Micro:Bit Dominoes

myminifactory

As a child, I used to have a large dominoes set and spent hours lining up all the dominoes standing vertically, creating curves and paths for them to follow. I'd stand at one end and watch them fall one after another, relining them whenever they didn't all fall over. Now that I'm much older, I still see kids having endless fun with dominoes, so I came up with Micro:bit dominoes. Micro:bit dominoes uses conductive filament, which is more difficult to get hold of than regular filament and also more expensive. Imakr currently sells 1.75 meters for £59.00 on their website. You'll need: * A 3D printer + Conductive Filament * BBC Micro:bit * AAA battery pack with black and red wires * 2 x AAA batteries * Wire pliers * Sellotape or Blue Tack * 4 x Crocodile wires If you have a Micro:bit case or holder, it's not essential. You can customize the Micro:bit code using the Block Editor on their website. To set up Micro:bit dominoes, follow these instructions: Download the STL file and 3D print the dominoes, duplicating them as many times as you want. Place the 2 AAA batteries into their case and use pliers to cut away some plastic from the black and red wires attached to the battery pack. Use 2 crocodile wires to connect one end of each to the exposed wires on the battery pack and the other ends to the first dominoes piece in line. Line up all your dominoes as you wish, focusing on the end of the line. You'll need the other 2 crocodile wires to connect one end of each to the last dominoes piece in line and the other ends to pins 0 and GND on the Micro:bit. If necessary, use Blue Tack or Sellotape to secure the wires in a position. The Micro:bit will now power on when the conductive dominoes touch to complete the circuit. You can find the Micro:bit code on their website. Compile the code onto your Micro:bit and you're ready to go! You've created a circuit that breaks when the Dominoes are not touching, so the aim of the game is to make a path that's simple, and if all the dominoes are knocked down, the Micro:bit will display an image. Make the path more complex as you go and see how far you can get. You could play with others to see who can build the most complex path and still power the circuit. You can also take advantage of the 3D printed dominoes and create more of your own to make your own set. Happy playing! If you have any suggestions for improvement, feel free to comment! The printing time varies depending on how many dominoes are printed - it's 49 minutes for a small set, but 338 minutes for a full set of 28 dominoes if you want the game as well.