Taking Your Ideas to the Next Level: A Guide to Building a Prototype

We've all been there - we have an idea, and we're excited to bring it to life. But, as it turns out, just getting it off the ground is often the hardest part. In this article, we'll take a look at our own experience with building a prototype, and how we were able to overcome some of the challenges that came our way.

Our project involved creating a simple ping pong game using an ESP board and some basic components. We started by gathering all of our materials and getting everything in place on our table. However, as it turned out, having two connections to our board instead of one meant we had to add extra wiring and make concessions for that. But, breaking it down into two pieces made it a lot more flexible of a product, so we were able to move forward with the project.

We had all of our components made and some VHB tape to temporarily or semi-permanently attach them to the table. We decided to test all of the connections before actually gluing the box up, which is a great idea in general. We used black tape electrical tape around this box to hold it together because we wanted to test all the connections and make sure everything was good before we actually glued the box up.

Another option for our project was to buy a pre-made project box. These boxes are solid except for one side that has four screws, so you can open it up. They're thin plastic, which makes them easy to mill and drill into as needed. There are tons of different sizes available, so we could have chosen to buy one instead of making our own box.

When it came to predicting the success of our project, we estimated that 75% of it would work out correctly. However, when we started testing, we quickly discovered that there was a component that wouldn't be working as planned. We soon realized that the female header pins on the ESP board weren't lined up correctly and were not seating all the way in there.

It turned out that one end of our system wasn't connected, which meant that it had power but no buttons or LEDs. We adjusted the code to fit this new configuration, and now everything is working as planned. The only issue we encountered was a problem with one of the pins on the ESP module, which we were able to fix by moving to a different pin.

The Game is Afoot: Bringing Our Ping Pong Prototype to Life

Once we had all of our components worked out, we decided it was time to start building the actual game. We used an ESP board and some basic components to create a simple ping pong setup. However, as it turned out, we needed to make some changes to the code because we changed the LED layout.

We adjusted the game so that it now has 11 points instead of 21, following the international ping pong rules. We added in different messages to indicate when the player is currently in the ping phase and when they become the server. This added an extra layer of complexity to the project, but we were excited to see how it would all come together.

The Final Product: What's Next?

Although our prototype isn't a final product just yet, we're happy with where we've gotten so far. We had to overcome some challenges along the way, but they ended up making the project more refined and flexible in the end.

We learned that taking an idea from concept to reality requires patience, perseverance, and a willingness to adapt. It's not always easy, but it's often worth it in the end. If you're working on your own project and need some encouragement or inspiration, we hope this article has provided some of that for you.

So, what can you take away from our experience? First and foremost, don't be afraid to try new things and experiment with different components. It's okay if they don't work at first - just keep trying until you get it right. Also, be sure to test all of your connections before assembling the final product, as this will save you a lot of time and frustration in the long run.

Finally, consider reaching out to others for help or advice. We got some great feedback from our viewers on this video, which helped us to refine our project even further. Don't be afraid to ask for help - it's often the best way to get things done.

