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  • Author Author: bowdends
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The Treasure Map Hat

bowdends

Last week I described all of the hats we decided not to build.

 

This week I'll introduce two hats we are planning to build.

 

We received our parts yesterday, and I went over them with the children today. We'll get into more detail later on how the parts will all be used, but for now, I'd like to let my son introduce his Treasure Map Hat.

image

Since his writing may be hard to interpret, I'll type it here;

Treasure Map Hat

The Treasure Map Hat is a hat that tells where something is. First you put the hat on your head, and walk to the treasure. When you turn corners, you have to tilt your head the way you turn.  Then someone else puts it on at the same spot the first person started.  Then the hat tells them where the treasure is by telling the wearer where it is.

(picture of treasure map)

(Demonstration:

3 steps, turn right, 10 steps, turn left, 2 steps,stop.)


This hat is modeled after the iconic Pirate Treasure Map, which gives the user a starting point, then step by step directions on how to proceed to find the treasure.  The directions are typically of the style "Walk 10 paces forward, turn left, walk three paces, turn right, walk 20 paces and dig".


The first wearer will "hide" the treasure, while wearing the hat.  The hat will count the number of steps taken, and remember any turns that were made.  Later, the hat will be handed to the searcher, who will follow the hat's directions, in hopes of being able to retrace the hider's footsteps, to find the buried treasure!

 

To keep the general theme, we'll start the design with a pirate's hat, and add a Gemma, tilt sensors (for direction), a vibration sensor (to count steps), and NeoPixels to guide the searcher to the treasure.

 

Arr.image

  • in reply to bekathwia

    Oh - I agree that a Flora with accelerometer, compass, and GPS would be much easier and more accurate for this project, but that's part of the fun of building with a Gemma. 

     

    I also agree that the controls are going to be difficult.  I think the tilt sensors should be OK, but I need to spend some time with the vibration sensors (I have one each of the fast and slow types) and an oscilloscope to see if there's a way to pick out the footsteps from the background noise.

     

    At the end of the day, it's a toy for children, and I believe it will be fun to play with if it even halfway works.  If it doesn't work, it will have been a learning project instead of a building project, and that's fine too!

     

    David

  • What a creative idea! I think you're going to have trouble building this out with the parts you described. The vibration sensor does not reliably trigger to just footsteps, but rather movement of any kind. Likewise with the tilt sensors. If I were to list parts to build your proposal I'd probably pick a FLORA, GPS, and some buttons for waypoint marking.