Interactive Paper Football
Still Image of Interactive Paper Football
This project is an interactive game of paper football, on a much larger scale, of course. This game works by kicking an old-fashioned paper football between the two yellow uprights. The paper football then drops down into a small box, where it ramps towards an ultrasonic sensor that detects distance. Once the distance is less than 6 inches, it sends the data through my Arduino, through the p5.serialcontrol app, and into p5.js itself to trigger an animation that says, “And it’s good!” and plays a sound clip of a crowd cheering as well. Attached below is a video of the beginning stages of the project.
I originally intended for the net itself to be the sensor that triggered the animation, but due to a lack of fish netting in New York City (maybe this place isn’t so great after all), I had to make a net out of 40 feet of rope, which proved to be a difficult task and not what I wanted either. I was then forced to nix the idea of the net being the sensor and just use it as decoration for the project. I had to use just a hard back for the paper football to hit, forcing it to drop into a box I then had to design. Inside the box, there are three ramps that direct the paper football towards the ultrasonic sensor. Also, huge thanks to my father, Erik Massie, for getting ahold of some copper pipe for me to use for the field goal posts (he’d be mad if I didn’t give a shoutout–sorry for the interruption in this reading). Attached below is the final layout of the project and the project in use.
I became interested in this project during the process of developing my midterm project, but didn’t think I had the skillset to accomplish it yet. So, I held off on it until now, where I still struggled to make it work. I love the sports industry, so much that I wish to work in it someday following college. So, taking that into account, I wanted to build something that was framed around sports, which led me to paper football.
My most difficult obstacle, technically, was building something that sent the paper football towards the ultrasonic sensor. Even though there were ramps inside the box, there was still a way for it to not completely move down them or even hit them at all. This obstacle proved to be something that could potentially ruin presentation of the project, because if the football didn’t hit the sensor, nothing would work. My second most difficult obstacle was myself. I had very low levels of faith in myself and my abilities to build something that worked, especially after what I wanted at first didn’t work. I definitely learned more about having to work with the obstacles I am given and attempt to create something that still worked.
Thanks to everyone in this class for their feedback for the project. Thanks to Dano for teaching me everything I used in this project. Thanks to Arnab for dealing with my debugging struggles. Thanks to David for moral support.
