Story

What if you could turn on lights just by snapping of your fingers? Or make it be a fun game of Tic-Tac-Toe?

If so, how would you design it? How many lights do you want? What would the grid look like?

And the microcontroller board, which model to select? A Texas Instruments MSP 430? How will it interface with the camera and microphone?

The Camera comes with face detection, pupil detection, and person detection. Which one is most reliable?

Should you detect a single snap? What about noise? Perhaps we can detect a double clap? How to adjust the microphone sensitivity?

Those were among many of the thoughts we had throughout the design process. In the end, we created SnapLights, a two person game of Tic-Tac-Toe, with the twist of using your face to select the spot and double clapping to confirm. As two players take turns playing, moving in front of and out of the way of the camera’s line of sight, they progress until the one reaches three marks in a row. Victory is assured or a tie game is reached.