The Simon game was introduced in 1978 and been very popular ever since. Personally, I’m not very good at memory games, so I’ve decided to create a machine to help me. I’ve wanted to build such a machine for a long time, but as I’m not a mechanical designer, I could not find a practical solution that would hold everything I needed in place.
![](https://idoroseman.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IMG_2319-1024x768.png)
Lately I’ve got some inspiration from 3d wood puzzles, and RC airplane flight control surfaces using servo motors, and I finally had a basic idea of how It should look like.
At first, I draw by hand and cut some cardboard pieces, so I can work on the basic structure and finalize the dimensions. When I was happy enough with the results, I sketched everything on fusion 360, and created DXF files.
![](https://idoroseman.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IMG_2304-1024x768.png)
My favorite wood shop gave me some 6mm scrap plywood for free, and I headed to a local maker-lab to cut it with a laser cutter.
![](https://idoroseman.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/laser-1024x576.png)
Now that I had all the components, I started to build the robot. My design was not complete yet, so I had to do a lot of trial and error till I got the servo wires at the correct length and had to drill some extra holes so that the arms moved to the correct place.
![](https://idoroseman.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Untitled-3-1024x550.png)
Next, I used hot glue to mount some light sensitive resistors that would act as the eyes of the machine. I soldered everything and connected all the wires to an Arduino board using a shield breadboard I had from an old project.
![](https://idoroseman.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IMG_2318-1024x751.png)
At this stage everything was in place and I’ve started testing the software that senses the lights and triggers the motors to press the Simon keys at the correct sequence. I had to fix some wiring mix ups, find a better cable management solution and debug some software issues, but in the end – it works!
The design is still far from perfect, but if you’re interested, here are the source files
EDIT: this article was featured on hackaday.com and hackster.io