We feel like trumpets should be sounding. Someone took the overused project of connecting RGB LEDs to a microcontroller and produced something useful. [Paul] created Dr. Boardman’s Color Conundrum which works much like a simple mechanical coin-op game you might find at a carnival. When switched on, a random color is displayed by the ping-pong ball covered LED on the left. The player then manipulates three knobs to color-match the two lights.

Inside you’ll find a minimalist set of hardware. An ATmega8 polls the three potentiometers and uses them to mix the appropriate user color. Everything is wired-up using prototyping board and draws power from two AA batteries. He’s using a random seed stored in EEPROM and increments it every time the uC boots up. This keeps the input color different for every game.

Fun and simple, it’s not going to make your guests marvel at the complexity but [Paul’s] come up with a unique game that we think has marketing potential.