HARDWARIO IoT Kit Color Game

With this game you can teach your kids variety of colors in a fun way, just press the button, wait for the color and let the kid answer the question: "What a color it is?".

You can learn something too, just add some more colors or languages into the Node-RED function that controls this whole project.

NOTE: This project is inspired by Martin Grames and this is just my adaptation of it. Feel free to check the original project here.

1. Build hardware

There are two possible ways with the hardware in this project.

You can use Split Module so you can have Button and LCD module on one Core module at the same time.

Or you can discard the split module and use just Button module, it will work the same, you just won't see the name of a color.

After you have your device ready, plug in the LED strip and Hardware part is done. The LED strip goes to the Power Module.

2. Flash firmware

• Download HARDWARIO Playground.
• You can see documentation page on how to flash the firmware with HARDWARIO Playground.
• You will need the bcf-radio-color-game firmware for this project.

3. Pair the Core Module

You need to pair the Core module with the Radio dongle that you are using, follow the instructions below to see how it is done.

The same thing will go if you are using a Raspberry Pi as a server, just access the Raspberry through the IP address instead of the Playground

• Connect your USB Radio Dongle to your computer.
• Open HARDWARIO Playground
• Click Start Pairing the LED on the dongle should start blinking
• Connect the device that you want to pair into your computer or insert the batteries.
• Wait for the device to appear in the table
• It should add the device with the Alias: color-game:0
• Click Stop Pairing

After you did all this you can unplug the device from the computer and insert the batteries, it will run on them without a problem. Next steps will be done on the computer, so you can leave the device and focus on the Playground.

4. Import function

Open Node-RED in the Playground or Raspberry Pi and import the flow from this link in the Menu -> Import -> Clipboard. Do not forget to hit "Deploy" in the top right corner to apply the changes.

This function is ready to be used, you can do some changes but if you are fine with basic colors you are ready to go.

5. Customize function (optional)

You can customize a lot of things in this flow. First of all, inject the Update colors to load default colors into the flow. Just hit the blue button next to it.

You can add more colors, just open the color hex function and add some hex codes to the end of the array. After each change, you have to inject the Update colors.

Hex codes of colors are available for example here, just pick a color and add it.

You have to follow the format so write 0x[color code].

If you want to show the name of the color you have to also add the name to the end of the array with the names. Just open color name function and add the name to the end of the array as well.

Summary

You can easily add more languages to the game so your kids can learn how to say them in foreign languages.

Add some score so they can compete with each other, or with you.

If you have any questions about this project, feel free to ask in the comments.

Hope you have fun with this simple solution.

• Visit HARDWARIO page on hackster.iof for more interesting projects or go directly to their website
• Go to HARDWARIO documentation to learn more about their modules and other possibilities of the platform.
• Try more firmware from HARDWARIO Playground or write your own, it is easy to start.
• Because everything is Open source you can get all firmware on GitHub, get some inspiration and try to make your own applications.
• Get your own HARDWARIO Hub to replace your computer in this project so you have always access to your applications.
• Check out more applications that can be used with HARDWARIO IoT Kit in Integrations section.