Midterm Project (2023): Creating “Simon”

The game “Simon” is a classic toy which tests the working memory of the player. For the final project, you will create a small, coin cell-operated Simon game. This will involve PCB design and fairly involved firmware to achieve an enjoyable user experience. In addition, you will be invited to add some sort of interesting feature beyond the Simon game. In the past, this has ranged from simple animations to a mode in which the device becomes a music sequencer.

Here’s a video from Tiger Yang (Spring 2019), showing a Simon board in action along with a number of bonuses.

Rules for the ELEC327 version of the Simon game

In our variant of Simon, the point of the game is to learn a sequence of M button presses. Each button corresponds to one of the LEDs and to one frequency of PWM tone. On the nth turn, the device plays the first n elements of the sequence. So one tone/LED on turn one, two on turn two, etc. The pattern of the n-1 elements of the sequence are the same as the previous turn. Each turn, after the sequence is played, the player must push the appropriate buttons to recreate the sequence. If they do it correctly, the game proceeds to the n+1th turn. If they make an error or wait too long (measured by the time since the last button press), they lose. Winning corresponds to playing the full M-element sequence. If the player loses, the device should play a “Game Over - Lost” animation that continues until it is reset. Similarly, if the player wins, the device should play a “Game Over - Won” animation until it is reset (e.g., by power cycling or pressing a button).

Details:

• On initial boot, the devices should play either one of the “Game Over” animations or a third novel animation. Pushing any button should then start the game.
• Sequences should be random each game (make sure your random routine produces a different value on startup!)
• When a button is pressed, the appropriate LED should flash (and tone should sound).
• The light and sound associated with the button should be displayed/played as long as the button is held down, and then should stop. (So not like in the example video below where they play for a constant length of time regardless of how long the button is pressed for.)
• The timeout period should not be a constant. Rather, each time a player pushes a button, a new timeout should start. Thus, a timeout of 1-2 s is appropriate.
• Errors should result in immediate game over (i.e., button presses should be processed immediately).
• You should make the maximum sequence size adjustable. For your video, sequences of length 5 are appropriate.

Here’s a nice video from Joshua Harper (Spring 2022) showing a Simon board in action.

Helpful Tips

Much of Simon can be pieced together by using code developed from previous labs. To help you,

• Example code for Labs 5, 6, and 7 has been provided to you via the class Slack channel.
• More code is provided on the github: Simon Github
• Remember that the LFSR random number generator can be used to both generate the button/light sequences and check the playback (if you store the seed used and start over during the button pressing)

Physical information is given in the ELEC327 Simon repository Eagle CAD schematic in the ELEC327 git repository.

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