Episode 607 Reboot request

You may need to start by sharing some pictures of the version of the game that you are after creating, as they vary quite a bit.

Over here in my youth it was known as the 'Donkey Derby' but that I believe that was a copy of George Valentine Tonner's 'Kentucky Derby' game. Some had animatronic horses on a Scalextric type track whereas some were pulled along by ropes wrapped around pulleys more like Lorrainbow's design. Some were controlled by rolling balls into pockets, and others by tapping switches alternately. Horses have been replaced by camels and rabbits as well.

I recall that some were based on linear tracks like Lorrainbow's Strava version whereas some were based on oval tracks.

Size varied a lot as well from the large arcade versions like this Blackpool Pier Entertainment - Donkey Derby to small table top toys like this Desktop Horse Racing Derby .

The ball-rolling ones tended to be at the larger end of to scale so not clear as to how large a build your were thinking of ?

Well elves and jets have been featured before... 

/members-area/holidays/a/holiday-projects-2024/HP62/naughty-elf-animatronic-holiday-air-freshener

Get working on it and submit it to this year's e14 Holiday Special competition.

That's something fun to try out. Retirement is for doing stuff needing a lot of time. Guess what I'm doing this year - lol

Yeah. I definitely will. I have the time.

I just looked at the elves air cleaner. I think I'll make these for Christmas gifts this year. That is funny and reflects my sense of humor.

Mikeatencio said:

Guess what I'm doing this year

A lot of reading I suspect   

A couple of books that may be of interest to help you along the way: 

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/arduino-cookbook-3rd/9781491903513/

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/making-things-talk/9781680452143/

I'll purchase those. They will help. I'm taking an electronics course on Udemy. An electrical engineer created the course, and there's a lot of theory and information. It is a bit overwhelming, but he answers questions quickly. It's a lot.

Are all of these books free? I browsed a few, and they are short. There is not a lot of information, but enough in simple terms to grasp what is going on. Thank you for this. I added to my startup in my browser.

Mikeatencio said:

and they are short

Short ? 

Arduino Cookbook is 771 pages
Making things Talk is 496 pages

Mikeatencio said:

Are all of these books free?

No, but there is a 10day free trial on the O'Reilly site.

You can probably pick up some cheap second hand. Some of the earlier editions will cover the concepts but may not show the latest IDEs.   

My library is about to increase in size.

I recall colporteur created a project 14 entry based on PWM locomotive motor control about 3 years ago as part of the world in motion competition and won a prize.

I think it will have some similarities with what you will be attempting, so you may want to take a look at it:

/challenges-projects/project14/theworldinmotion/b/blog/posts/pulse-width-modulation-a-speed-equalizer-6-final-post

I recall colporteur created a project 14 entry based on PWM locomotive motor control about 3 years ago as part of the world in motion competition and won a prize.

I think it will have some similarities with what you will be attempting, so you may want to take a look at it:

/challenges-projects/project14/theworldinmotion/b/blog/posts/pulse-width-modulation-a-speed-equalizer-6-final-post

will do