Jackpot
The idea behind this project is that your life and experiences are largely influenced by the circumstances of your birth, and a very small minority of Americans are born extremely lucky. This is a cute little slot machine where for the first time ever, you can “rig” it in your favor. Press a button and the slot machine will spin, randomly landing on some result. These results correlate to some aspect of a person’s life. For example, one roll may land on the country you’re born in, another roll may land on the amount of money your parents have, and the last roll may land on your level of education. After this, the user will be given the opportunity to “rig” the machine in their favor. Part of the machine includes a magnet and the user can basically wave it in front of one of three magnetometers to try and get the result they want. The magnetic values observed correlate to some angle of a servo motor, which is your result. Only, a very very small range of magnetic values correlate to “Jackpot.” Thus, it would require a lot of fiddling and desperately moving the magnet around to get what you want. An added factor is that from using a magnetometer in the past, I know they are very funky and sensitive pieces of equipment, so it would require a lot of work just to get what you want. I’m planning to implement an LCD that says humorous and sarcastic remarks based off of whatever it landed on. Aesthetically, I really want to pull from traditional slot machines with LEDs, lots of lights and a bold design. Landing on “Jackpot” will causes the lights to flash and noises to play, making it very exciting.
Another idea I have that I haven’t yet incorporated into my block diagram that I would like feedback on is that maybe the rotation of the servo motors influences the rotation of the other servo motors. None of these elements live in a vacuum, and as a result of being intertwined they influence the likelihood of each other servo motor. It might be shocking to mess with the magnetometer of one to see another one all of a sudden change as a result. Furthermore, how actual slot machines work is that it goes in order of one, two, three after each other to make it dramatic. Thus, applying this idea to my device, someone may be inclined to change the money column directly only to discover that waving the magnet in front of the place of birth column is more effective/helpful to the ends of not being born in poverty.
I’m potentially interested in possibly adding another variable to determine the output of the slot machine outside of the magnet, but I haven’t yet determined what this added factor should be or if I definitely need one. As another point, I’m worried it won’t be as engaging as I’m imagining it to be, so any and all feedback related to that is appreciated.
Block Diagram
Sketches
