Learn How to Make Your Own Electronic Tic-Tac-Toe Game Using an Arduino

We tend to feature fairly advanced projects here on Hackster, because those stand out the most. Unfortunately, our less experienced readers may see all of that technical wizardry and feel overwhelmed. The good news is that everyone starts somewhere. Even the most skilled makers began their journey with simple projects like blinking LEDs. If you’re just getting into the game, you should seek out those projects and replicate them in order to wrap your mind around the basics of electronic design. Once you’ve done that, you can move onto slightly more advanced projects like this awesome electronic tic-tac-toe game controlled by an Arduino.

This video tutorial comes from YouTuber techiesms and they’ve already done most of the hard work for you. Most of the concepts presented in the video can be grasped by those of you who have the basics of using an Arduino down, but completing this project will also help you expand your understanding of how sensors are monitored and more. The game itself is just a large electronic version of tic-tac-toe, but with some fun twists. To “select” a box, you simply wave your hand inside of it. The boxes are automatically lit in either red or green to indicate which player has claimed them, and lining up three boxes will cause to the lights to blink in a little celebration for the winner.

An Arduino Mega is required for this project, which is attached to a custom PCB that was designed by techiesms. You don’t have to understand PCB design to build this game, because you can simply order the board using the provided design files. Each box in the grid is monitored by a proximity sensor that can detect your hand when you move it close. The boxes are lit by a strip of WS2812b individually-addressable RGB LEDs that are a snap to control. A generic buzzer provides audio feedback when you select a box.

All of the code to make this work is available so you don’t have to do any programming yourself, but we recommended that you read through that code in order to understand what is happening. Once your electronics are ready, you can mount them in whatever kind of enclosure you like. A wood grid of boxes was built by techiesms, but you can construct it differently if you prefer. This may all seem pretty basic to our experienced readers, but it is a fantastic project for those of you who are still learning the fundamentals of microcontroller projects.