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You’ve been lucky enough to get your hands on a Crumble starter kit, you’ve connected bits together and managed to get a Sparkle shining red, but now what? What else can you do with it apart from make a red light?

We’ve decided to collate a list of inspiration and ideas for projects that you can make using only the contents – and container – of the starter kit. Before you get started with the projects, you may want to check out our basics video, which walks you from the very beginning.

We’ll start with the simpler projects, before looking at a couple of more advanced ones. First up we have a simple timer. This can be made as simple or advanced as you like, but the main premise behind it is that a timer for 30 seconds will start when you press the button.

The program is simple. Wait until the button is pressed, turn on the Sparkle white, then after 30 seconds, turn it off. The program then repeats, waiting for the user to press the button to start the timer again. This could easily be extended by adding in a nice pulsing effect every second, getting faster near the end of the time limit.

Next up we have the classic ‘police lights’ project. You can start off by making only the lights, which you can then ’embed’ into a model police car. If you are feeling particularly creative, you could use the starter kit box to make a chassis, which you can then turn into your own ‘moving’ vehicle! As a starting point, we want to make the two sparkles alternate between red and blue. This could then be elaborated on, to create extravagant flashing patterns, or even use the switch to cycle between various styles!

This is one of the simplest, yet most satisfying programs! To represent police lights, we turn the Sparkles on red and blue, then after a short time, we switch their colour.

Now we have an example of a simple project, with a bit more ‘making’ involved. The lightbox is made using either the starter kit box, or another box, and a piece of paper. We then can light up the message using the supplied sparkles. To make the programming more difficult, we can control the lights via the switch, make them change colour or even fade through the RGB values.

The programming for this project is surprisingly simple, once you know how. We are going to wait for the button to be pressed, and A to become HI. Then we’ll turn on the Sparkle(s) white (you can use as many as you like with this code!). Then, each time the button is pressed, the Sparkle(s) changes to another colour, or off. The wait statement allows us time to remove our finger from the button, setting A LO. If we didn’t have it, the program would skip through repeatedly, as it runs faster than we can move!

For our final basic project, we have our very own model Zebra crossing, complete with flashing Belisha beacons! Using most of the starter kit box as the ‘crossing’, we’ve made two beacons out of  some of the lid from the box. Programmatically, this isn’t too taxing – its an infinite loop, alternating each light.

This code is nice and simple – set one Sparkle to Orange, and the other one off. After one second, switch them around so that the orange one turns off, and the one that’s off turns on orange. Wait another second before repeating. This will then give us the effect of them flashing alternately.

Now we move onto some projects for those of you who are more experienced. First up, we are going to look at a simple reaction time gamer. One Sparkle will light up after x milliseconds, then you have to press the button as quickly as you can. Within a set amount of time, and you get a green on the other Sparkle, but too slow and you’ll get red.

Now that we have moved onto something more complicated, the code has gotten longer, however, it is just as easy to understand! This program waits a random amount of time (0.5 – 3.5 seconds) before turning on the Sparkle white. It then ‘times’ us by adding 10 to our ‘Time’ variable, every 10ms, until the switch is pressed. If we took less than 350ms, we get a green flashing Sparkle, but if we took longer, it goes red! If you have a Sparkle Baton, check out this project.

On the theme of reaction-based games, we have our ‘Sparkle Snap’ game – The two Sparkles light up a random colour (from a predefined list), if they match you must press the button as quickly as you can. Succeed, and you’ll be rewarded with flashing green Sparkles. Get it wrong, and you’ll get red.

We’re starting off by lighting each Sparkle one of three colours. We’ve assigned ‘ColourOne’ and ‘ColourTwo’ a random number between 0 and 2, and then using selection (if statements), we’ve lit the Sparkles depending on the variable values. It’s worth noting that this section could be far longer, if you want a wider range of colours. The Sparkles are then on for either 500ms or until the button is pressed. If the time elapses, the game just continues, whereas if the button was pressed, we check to see whether the two colours (variables) are the same. If they are, then we flash green for 2.5s, if they weren’t, then we flash red for 2.5s. This game could be taken a lot further if you wanted too – making it get faster after each correct guess, adding in a penalty if you miss a pair etc.

Next up we have a slightly simpler project to the previous two – morse code. Using a Sparkle, it is possible to flash an array of messages, using morse code. This one is fairly self-explanatory, and using a variety of wait statements and repeat loops, it is easily achieved.

This is the less efficient way of making this program, but it works nonetheless! Put simply, we have flashed our Sparkle based on something in Morse Code. This is achieved by using the wait statements, to correctly display a dot, dash, the gap between letters and the gap between words. If you want another starter kit, ‘code’ based Sparkle project, check out our Lighthouse.

Finally, we have another ‘maker’ based project, using the starter kit box (or other). By colouring the box in black, and poking some carefully placed holes, we can easily make a ‘constellation’. We can then add some realistic twinkling, by randomly choosing shades of bluey-yellowy-white. Although simple to make, it is a nice programming exercise using repeat loops and variables.

Our last code segment is actually quite simple. By defining the range of various random number blocks, and placing them in the RGB sections of the Sparkle variables, we can define a random set of colours. Then, by waiting a random amount of time for changing them, we can get a realistic twinkling effect!

We often get asked questions about how to use the line follower with the Crumble, so we thought that we’d provide some updated examples on how to use it.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, the ‘Crumble Line Follower Widget‘ is a small board with two infra-red sensors in. Their resistance changes depending on the colour/ amount of light they sense. This means we can use the analogue values on the Crumble, along with some motors, to make a buggy follow a line!

There are many different ways to program a line-following buggy, and we are going to have a look at these. It is worth noting before we go any further, that there are many factors that can influence how successful your line-following adventure will be. Everything from how white your surface is, how reflective it is (for infra-red), how close the line follower is to the surface, to how charged your batteries are.

First of all, we need to wire up our Crumble and line follower. If you look at the back of your buggy, the right motor needs to connect to the motor two pads (red + and black -). The left motor connects to the motor 1 pads, but because the motor is flipped we need to reverse the wiring so that the ‘forwards’ block still makes the motor move forwards. So we will connect the black to + and the red to – . The line follower then needs connecting. The power (+ and -) connects to the corresponding pads on the Crumble or battery box and then the ‘left’ and ‘right’ pads need connecting to two of the I/O pads e.g. A and B.

note: This may be different depending on your motor configuration/set up. If you are in doubt have a play and find out!

Method One: The Simple One

We will first look at the shortest and simplest way of getting the line follower to work. This method links the analogue values with the corresponding motor speeds.

There are occasions when this technique doesn’t work so well – it will depend on the materials you are using and how tight the ‘track’ you are following is!

Method Two: Treating Them Digitally

The next method treats the inputs digitally – so that the readings are either HI or LO. If the left or right are reading low, we only want the opposite motor running. Or when a side is on white, we want that motor to keep running.

Method Three: Analogue Alternative

When the digital method doesn’t work correctly, whether it is the surfaces you are using, or the height of the line follower from the floor, we can use analogue values instead, to achieve exactly the same effect.

Method Four: Comparing Left & Right

The other methods we are going to look at rely on comparing the left and right values to one another. This one works as follows: If the left analogue value is less than the right one,  gradually turn left- else gradually turn right. The motor speeds can be adjusted depending on the complexity of your course.

Method Five: Joseph’s Brainchild

The other comparison method we are going to look at is the brain-child of Joseph, the Crumble’s creator. It involves finding the difference between the left and right values, and then adding/subtracting from the relevant motors.