The jam is on! This year I’m the main site organizer in Gothenburg again, but I also aspire to experiment with and idea for a gaming platform based on balloons. The event is proceeding smoothly, so I’ve had some time to set up a cozy work station for myself in an armchair with a coffee table on wheels.
The idea is to work with classic balloon interaction. You know, they can be tossed and then slowly fall. They can be hit, rubbed popped and such. Then I want to augment the classic balloon with neopixel light so that they can “change color” and some sensor to make a balloon register being touched. Furthermore, I would like my balloons to be connected so that they can communicate with a main game app and each other, and to be wireless just like regular balloons. For these reasons I’m looking at working with ESP2866 based micro controllers, something I’ve not done before, and to power the electronics with lipo batteries, which is also new to me. I’ve never worked with neopixels before neither. Lots of things to learn, but for today I settled with just controlling a pixel and sensing “knocks” with a piezo.