I thought I would give you an update of what has been going on.
1) I had been researching ways that I could see and talk to everyone that comes up to the front door that gets a treat. I think I found about 1001 ways to go it. But most of them took a while to get done, and I really wanted something easy. I finally found on-line from ebay, go figure, a baby monitor. I got it for about 35 dollars. It came a few weeks ago. I know because the girlfriend was asking me if I was hinting. To which I said hell no. Too old for kids. Anyway, this baby monitor does it all. I can view everyone from my cell phone or computer from wifi. Which I thought was awesome. It also records video and photos, not to mention it has night vision. And if that wasn’t enough, it can turn up and down, right or left, controlled by my cell phone. And the kicker is I can hear everything that everyone is saying on the other side. And if I have to, I can talk back thru this baby monitor. I would have to say it does everything I wanted to do without making my Raspberry pi do it. Easy peezie, lemon sqeezy.
2) About 14 years ago I had bought arcade switches just to make this treat disturber system. But for the life of me I couldn’t get it working the way I wanted. With this Raspberry pi it does what I wanted it to do. Of course looking at the switches now, I don’t think I can use them. Reason being is all they say on them is 1 and 2. And I don’t think I could repaint them to say anything else. I did use them to test my program out, but I decided to get better ones. I found on-line a START Button and 4 different colored buttons. I just got the START button the other day. They seem to work but the internal lighting of the switches is 12vdc. So I will have to fix that. But they do work.
3) I have the main program working good. It is about 92% done with a few tweaks I need done. But for the most part it works well. What the main program does is randomize options for 4 buttons. There are three motors that have three separate treats. One being a toy. When one of the buttons is pressed, the pi checks to see what it picked for that button and then turns on the motors to give out that treat. I even have a double treat option. Also competed are the audio tracks that say you have won a toy etc, or what button was pressed etc. Some of the tracks need a little TLC, but I am getting there. OH, last minute I had to add a by-pass to the programming. Meaning, my girlfriend told me she would be very cross if a cute little 2 year old girl walked up the box and didn’t get a toy. So what I did was during the time where I am enabling the switches for the kids to press, I have made it so I can tell it to give the kid a toy even if they picked the wrong button. I decided it was easier than to do this than my girlfriend killing me when the little girl didn’t get a toy.
What am I doing now:
1) Even though the main program is 92% done, I have decided to make this into more of a video game than anything. So I have been experimenting with a video style card game. The idea is to show the TOTs where the toy was if they guessed wrong. I have some pics of the cards here that I have been making. Please give me your input.
2) The façade is a bit trickier. I have a pic of my front door. If you have any ideas please feel free. The goal is that I can open one of the windows on the door, and the motors will kick out the treat from the door window. I assume I will need a ramp or something for the treats to go down on.
3) I also have been messing with a program called JuiceSSH. This will be put on my phone to talk to the Pi. It will tell me everything that is going on. Including what they selected, what they won, also statics of % of winning the toy etc. Most people might worry about kids pushing buttons to get extra treats etc, but not the case with this. After the kids press the Start button, my phone will pop up and ask me to enable the select buttons. Until I do so, no treats will come out. And because I can see the kids at the front door, I will know if someone will try to get an extra treat.
Thank you for listening or just skipping and looking at just the pictures.(I would too) Any comments or suggestions please feel free to give me what you thing the façade should look like or should I change the look of the cards etc.
http://s7.photobucket.com/user/lovermonkey/media/Halloween%20treat%20dispenser/top_zpsqnquykwg.jpg[IMG]
[IMG]http://s7.photobucket.com/user/lovermonkey/media/Halloween%20treat%20dispenser/20160203_180731_zpsygfpmjdw.jpg[IMG]
[IMG]http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y260/lovermonkey/Halloween%20treat%20dispenser/candydouble_zpsbu6d4btl.jpg
