LED 13 Colonies Map Tour

This project consists of a chessboard with the original 13 colonies wood-burned onto it. It also has LEDs sticking through each of the colonies, and earphones connected to it. There is a button at the top of the board, and when you put in the earphones and press the button it lights up each of the LEDs in succession, and talks about each of the colonies when that LED is lit up. It also has a larger speaker for demonstrations to multiple people.

I used a Raspberry Pi to make this project.

Step 1: What You Will Need:

What you will need to make this project:

1. Raspberry Pi (any model will work but if you use the Raspberry Pi Zero then you will need to add an audio port)
2. Half size Perma-Proto Breadboard (this is a breadboard which can be soldered to)
3. A lot of positive to positive jumper wires.
4. fifteen small LEDs
5. sixteen 330 OHM resistors
6. one pushbutton
7. Raspberry Pi power supply
8. earphones, speaker, or both
9. Battery (optional and I did not use one)

The rest of the supplies will vary depending on how you decide to refine it into a finished and show-worthy project.

Step 2: Write the Program

Okay, so of course you will need some code to run this. For this you will have to figure it out on your own although I may put my code up here later. I used Python which was great for this but if you have expertise in another programming language, you can use that.

Step 3: Put in the LEDs

You should now attach the LEDs in whatever way you have decided on.

Step 4: Wire It Up

You will need to be pretty good at soldering for this. You can very easily find pinout charts for the Raspberry Pi GPIO online. This does not show you exactly where each of the wires go, because there are many different ways that the wires can be hooked up, so you have to use your brain to figure out the details.

Step 5: Record the Audios

You can actually do this step anywhere in the order of steps.

Just record someone saying all the things you want the project to say. (Most computers have a built-in microphone but an external microphone is often better).

Step 6: Refine

There are lots of ways to refine this project into a finished project so you get to choose your own way.

Step 7: Test It Out

Test it out one last time because the next step will make it so that you cannot change the program at all.

Step 8: Make Program Run on Boot

This step will make the program automatically run on boot. If your program has an infinite loop in it then there is no way to undo this or change anything about the Raspberry Pi.

1. Go to the terminal
2. type sudo nano /etc/profile
3. go to the bottom of the file
4. type sudo python /home/Desktop/example.py (or whatever the terminal command to run your program is)
5. type control x; y; return
6. Reboot

Step 9: You Are Done!

Finished!

If you intend to use this as a school project or for commercial purposes then please email me at [e-mail] before you do this.