When [marzsman]’s eight-year-old daughter thought up a game they could play together involving rainbows, he was all ears. She is a certified rainbow expert, after all. They had a few R&D sessions and came up with a rainbow sorting speed trial game that looks fun to play and fairly easy to build.
Press that blue button on the side, and the RGB LEDs along the top are put in randomized order. The object of this game is simple — just sort the rainbow before the other player by pressing each LED’s corresponding arcade button. Whoever sorts faster is rewarded with a rainbow animation behind their set of way-cool clear buttons.
Inside the laser-cut box is an Espruino, which is a handy little microcontroller that speaks JavaScript. All of the arcade buttons are wired up as a key matrix. The astute among you have noticed there is six of everything, and that’s because indigo light is too hard to distinguish from blue. Check out the intense gameplay after the break.
If [marzsman]’s daughter wants to learn computer science, rainbows are good for that, too.
Finally, a use of RGB LEDs that’s not just annoying, but actually serves a purpose! ;-)
The only reason we have seven colours in the rainbow is Newton’s mysticism. Even he only described five colours before trying to match notes in the octave.
But here we are.
With 3 colour receivers in the eyes we should have 6 pure colors (8 if you count black and white). Newton as many others simply tried to make the science adhere with belief so both could be a part of the same “universal principles” .
Nevertheless unicorns are not included and congrats to the author for the build. I know how gratifying is to have a good time with our sons in the workshop during the construction of a gadget and later using it.
Eight colours. You forgot octarine.
Wouldn’t indigo be something like ‘royal blue’ vs a ‘cyan’ LED?
We only distinguish violet from blue as the red cones have a sensitivity hump towards the blue-to-violet region.
And how, exactly, are COLOR BLIND people supposed to use this thing?
Just change the colours to more distinguishable ones or cut down on colours?
also helps people with other colour aversions
Machine is not defective, eye is defective. Fix eye. *Sets issue to Resolved*
Set the LEDs to blink at different frequencies and have the user sort them from slowest to fastest!