That's all for today, folks! If you'd like to see more projects like this one, be sure to check out our channel and sign up for our newsletter at iliketomakestuff.com. We've got tons of other types of projects in the works, so stay tuned for more updates.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey i'm bob and i like to make stuff today we're going to take a good idea and make it better a couple of years ago we made a full ping pong table with lots of really cool stuff in it one of the things in that table was a scoring system and we made it custom for that table made it so that as you scored a point you could tap a button and then it would record that score down the center of the table underneath the net and some leds it still works but it's at my house and so now we're here at the office and we have a store-bought table and we'd love to have a scoring system here as well so today we're going to do something a little bit different we're actually going to kind of remake an old project we're going to take the scoring system from the old table and make it a separate piece that can be added to any table but this is not just about doing something twice this is about taking an idea that was built for one place and turning it into an idea that is more general and can be used in lots of other places the end goal here is for us to refine a good idea into something that could potentially be a product the first thing we need to do here is to get you and i on the same page about what we're trying to accomplish the old system was thrown together just kind of off the cuff but basically it had all the elements that we still need to use we've got a button in front of each player so that they can hit that button anytime that they score those are connected to a central arduino that's keeping track of the score and controlling the leds the leds are a strip that run underneath the net and then those become an indicator of the current score and animate when somebody wins so the things that we're trying to actually improve in this video are those three things the buttons and how they're housed the arduino system and how it's housed and the leds we want all three of those components to be able to be added to any table without being permanently attached so the first thing we did is have a meeting it would be dumb to just go into building a product without actually talking about how you could make it better so we sat down as a team and talked about the existing system and figured out how we could make it easier to produce and make it fit in a lot of different situations the first thing we did was talk about the usability we wanted to make sure that the existing button structure and placement made the most sense to add to somebody else's table and after that we talked about whether we wanted this thing to be a kit or to be completely produced and assembled here in-house before we ship it out there's a lot of different things that go into making something into a kit you have to plan for somebody to have everything they need to put it together versus just getting a box with everything pre-assembled and you can just put it on the table and you're ready to go on top of that we wanted to make sure that all the different components could be universally attached to any table without driving in screws and ruining the surface that you're working on so we spent a lot of time talking about all those things and now we're going to start by going through each one of the components individually and make a new version of it that's a lot better first let's talk about the buttons on the original table we used a really large arcade button and we did that so that we could kick it with our foot but that means that it had to be mounted inside the table the table is made of plywood so that worked fine but we want to make something more general that doesn't require drilling a hole into the table frame as a replacement we found a much smaller arcade button it's a totally different style it's a press fit and that's great because we can put it in just about anything that we want so we're going to use the laser cutter and some acrylic to make a really tiny box that's fit exactly to this button that we can hide underneath the table now this was an extremely simple enclosure to make and we did make it so that the button could just be press fit in it locks into place and from this side you still have access to the button the wire is going to come in this tiny hole right here we'll tie a knot so it won't get pulled out and we want to keep access to this in case there's ever a problem with one of the connections we want to be able to get to it so we've made one side of this just press fit this is going to fit into place and will stay there unless you actively take it off this box is complete and can just be mounted underneath the table and to do that we're going to use vhb tape so vhb tape is a semi-permanent tape it's great for fixing something in place and it will pretty much stay on any surface until you actively take it off this is a great material because it's not permanent but it's kind of problematic because if you're going to need small pieces of it like in this case you're either going to have to make those or order them from somebody who can cut them down we bought it in a roll and it's sticky on one side so we can do a few different things we had a conversation as a team and talked about several different ways to handle the tape one of them would be to lay this down on some wax paper cut it into individual pieces another would be to order them cut already into the right lengths and an even simpler one would just be to cut it and stick it to the box before it goes into the package so for each one of these components not only are there big things like hardware and code but you also have to think about packaging and fixture all of these elements are going to have stuff that you have to spend time thinking about next up we need to talk about the brain this is probably the biggest most important part of this project and originally i threw it together with what i had on hand which was an arduino uno those are great for prototyping they have lots of different i o it's easy to plug things into them they're easy to get to but they are not cheap