I am building a functional fortune teller arcade machine Similar to Zoltar. I have built the cabinet and the animatronic figure. However, I have never used microcontrollers. My questions are in two parts.
What are the best microcontrollers to control the coin mechanism, program servos for the animatronic, and activate the fortune card dispenser?
I have been looking at Lynxmotion SSC32, Raspberry PI, Arduino Uno, and RAPU. I understand, RAPU is used to play back and control the “show”. However, do I use multiple controllers for different functions? Once someone inserts a coin, how/what controllers read the coin mechanism, to then turn on the animatronics and music, after the show then shut down the system and reset for the next interaction?
I would very much appreciate any guidance and suggestions.
Since you are new to microcontrollers, I recommend the Arduino. It should be capable of everything you need and there are more tutorials and support available than any other solution. It is much simpler than most of the others, too.
Have you ever done any programming at all? It will be helpful, but not required, if you have.
Can you give more details of the system, like how many servos you need to control?
If I understand completely what you are doing, the program should be quite simple:
Wait for a coin input
2a. step one of show
2b. step two of show
…
dispense card
stop
go back to 1
Are you planning on having the controller generate the music, or playback something recorded? An Arduino can generate some simple music on its own. For something complex you will need additional hardware.
The arduino uno can handle up to six servos. More will need either something like a mega, or an external servo controller.
hope this helps.
Your understanding of what I need to program is correct. Would one microcontroller be able to perform all of the functions?
I will need to control 12-14 servos, operate the coin mechanism, and the card dispenser. The audio/music will be playback. I was looking at the Brookshire VSA software for programing the servos and audio.
An Arduino mega can control up to 20 servos. (An Uno can control only 6.) A Mega should work just fine on its own. The coin mechanism probably only needs one input line and the card dispenser only one output. You should have no problem.
I don’t know anything about Brookshire VSA. Can you provide a link?
I don’t think the VSA software is what you want. It requires a full blown PC to run. That is overkill for what you are doing! The software won’t run on a microcontroller. It also appears to require other hardware, like a servo controller. And, it seems they will communicate with some microcontroller baords, I didn’t see Arduino on the list.
The software you need on the Arduino is quite simple. The hardest part is probably going to be music playback, and that should be easy.
I’m sure people here can help you with the programming. And, as a bonus, you get to learn to program an Arduino with NO extra charge!
You can record up to 22 minutes of speech or sounds and, as a bonus you have the possibility to add voice recognition (making it a bit cooler than Zoltar was imo).
Good luck in your project, would really like to see a few pictures too !
I agree here, the VSA software + servo controller would probably be a bit of an overkill.
That being said, if you do want to go that route, you can find the software here and it is compatible with the SSC-32U.
