no mechanism to move the cacti between the tracks. Until now - we have added a small loop at the end of each track, so now the cacti can loop all the way back as you play the game:

Whenever a new cactus arrives at the end of the track, it simply pushes the other cacti in the loop, causing the last one to be pushed back into the other track. This way the cacti loop around the dino forever - until you lose the game. The mechanism works quite well, though it occasionally happens that a cactus gets stuck. Next step would be to try to replace the 3D-printed loop and walls with laser-cut pieces, so everything will be smoother and also more slick. Stay tuned!

I received a 2.9" E-paper display, and I hope to use it for showing the scores.  The display module is manufactured by Waveshare, and comes with handy sample code for Raspberry Pi, Arduino and STM32. This was my first time working with an E-Paper module, and as you can imagine, this is an exciting technology. Even if you cut off the power, it retains the last image, and it also seem to have some memory effect - something you need to clear the screen several times to erase all traces of the previous image. 

I spent the last night making it work on Espruino, and by the end of the night got some promising results:

You can find the prototype Espruino code here. I'm very happy that I got this working! 

Next step: cleaning up the code and optimizing it to display the score.

The original prototype of the project was built during Geekcon 2017. We used a pair of geared DC motors for driving the timing belts that carry the cactuses, but only the belt going forward was functional - the player had to manually return each cactus to the starting point. 

Today, we revamped the prototype with Stepper motors - they make less noise and have better performance. Next, we will try to figure out how to move the cactuses between the belts, so they will loop around. Stay tuned!

Below - presenting the project to my peers at the BlackBerry office: