M5 Red only comes with 1 Port B and I would to use 2 Port B units without the hub which added to the overall formfactor. The two units I need are the Limit Switch unit (U145) and the Vibrator unit (U059) and, fortunately, they are hooked up to a different GPIO pin on Port B. The Limit Switch unit is on GPIO 36 (Input, Whit) while the Vibrator unit is on GPIO 26 (In/Out, Yellow).
Theoretically speaking, if I split a grove cable into 2, I should be able to connect both units to Port B at the same time. I have done this a couple times for other projects to save space, but I do worry the vibrator might draw too much power from the same cable and eventually cause the switch to stop working properly.
It works beautifully.
Programing the vibrator is super fun. I had in my mind the “pew pew pew” sound, and this is what I ended up with. I have not played with the frequency and resolution yet.
[Note to myself] The ESP32 can generate a PWM signal with a frequency of up to 40 MHz. It is currently set to 10000. If the PWM resolution is “n” bits, the timer counts from 0 to 2n-1 before it resets. For example, if we configure the timer with a frequency of 1 Hz and a resolution of 8 bits, the timer will take 1 second to count from 0 to 255 (28-1). In the case of a frequency of 1 Hz and a resolution of 16 bits, the timer will still take 1 second, but it will count from 0 to 65,535 (216-1). The resolution is currently set to 10.
//Vibration
for (int ii = 0; ii < 6; ii++) {
ledcWrite(ledChannel, 512 - ii*40);
delay(40 + ii*10);
}
ledcWrite(ledChannel, 0); // set buzz off
Bubble Up and Go, aka B.U.G., is a single-player Start-of-2025-Empowering game. It has been a rocky start this year, negativities are around us! In this simulation, players have to navigate through negativities, learn to keep a safe distance to toxic influences, and purify them with positive energy! Hope all of us have a great rest of 2025. Bubble up and let’s go already!
This year’s them is bubble.
How convenient! Before attending the global game jam today at our site, I stopped by Michael’s. I went there to see if I could find a cheap snow globe kit for a summer project that I was working on. There were a few interesting things I found there but they were either two big or too fragile for the project. I eventually decided to go with a clear plastic 3-Part Mold that was on sale. It has the right size and super cheap. The universe was aligned that afternoon because when I arrived, I found out the theme for this year’s Global Game Jam was, guess what!?, bubble!
Okay, I have to make something to answer the calling!
I also relearned math in the process (in English!), for example, in a triangle, the line that goes from one angle to the middle of the line between two other angles is called a median. The other one I relearned was the circumcenter of a triangle which is the point where the triangle’s three perpendicular bisectors meet. It’s also the center of the circle that passes through all three vertices of the triangle, called the circumcircle.
Translating them into Visual Scripting was also very fun. I had done a similar experiment with C# in 2013 when those tablet toys were popular. The relation between the 3 angles is different for different triangles and, therefore in theory, can be used as identifier. The debugging is a little tricky because the multitouch feature can’t be tested directly inside of Unity editor.
With the bubbly controller in mind, the first few things that came to me was protection, activation, attraction and repeal. This probably came from my memory of playing WoW. Bubble up = 0 harm.
Here are an initial set of rules to situate the gameplay and most of them are based on the felt.
the player (soul unit) can attract good energies and repeal negative ones
negative energies (disaster clusters) will randomly pop up in proximity to the player
bullets with positive energy will shoot out of the front of the soul unit to repeal any disaster cluster they hit.
a successful hit with a bullet will generate points and enlarge the soul unity over time
when points reach a threshold, the player can release a map attack that whips out all the disaster clusters nearby.
Over the course this weekend, 21 students, 1 faculty, and 1 alum (my one and only Bryce!) made 7 games in total, super awesome!
We played each other’s games at the end, all of my overthinking and tech-savvy game mechanics were immediately humbled by other players. For example, the bubble controller can also control the rotation of the soul unit. I wanted to use the rotation for something so I added a mechanic which shoots out a energy bullet from the front to repeal disaster clusters. It was not very intuitive, and players had a hard figure out what’s going on there including where the front is. I should of just let the soul unit do what bubble do the best which is to bounce with other disaster clusters directly. I missed frequent playtesting so much!
I am planning to add a few more things:
Soul unit can be hurt by nearby clusters – decrease points?
