Here’s an update on the beer pong table project which as said before is based on the table chexal.com has made. I’ve been working on it over the last week or two, but haven’t made much headway on the physical side as I’m still waiting for a 10mm router bit that should be the exact width of the leds so everything fits together nicely.
Physical Render
I made a quick model of the table in Inventor so I could see how large the led array would be and rendered a few different pictures of it:
The plan right now is to stain the wood black as seen in the first picture. I have all the wood cut and I’m just about to start staining the edge pieces while I wait for that router bit. The table is 8ft. long by 2ft. wide including the trim around it. On top of the wood will be some 2mm thick acrylic so I will be sinking the LEDs into the plywood with the routered sections seen above. The table will also fold in half with a hinge so it is easier to transport and store.
The table will use some folding legs from Lowes, but I might also add another leg to hold up the middle of the table so the hinge doesn’t get ripped out if a lot of weight is put on it.
Cup Detector Boards
My IR sensor boards arrived from OSHpark today so I wired one up to test it. When I was first testing it I accidentally used the absolute max ratings from the data sheet instead of the recommended and ended up frying a resistor and a detector. ooops. Good thing I ordered some extra… I replaced the components and used a 270 ohm resistor for the IR led and a 10k pullup for the collector. I wrote a simple arduino sketch to measure the collector voltage on startup and then compare that value to the real time reading to see if something has been placed in front of it. I was worried it wouldn’t have enough range to go through the acrylic, but after testing it seems to work quite well although if I did it again I would probably go for a sensor that has a higher range.
I also designed a 3d printed part to hold the board and the LEDs that will surround the detector to light up the cup:
There are cutouts at the bottom for the wires, and a lip around the top if I want to add a 1mm thick diffuser.
Software
I’m going to be using some FadeCandy boards to drive the LEDs and a Processing sketch for the time being to control the FadeCandy’s. So far I have made a bar graph equalizer that reacts to the music being played from a pc:
I’m not completely happy with how it turned out so I will be improving it as I go along, but I think it’s a decent start.
Once I finish this project I’ll make sure to add more details on its finished project page.
nocduro 