My Little Horse Racing Game Project
Okay, so I got this idea buzzing in my head the other day. Remember those old-school mechanical horse racing games at arcades? I thought, why not try and build a simple electronic version myself? Just something basic, for a bit of fun and tinkering.
First thing I did was rummage through my electronics box. I figured I’d need a brain for it, so I grabbed my trusty Arduino Uno. Then, I needed the ‘horses’. A strip of LEDs seemed perfect, maybe 8 LEDs long for each lane? Let’s say four lanes, so four strips or just individual LEDs lined up. I found a bunch of red, green, blue, and yellow LEDs. Perfect.
Next up, the controls. How do players make their horses run? Simple push buttons! Found four tactile buttons. Easy enough. And of course, jumper wires. Lots of jumper wires and a breadboard to stick everything into for testing.
Putting It Together
So, I started plugging things in. This part always takes longer than you think!
- I lined up four rows of 8 LEDs on the breadboard. Each row is a horse’s track.
- Wired up each LED’s anode (the longer leg) through a resistor to a digital pin on the Arduino. Gotta have resistors, don’t want to burn out the LEDs.
- Connected all the cathodes (shorter legs) to the ground rail on the breadboard.
- Then, I hooked up the four push buttons. One side of each button went to a digital pin on the Arduino, the other side to ground.
Checked the wiring twice. Looked like a bit of a mess, but hopefully functional.
Making it ‘Run’
Time for the code. I fired up the Arduino IDE. My logic was pretty straightforward:
I needed to keep track of each horse’s position. So, four variables, let’s call them `horse1_pos`, `horse2_pos`, etc., all starting at 0.
Then, in the main loop, I constantly checked if any button was pressed. The Arduino pins for the buttons needed internal pull-up resistors enabled in the code ( `pinMode(buttonPin, INPUT_PULLUP);` ) so I could detect a press when the pin went LOW.
When a button press was detected (pin LOW), I needed to advance the corresponding horse. But how? Just moving one step per press felt too predictable. So, I added a bit of randomness. Each button press would give a chance to move forward, maybe using the `random()` function. Sometimes you move 1 step, sometimes maybe 2, sometimes none!
After potentially moving a horse, I updated the LEDs. If `horse1_pos` was 3, I’d light up the 3rd LED in horse 1’s row. I wrote a function to clear all LEDs and then light up the correct LED for each horse based on its current position variable.
The winning condition was simple: check if any horse’s position reached 8 (the end of the track). The first one to hit 8 wins!
When someone won, I made all the LEDs for that winning horse flash rapidly for a few seconds. Then, reset all horse positions back to 0 for the next race.
Testing and Tweaking
Uploaded the code… anddd… nothing happened. Ah. Classic. Okay, debugging time. Went back over the wiring. Found one LED backwards. Fixed that. Still glitchy. Checked the code. Realised my button detection logic was flawed; it was registering multiple presses for one push. Added a small delay (`debounce`) after detecting a press. Much better!
Played a few rounds against myself (yeah, I know). It worked! It wasn’t super fast, but the random element made it kinda exciting. Pressing the button furiously didn’t always guarantee a win. Sometimes a lucky streak would propel a horse forward.
Final Thoughts
It’s definitely not the fanciest thing. The wiring is still on a breadboard, looking like spaghetti. But hey, it’s a working electronic horse racing game I built myself! From gathering parts, wiring them up, writing the code, and squashing bugs, it was a fun little project. Seeing those LEDs dash towards the finish line, even if controlled by simple code, was pretty satisfying. Maybe next I’ll try adding sounds or building a proper little case for it.