By A.A. Station, 1983, it is a Clue-like board game. I love the game board design and all the illustrations.
The goal of the game is to use your search cards to search each room and discover the following three things:
– Which room has a rift appeared for aliens to come through? – What kind of alien invaded through the rift? – Who is the crew member infested with aliens?
There are 21 search cards in total — 9 room cards, 6 alien cards, and 6 crew cards The first person to find it is the winner.
I was very excited to find out about this Japanese version while researching other board games. BTW, the other space themed Clue that I love is Clue: Star Wars (2016).
Also, Akiko Takahashi, a.k.a. A.A. Station, is an interesting board game designer (source):
Yonezawa・ヨネザワ – Like many Japanese board and card game publishers in the Shōwa era, Yonezawa was best known as a toy manufacturer. They had dabbled in games since at least the 1970s but jumped headlong into game publishing with the パーティールーム21 (Party Room 21) series, which ranged from card and board games to Game Boy carts and console peripherals. Yonezawa kicked off Party Room 21 in 1986, targeting college-aged adults with a series of irreverent, rules-light party games. The series, which comprised more than 75 titles, continued at a steady clip until 1994, when Yonezawa was acquired by Sega. Party Room’s most prolific designer was 高橋章子 (Akiko Takahashi), former editor of Big House magazine. Using the pen name A.A. Station, she designed more than twenty games from 1986 to 1990. Many of her titles, like the popular Tanba board game, were subversive and satirical takes on traditional Japanese culture, customs, and games.
Comes with a vinyl record and built-in record player: Voice of the Mummy (1971) Séance (1972) Comes with a vinyl record only: エポック社 モノポリー (Monopoly 1973) エポック社 金田一耕助の推理ゲーム (Kindaichi Kosuke no Suiri Game 1980)
After many years, I am coming back to get 3 RFID readers to work together again. Completely forgot how I did it , I started with Software serial. I couldn’t get two software serial ports to work. After reading the notes I left for myself in this post (https://www.ivadream.com/kyle/red/?p=4344). I found out from myself that in order to get 3 RFID readers working on 1 Arduino, I had to use 1 hardware serial, 1 software serial, and 1 altsoftware serial. It worked like charm!
Finally made some progress in the DIY vending machine, going to reactivate the Acorn Riders project. After building the coin dispenser, I have been looking for a capsule vending machine. My ideal vending machine was Bandai’s Capsule Station Mini (カプセルステーション ミニ). It looks very different than the regular size one and goes well with my coin dispenser setup (in my imagination). However, I’ve not able to find one in any of the market places all these years.
Capsule Station Mini
Over the years, I have encountered a couple of DIY vending machines. First one was VEND on Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:45347). My final version is eventually based on this build, I learned so much from taking its design apart. The second one was the Recycle Capsule Machine (循環ガチャ)(https://circular.yokohama/projects/circular-capsule-macine/). I first bumped into one when I visited the Fabcafe in Shibuya. It was made with laser cut and 3D print parts, very eye-catching. It made an impression of me when I found out it takes bottle caps as coins. Last year, when I was judging the Creative Discovery Challenge 2023 (https://awrd.com/award/cdc2023/result), I saw the same vending machine again. They now have multiple versions of the machines which is very encouraging.
I started to take notice of the mechanics of simple vending machine in this issue of TV magazine (テレビマガジン) in January 2016. It is basically using the same mechanic as the VEND where the handle connects directly to a drum that vends a capsule when rotates. On the other hand, the commercial ones like Bandai’s Capsule Stations has a more complex setup with multiple drums, which increases the chance of capsules falling into place correctly so that a capsule is always ready for vending.
テレビマガジン January 2016a drum
After study VENT, I started to modify the design to suit my needs. I first modified the faceplate (VEND-CoinFace.stl) by removing the extended coin track. I tried to create a simpler look and feel so I can add my own narrative elements to the surface later on. I also modified the drum so it can handle bigger capsules while keeping the same form factor if not a little bit smaller. I then broke parts into smaller ones for easy printing and assembling. After all the specialty parts are modified, I designed a new casing for them with a detachable coin compartment. There are a few places needed to be improved, but I am pretty happy with the outcome.
For the capsule container, it has to be from the legendry pork sung jar. I redesigned the top so I can screw the jar in securely. It’s perfect in every way.