each one of those is about 25 or 30 dollars because they're made for prototyping they're not made to go into a product instead we're going to use one of these this is an esp module it has all the same functionality as the arduino in fact it uses the exact same code and this one has wi-fi built onto it the best thing about this is that you can get these for a dollar or two a piece depending on how many you buy so this is a great option even if you want to embed these in something that you're gonna sell so because we're using this module this is the form factor we have to work around we have to make a container to hold this and all of the connections that are gonna be going into this now the original box just had some holes where you could stick in some wires and hot glue them in place it didn't need to be professional it didn't need to be polished but in this case we're going to make all of the connections all of the wires that come into this nice looking easy to plug in and secure so next up we need to make a box to hold this and all of those connections josh started working on a design for this box and he ended up prototyping it by 3d printing it's a great way to test out different designs use very little material very little time and you can get all the fit and finish you need on a piece before making the final result so the way that he worked this out was to make a plate that would hold the module that would then close into a box and that box had a place for a switch to go in had different connectors for the players and for power and so we figured all the stuff out on this prototype but then eventually decided to make it out of acrylic just like the other boxes so we made the next iteration of the case and we made this acrylic case to match these connectors because this is what i thought we were going to use but after thinking about it some more and thinking about the number of these that we would need it's just not a good fit so we went looking for a different type of connector and then had to design the new box around that and this is where we ended up this simplifies the amount of connectors on the outside so now we have these five pin connectors that fit in the box we have a power and then a power switch and that's all we have on this nice new finished box now you can tell that this is still a prototype it is taped together because we've got to figure out all the wiring but if you look on the inside there's a lot less to deal with in here when you're picking connectors like this for your project you have to think about several different things how many of them can you get how expensive are they how hard are they to wire up if you're going to be doing it yourself otherwise if you're going to be farming this out to a manufacturer somewhere you have to think about what they have available and how much it's going to cost to have those things wired up at that location in our case we're just trying to get stuff that we can assemble right here in-house for now and then if this scales up to a point to where we need to have somebody else do it we'll figure that out later we've got all of our components ready to solder together to make the brain box complete but i wanted to point something out we don't want to solder directly to our esp module so we're going to make a little board out of some perf board we're gonna make some sockets with the headers down the side that we can just plug this into that way it's not permanently attached and then this board can also have all the power and the data connections on it going to the right places we can figure all that out here and then just pop our board into place now eventually if we wanted to scale this up and have it produced by somebody else we could use this board as a prototype for making a specific circuit board which is actually really inexpensive to do that would work for this project so first up we're going to design this thing and then get it all wired up this video is sponsored by micro center which is awesome because everything that we're using electronics wise in this project you can get at your local micro center they've got an entire section of arduinos and sensors and raspberry pi's on top of that they've got camera gear and 3d printers in fact they've got a bunch of different types of 3d printers and filament in store and you can see how they work and you can talk to their knowledgeable staff to help you pick the right one for you you can buy all those things in store but they've also got an amazon store where you can order filament from them and have it delivered right to your house and on top of that they've got an awesome community of like-minded makers where you can go on and ask questions about projects get some tips and tricks and just meet some other people like you and if you're into 3d printing we've got an awesome deal for you there's a coupon link down in the description that you can have texted to your phone you take it in store and you can get a creality ender 3 pro for 99 bucks it's a fantastic deal be sure to take advantage of it big thanks to micro center for sponsoring this video we've got all the wiring done so we've got a bunch of individual pieces to connect all of our components now the reason we did this is so that we could start to understand and decide the types of connectors that we need at each end how long the wires need to be how thick a gauge wire we need and now that i've got this piece done i can take this to a supplier or manufacturer so they know exactly what i need and they may already have something that does what we need or they'll have all the specifications to make them for us another thing about this is that the actual connections and the soldering took us a lot of time because we don't have a great process for it manufacturers already have processes and people set up to do this stuff very quickly and very well therefore a lot cheaper than we could do it here in house so again the point of all of this stuff is to get kind of a final prototype to get all the connections all the requirements that we need for this product so that we can take it somewhere else to actually have it produced now we've got one more component we need to work on and it's a lot simpler and that's the led strip that goes underneath