SmartBadge – Flashing Pixels and Games for Geek Events

Designed in conjunction with Amy Mather @MiniGirlGeek

SmartBadge is a wearable that you can program to display patterns or messages, play games or just to blind anyone who comes too close

19 super-bright, full-colour individually addressable RGB neopixels arranged in hexagonal rings allow you to make fantastic dynamic patterns and exciting games

4 mini buttons give you control over menus, or game functions. You code, you decide!

Powered from a rechargeable lithium coin cell which lasts 45 minutes on a single charge whilst displaying patterns continuously.

Fast, simple and exciting way to start working with wearable computing

Features

19 RGB neopixels
4 buttons
Arduino IDE compatible
Rechargeable coin cell
Power & activity LEDs
On-off switch
Fully soldered

Pre-Installed Demo Program

SW1 acts as the menu button. After a 5,4,3,2,1,0 countdown it shows a single purple LED. Pressing SW1 cycles through 1,2,3,4,5,6 LEDs lit. It times out after 5 seconds without a button press and runs the selected demo as below. You can press SW4 if you don’t want to wait the 5 seconds.

Press SW1 at any point to return to the menu

Individual Demos

This is the default demo and just shows lots of pretty patterns
Capture Pixels game. You have to press SW4 when the white LED is on to capture it. When you complete the level it starts again, but you get less time to do it
Death Ray. Ray gun effect with super bright finale
Bug Chase. My brother and I wrote this game at the end of the 70s/early 80s (ancient history). It sort of pre-dates pacman. You (Blue) have to visit every pixel to collect them, whilst being chased by a bug (Red). SW4 and SW3 move you around the hexagonal ring. SW2 moves you inwards. Collected pixels show green on the first level and subsequent levels get faster. On our original game we introduced a second bug on level 3, but I haven’t done that. This game is very hard!

Example software and neopixel library available from the 4tronix SmartBadge GitHub