I decided for the final project to improve on my midterm project game, which is the pac-man game. In this post, I will discuss the role of p5.js and Arduino in my project and how the communications happen between them. Moreover, I will talk about the hardware stuff that I am using for this project.
Hardware devices
To build an interactive system that can control the pacman game in my laptop I will use an arduino Uno and a breadboard with wires. The major hardware component for my game is a joystick that I will attach to the breadboard to control the game. You can see this joystick attached below.
Furthermore, I want to add few indicators that will show the user their progress in the game. For example if the user needs 15 points to win the game then I will have three indicators and each indicator will light up if the user reaches 5 points. The three indicators will all light up together and start blinking when the user wins the game.
The role of p5.js
In my interactive system p5.js will contain all the commands needed to run my game on p5.js interface, which I have done for my midterm project. In addition to this p5.js should also read 4 different values from arduino which will be the UP position, DOWN position, LEFT position and RIGHT position. If any of these values is zero then in p5.js I will write if statements to move the pacman towards this direction. For instance, if UP is zero then pacman moves towards the up direction. In addition to this p5.js should send the current score value to arduino so that the arduino IDE will deal with this value and light up the different indicators accordingly.
The role of Arduino Software
The arduino software will be the main bridge connecting my hardware stuff to the game on p5.js. The arduino should read 4 different values based on the joystick movements. After testing the joystick motions I figured out that the joystick returns 4 values and whenever I move it to one end, then one of the four values will return 0. Based on this observation I will be able to control the game on p5.js.
Furthermore, the arduino software will read value of score from p5.js and update the state of the indicators based on these lights.
I am very excited to complete this project but I am still a bit confused about how the physical structure for my project will look like and I hope to be able to figure out this challenging thing soon.