Arcade Basketball Machine
Fall 2023
Role
Team of four
Quinn Morris: all firmware, plus laser-cut design
Description
A jungle-themed arcade basketball game with two difficulty modes, sensor-based shot detection, and a live LCD scoreboard. Laser-cut monkeys swing across the shooting lanes as obstacles. Built by a team of four to a $200 budget.
Overview
Background
The goal of this assignment was to create an arcade-style game combining laser-cut parts with Arduino electronics. It had to have clear, winnable rules with no room for scoring disputes, survive repeated play, look good enough to draw attention in an arcade setting, and be portable enough for one person to carry unassisted.
Build
A 2x4 frame with a plywood backboard, themed as a jungle with swinging monkeys serving as both obstacles and decoration. Cardboard glued to the frame forms the inside walls, containing stray balls at a fraction of the cost of plywood, and a cut-up bed sheet slung from below the rim was used to return balls to the front of the machine.
Result
Two buttons pick the mode: green for easy at 20 points in a minute, red for hard at 30. The LCD prompts for a mode, counts down from three, then runs a 60 second timer alongside the score, and finishes with a win or lose message. Either button resets it for the next player.
Shot detection and game logic
The distance sensor sits below the rim, with a 10 inch detection window, so it reads the ball dropping through and ignores the rim itself. Each read adds two points to the score on the right side of the LCD.
I wrote the code which included features like mode selection, the three second countdown, the 60 second timer, score tracking, and the win and lose states. It went through many iterations from the first prototype to the final build.
Monkeys as obstacles
Two laser-cut monkeys hang on hinges: one screwed into the right wall at rim height, one higher up off a tree built from leftover 2x4. They block the line of sight and swing back and forth when hit, which limits where a player can shoot from.
I designed and cut both in AutoCAD and Illustrator. The prototype used a realistic monkey, but the final build switched to a cartoon version to make it more structurally sound and identifiable.
Working to the budget
Cardboard walls instead of plywood, leftover 2x4 for the tree, and a bed sheet for the ball return kept the build inside $200 without it looking improvised.
We deliberately did not lock anyone into a fixed role, so I moved between construction, laser cutting, and code depending on what the build needed that week.