Thanks to Paul for sending in his awesome Magic Eight Ball project! Check out the full build at Instructables.
The Magic 8 Ball toy has first introduced in 1950. It answers yes or no questions via a 20 sided die floating in dark blue fluid – whichever side floats to the top is the “answer.” In this project the die and fluid mechanism is replaced with an OLED display and Arduino based microcontroller.
Operation is identical to the original Magic 8 Ball – just flip the ball upside down and then right side up to get your answer (see YouTube video). You can edit or add answers of your choosing, and you’re not limited to just 20 answers.
The modified 8 ball outwardly appears nearly identical to the original; there are no external switches, just set the ball down to turn it off and pick it up to turn it on. The ball twists apart to allow LiPo battery recharging or programming to add your own unique answers.
The circuit is very simple consisting of just 4 parts: OLED display, Flora (Arduino based microcontroller board), LiPo battery, and orientation switch. The toughest part of the project is neatly cutting the Magic 8 Ball, so step # 3 provides detailed instructions.
Monochrome 1.3″ 128×64 OLED graphic display: These displays are small, only about 1.3″ diagonal, but very readable due to the high contrast of an OLED display. This display is made of 128×64 individual white OLED pixels, each one is turned on or off by the controller chip. Because the display makes its own light, no backlight is required. This reduces the power required to run the OLED and is why the display has such high contrast; we really like this miniature display for its crispness! Read more.
FLORA – Wearable electronic platform: Arduino-compatible: FLORA is Adafruit’s fully-featured wearable electronics platform. It’s a round, sewable, Arduino-compatible microcontroller designed to empower amazing wearables projects.
FLORA comes with Adafruit’s support, tutorials and projects. Check out dozens of FLORA tutorials on the Adafruit Learning System, with more added every week by Becky Stern, director of wearable electronics, and our dedicated wearables staff. Read more.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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