Blast ‘Em Bop-It
Fall 2023
Microcontroller-based Bop-It project developed for Junior Design
The Design
Handheld Laser Blaster Bop-It Toy with actions of blasting with a trigger, priming with a top slide primer, and reloading with detachable clips.
The design is self-contained unit powered by a 3.7V Li-Po battery, and has an OLED Menu Screen with a joystick controller, TinyPICO ESP32 with a USB-C port for communication and battery charging, a reset button, neopixels, speaker/mp3 player, IR emitter, and laser pointer.
Accessories include a Target that communicates with the blaster using an IR Receiver and Bluetooth, the detachable clips with the belt and holster that the clips fit into.
System Diagram
Functional Diagram
State Machine
Structural Diagram
Electromechanical Integration
My role within the team was to determine the physical system’s connection to the digital system. In other words, I was responsible for turning the user’s actions into usable input signals for our digital control system. This involved the following:
Enclosure design from scratch
IR Emitter integration and aiming
Laser pointer wiring and aiming
Mounting of the display, speaker, and LEDs
Battery selection
Design of a custom ADC-based electrical ID system for our clips
Everything buttons, switches, and sensors
See the images below for the process of designing and building the blaster.
First sketch
Test 3D Prints
Final 3D model
IR emitter and laser pointer integration
Target design
Early assembly: Mounting of main control board
Early assembly - neopixel installation
Early assembly - custom clip ID system
Nearly assembled
Complete blaster
Complete target
Complete belt with clips
Happy Engineer
Happy Engineer Pt. 2 (Ft. Ben)
Key Takeaways
Component PCB footprint design using Altium Designer
Battery Selection
Tolerances
Software/Hardware/Mechanical Integration
Team Members: Benjamin Esquieres, Tyler Hansen, and Kushal Parekh