the net on the original project we embedded some leds underneath the net now to do that we had to build the table and build in a channel for those to sit down in and have a diffusion layer on top of them obviously that's not going to work on any other table except for the one that we custom made so instead we've got to come up with another solution to hold these and make sure that they can still fit underneath the net but on top of the table instead of inside of it so recently we used some led channel on our gaming table we used it in the corner but this stuff is basically the same thing it's a little aluminum channel with a diffusion layer on top that you can slide some leds inside now this comes in lengths of one meter or two meter that's not really what we needed but luckily because it's aluminum and plastic we can cut it down with pretty much any woodworking tool another consideration for the leds on the original table we had one strip of leds that went from side to side but we want to make sure that this set can work on pretty much any table and it doesn't really need to go all the way across so we're breaking it up into two individual led strips that will come in from the outside of the table that way if you're using it on ping pong table it works if you're using it on your dining room table it will work and because of that we have two connections to our board instead of one so we've had to add extra wiring and make concessions for that but this just breaking it down into two pieces makes it a lot more flexible of a product so we've got all of our components made and some vhb tape so that we can temporarily or semi-permanently attach them to the table so we're going to go ahead and get everything in place get it all hooked up and start testing we've got some black tape electrical tape around this box to hold it together because we want to test all the connections and make sure everything's good before we actually glue the box up i did want to mention another thing about these boxes we're making a box but another option for this is to buy a project box you can buy a plastic project box which is a solid box except for one side that has four screws so that you can open it up but it's thin plastic so that you can mill it you can drill holes in it and do whatever you need to make it fit your project that's a great option and there's tons of different sizes out there all right so what percentage of success do you give this uh 75 success i think there will be one component that doesn't work like it should and i didn't actually do the math to see if there were four components but so we have uh one side that doesn't seem to be working correctly which means it's probably this connector because both the button and the leds of each side go into one of these so there's probably a loose wire inside here but we're about to find out yep yep those cold solder joints just popped off was it the blue one blue and yellow yep so there's your problem yep what's going on here all right so i think the problem is that the female header pins i use to mount this esp board are not actually like lined up correctly and they're not so i have a feeling when i squish these two things together it will power up all right yep so it's just a matter of these pins right here not seating all the way in there which means that our system probably worked fine to begin with but either one end of it was not connected or the other end was not connected one end has the power the other one has all the buttons and the leds believe i have all the wiring figured out turned out one of the pins on the esp module is just not usable i don't know if i fried it or what but moving to a different pin now has all the buttons and all the leds working so now i'm adjusting the code because since we changed the led layout we had to change the way the code works and i'm just adjusting the game to go from 21 points to 11 points we're making some changes like that following the international ping pong rules and i think now it's ready to go so green means that you are currently in the ping phase and once you win the ping you become the server like that and then once you get your first point goes right there and then every time you get a point it just adds to it until you get to 11 then you win we've got all these different components worked out and obviously it's still not a final product but i think it's a lot more refined of a prototype than what we started with the initial one just was hot glue and wires and a simple box with some tape and it totally worked but now we have all the different components figured out to where we could take each one of them and source the materials to make ourselves or get them manufactured by somebody else the point of this video is not to sell this product at all the point of this video is to give you some encouragement about taking your ideas to the next level taking them past that prototype stage and building them into something that you could actually put out into the world for other people to enjoy and if this video gave you some of that inspiration or ideas we would love to hear about it down in the comments please let us know down there this video is a little bit different for us but we've got tons of other types of projects that you may want to check out so be sure to watch those also if you'd like to find out about some of the products that we do have coming up soon head over to iliketomakestuff.com and sign up for the newsletter that's it for this one thanks for watching we'll see you next time hey i'm bob and i like to make stuff today we're going to take a good idea and make it better can't say boop hello it's like a little dancing man actually in the leg so that you could kick the butt you can't see my foot there's no sense of me doing that now i can like that gosh goshhey i'm bob and i like to make stuff today we're going to take a good idea and make it better a couple of years ago we made a full ping pong table with lots of really cool stuff in it one of the things in that table was a scoring system and we made it custom for that table made it so that as you scored a point you could tap a button and then it would record that score down the center of the table underneath the net and some leds it still works but it's