Digital Domino for Maker Faire

 

Digital dominoes are like real dominoes you line them up and "knock" them over, but because they're digital (LEDs blink to trigger the next domino) you never have to stand them up and you can do some fun light chaser projects. We're basing ours on Le Dominoux, by Randy Elwin with a few improvements. You can see his video here.

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/dirtypinball#p/a/u/0/PQOjkuJtBfM

 

Daryll's Digital Domino is up and running on a bread board. Here's a video showing the board. Here's a video showing the simple trigger we used to test it with. Finally a video of it operating.

 

Photos of adorable children learning with the dominoes

 

Funding

The goal is to have this be a fund raiser for Crash Space. Each domino costs about $1.33 to make in quantity 1000, plus some additional costs like paying MakerFaire to be allowed to sell in our booth. We'll have up front costs of about $1500 and we should make between $2000 and $3000 for Crash Space over the two days of the MakerFaire. If this goes well we'll be able to use these for other kit builds in the future.

 

There is always some risk in that something could go wrong. Our PCBs could be delayed or it could be no one buys them at Maker Faire for example. Because of that we need to have people pledge to back the $1500 in costs. Here's how this will work. Each person pledges the maximum they'd be willing to contribute to the project. I will front the money for the purchase. If, after Maker Faire, we didn't make enough to cover the costs, each person who pledges will be asked to loan the project a prorated amount to cover the shortfall. For example, if we spend $2000, but only make $1500, then you'll be asked to load 1/3 (500/1500) of your pledge to the project. If we make more than the costs you don't have to provide anything.

 

Pledges

Please edit this page and add your pledge. You can leave a comment to add your pledge. You can send me email to add a pledge.

 

Daryll $400

Theron $325

Tod $200

Rob Ray $50

epac $100

Westdave $20

Steve G $150

Clive $100

Bardus A $155

 

Total: $1500 of $1500

 

Working the Table

We need people to work the table and help people build their kits. I'd like to have 5 people sign up for 3 hour shifts. In return for working 3 hours we'll reimburse you $30 (out of profits) to cover your weekend pass to Maker Faire.

 

Please edit this page to sign up for a shift. You can leave a comment to sign up for a shift. You can send me an email to sign up for a shift.

 

Daryll

Theron
Steve Carter 

 

Buy Dominos

Do you want some of these dominoes? If you order now, you can have them for $2 each plus tax. They'll be at least twice that at the show.

 

Edit this page to say how many you want. Add a comment saying how many you want. Send me an email to sign up for how many you want.

 

Tod - 8

epac - 50
Steve Carter - 20

matt - 20

Theron - 10

Chris  Horton - 10

 

Additional Details

All these will likely be changing over the next couple weeks, but if you want all the details:

If you're wondering about the math for the project and the bill of materials, you can look at the spreadsheet. 

Here's the current design:

 

Here's the Eagle schematic  and board  file.

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.