Introduction: Interactive Hopscotch

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This hopscotch takes community play to the next level! Every time you step in a hopscotch square, LEDs will light up based on a response from a break beam sensor. You can arrange the squares in any order and challenge your peers to hop through a specific pattern! Please be advised - use interactive hopscotch in a large open space and do not wear big boots!


Project Contributors:

Esha Patel

Jennifer Weber

Supplies

To create 7 hopscotch tiles

Materials:

  1. 3 - yoga mats
  2. 7 - break beam sensors
  3. 10 - 1/2" wooden dowels
  4. 3 of Neopixel Strips
  5. 7 - Power Banks
  6. 7 - Data Cables for the Power Banks

Circuitry:

  1. Electrical tape
  2. Solder
  3. Soldering Iron
  4. 7 - Raspberry Pi Pico
  5. Pin to Pin wires (a lot - preferably long)
  6. 7 - Breadboards

Tools:

  1. Hot glue
  2. Ruler
  3. Band Saw (or Hand Saw)
  4. Laptop - with CircuitPython installed

Extra:

  1. 7 - 3D printed boxes (to hid circuitry components)

Attachments

Step 1: The Code and 3D Print

Make sure you have CircuitPython and Circup installed, it will make your life significantly easier, especially when downloading the packages needed.

The IR break beam sensors work similar to buttons which you might already have worked with.

The important thing to know about the functionality of the IR break beam is that it constantly returns a boolean value when connected. It will return True as long as the beam is not broken and False as long as the beam is broken.

We then used conditionals to make the LED strips light up when the beam is broken. For this we used the AdaFruit animations library but you could also extend the code to use other colors or add new features within the if statement.


3D print 7 of each STL file!

Step 2: Cut Out Yoga Mat Strips

The yoga mat will serve as a soft cushioned border for the hopscotch squares. Cut out 28 - 14.5" strips and 28 - 16.5" strips. Make sure there is a width of 2.5"

Step 3: Cut Out Dowels and NeoPixel Strips

Measure out 28 - 13" dowels (in length). You will need 4 for each hopscotch square.

Count out to 37 LEDs on your NeoPixel strips and cut out 14 of this size. Make sure to cut at the marked positions between the LED lights.

Step 4: Solder Time

You will need to solder 3 separate pin wires on the end of each strip. Make sure the arrow is pointing away from the end on the LED strip. Cut and strip one end of the pin wire and carefully solder one to power, one to ground, and one to signal.

Step 5: Assemble

Lay out two 16" strips and two 14" strips. Lay them to form a square. Glue one dowel onto each yoga mat as shown in the picture. Make sure one of the sides, where the dowels are glued down - there is a gap as shown in the image. Glue the dowels together in the other corner as shown in the image above. (repeat for each square)

Remove the adhesive cover from the NeoPixel strip and attach two strips to each square. One strip per two dowels. Make sure the wire points to the open end of the dowels.

Each break beam set comes with 2 components - one that receives IR and one that emits IR.

If you are following along with our code, pin your IR break beam sensors in GP4 and the NeoPixel strips in GP6 and GP7. Watch the video to see our set up.

Place the break beam with the signal wire closer to the Raspberry Pi Pico - we recommend pick one corner with an open end (larger space between the two dowels) to attach your pico and use the same corner for all of your hopscotch squares.

Attachments

Step 6: Assemble Part 2

Secure each break beam component in the corner of your square. Two break beams per square, one in each open corner. Be sure that they are exactly diagonal from each other. We recommend testing if the sensors work and light up your NeoPixel strips before moving to Step 7.

Attachments

Step 7: Assemble Part 3

Time to daisy chain! Try your best to use the same colored pin to pin wires while daisy chaining. You are going to daisy chain your NeoPixel strips and break beam sensors around the square to reach the Raspberry Pi Pico. Be sure to test your code before taping and gluing down the pins as showed above.

Carefully glue on the remaining yoga strips over your newly designed hopscotch squares.

Two 16" and two 14" strips per square. Make sure to leave one corner open (the one closest to your pico) for easy access to the wires and breadboard.


Plug in your external battery, close the printed boxes with the subsequent printed lids. Let's hop!