at my house and so now we're here at the office and we have a store-bought table and we'd love to have a scoring system here as well so today we're going to do something a little bit different we're actually going to kind of remake an old project we're going to take the scoring system from the old table and make it a separate piece that can be added to any table but this is not just about doing something twice this is about taking an idea that was built for one place and turning it into an idea that is more general and can be used in lots of other places the end goal here is for us to refine a good idea into something that could potentially be a product the first thing we need to do here is to get you and i on the same page about what we're trying to accomplish the old system was thrown together just kind of off the cuff but basically it had all the elements that we still need to use we've got a button in front of each player so that they can hit that button anytime that they score those are connected to a central arduino that's keeping track of the score and controlling the leds the leds are a strip that run underneath the net and then those become an indicator of the current score and animate when somebody wins so the things that we're trying to actually improve in this video are those three things the buttons and how they're housed the arduino system and how it's housed and the leds we want all three of those components to be able to be added to any table without being permanently attached so the first thing we did is have a meeting it would be dumb to just go into building a product without actually talking about how you could make it better so we sat down as a team and talked about the existing system and figured out how we could make it easier to produce and make it fit in a lot of different situations the first thing we did was talk about the usability we wanted to make sure that the existing button structure and placement made the most sense to add to somebody else's table and after that we talked about whether we wanted this thing to be a kit or to be completely produced and assembled here in-house before we ship it out there's a lot of different things that go into making something into a kit you have to plan for somebody to have everything they need to put it together versus just getting a box with everything pre-assembled and you can just put it on the table and you're ready to go on top of that we wanted to make sure that all the different components could be universally attached to any table without driving in screws and ruining the surface that you're working on so we spent a lot of time talking about all those things and now we're going to start by going through each one of the components individually and make a new version of it that's a lot better first let's talk about the buttons on the original table we used a really large arcade button and we did that so that we could kick it with our foot but that means that it had to be mounted inside the table the table is made of plywood so that worked fine but we want to make something more general that doesn't require drilling a hole into the table frame as a replacement we found a much smaller arcade button it's a totally different style it's a press fit and that's great because we can put it in just about anything that we want so we're going to use the laser cutter and some acrylic to make a really tiny box that's fit exactly to this button that we can hide underneath the table now this was an extremely simple enclosure to make and we did make it so that the button could just be press fit in it locks into place and from this side you still have access to the button the wire is going to come in this tiny hole right here we'll tie a knot so it won't get pulled out and we want to keep access to this in case there's ever a problem with one of the connections we want to be able to get to it so we've made one side of this just press fit this is going to fit into place and will stay there unless you actively take it off this box is complete and can just be mounted underneath the table and to do that we're going to use vhb tape so vhb tape is a semi-permanent tape it's great for fixing something in place and it will pretty much stay on any surface until you actively take it off this is a great material because it's not permanent but it's kind of problematic because if you're going to need small pieces of it like in this case you're either going to have to make those or order them from somebody who can cut them down we bought it in a roll and it's sticky on one side so we can do a few different things we had a conversation as a team and talked about several different ways to handle the tape one of them would be to lay this down on some wax paper cut it into individual pieces another would be to order them cut already into the right lengths and an even simpler one would just be to cut it and stick it to the box before it goes into the package so for each one of these components not only are there big things like hardware and code but you also have to think about packaging and fixture all of these elements are going to have stuff that you have to spend time thinking about next up we need to talk about the brain this is probably the biggest most important part of this project and originally i threw it together with what i had on hand which was an arduino uno those are great for prototyping they have lots of different i o it's easy to plug things into them they're easy to get to but they are not cheap each one of those is about 25 or 30 dollars because they're made for prototyping they're not made to go into a product instead we're going to use one of these this is an esp module it has all the same functionality as the arduino in fact it uses the exact same code and this one has wi-fi built onto it the best thing about this is that you can get these for a dollar or two a piece depending on how many you buy so this is a great option even if you want to embed these in something that you're gonna sell so because we're using this module this is the form factor we have to work around we have to make a container to hold this and all of the connections that are gonna be going into this now the original box just had some holes where you could stick in some wires and hot glue them in place it didn't need to be professional it didn't need to be polished but in this case we're going to make all of the connections all of the wires that come into this nice looking easy to plug in and secure so next up we need to make a box to hold this and all of those connections josh started working on a design for this box and he ended up prototyping it by 3d printing it's a great way to test out different designs use very little material very little time and you can get all the fit and finish you need on a piece before making the final result so the way that he worked this out was to make a plate that would hold the module that would then close into a box and that box had a place for a switch to go in had different connectors for the players and for power and so we figured all the stuff out on this prototype but then eventually decided to make it out of acrylic just like the other boxes so we made the next iteration of the case and we made this acrylic case to match these connectors because this is what i thought we were going to use but after thinking about it some more and thinking about the number of these that we would need it's just not a good fit so we went looking for a different type of connector and then had to design the new box around that and this is where we ended up this simplifies the amount of connectors on the outside so now we have these five pin connectors that fit in the box we have a power and then a power switch and that's all we have on this nice new finished box now you can tell that this is still a prototype it is taped together because we've got to figure out all the wiring but if you look on the inside there's a lot less to deal with in here when you're picking connectors like this for your project you have to think about several different things how many of them can you get how expensive are they how hard are they to wire up if you're going to be doing it yourself otherwise if you're going to be farming this out to a manufacturer somewhere you have to think about what they have available and how much it's going to cost to have those things wired up at that location in our case we're just trying to get stuff that we can assemble right here in-house for now and then if this scales up to a point to where we need to have somebody else do it we'll figure that out later we've got all of our components ready to solder together to make the brain box complete but i wanted to point something out we don't want to solder directly to our esp module so we're going to make a little board out of some perf board we're gonna make some sockets with the headers down the side that we can just plug this into that way it's not permanently attached and then this board can also have all the power and the data connections on it going to the right places we can figure all that out here and then just pop our board into place now eventually if we wanted to scale this up and have it produced by somebody else we could use this board as a prototype for making a specific circuit board which is actually really inexpensive to do that would work for this project so first up we're going to design this thing and then get it all wired up this video is sponsored by micro center which is awesome because everything that we're using electronics wise in this project you can get at your local micro center they've got an entire section of arduinos and sensors and raspberry pi's on top of that they've got camera gear and 3d printers in fact they've got a bunch of different types of 3d printers and filament in store and you can see how they work and you can talk to their knowledgeable staff to help you pick the right one for you you can buy all those things in store but they've also got an amazon store where you can order filament from them and have it delivered right to your house and on top of that they've got an awesome community of like-minded makers where you can go on and ask questions about projects get some tips and tricks and just meet some other people like you and if you're into 3d printing we've got an awesome deal for you there's a coupon link down in the description that you can have texted to your phone you take it in store and you can get a creality ender 3 pro for 99 bucks it's a fantastic deal be sure to take advantage of it big thanks to micro center for sponsoring this video we've got all the wiring done so we've got a bunch of individual pieces to connect all of our components now the reason we did this is so that we could start to understand and decide the types of connectors that we need at each end how long the wires need to be how thick a gauge wire we need and now that i've got this piece done i can take this to a supplier or manufacturer so they know exactly what i need and they may already have something that does what we need or they'll have all the specifications to make them for us another thing about this is that the actual connections and the soldering took us a lot of time because we don't have a great process for it manufacturers already have processes and people set up to do this stuff very quickly and very well therefore a lot cheaper than we could do it here in house so again the point of all of this stuff is to get kind of a final prototype to get all the connections all the requirements that we need for this product so that we can take it somewhere else to actually have it produced now we've got one more component we need to work on and it's a lot simpler and that's the led strip that goes underneath the net on the original project we embedded some leds underneath the net now to do that we had to build the table and build in a channel for those to sit down in and have a diffusion layer on top of them obviously that's not going to work on any other table except for the one that we custom made so instead we've got to come up with another solution to hold these and make sure that they can still fit underneath the net but on top of the table instead of inside of it so recently we used some led channel on our gaming table we used it in the corner but this stuff is basically the same thing it's a little aluminum channel with a diffusion layer on top that you can slide some leds inside now this comes in lengths of one meter or two meter that's not really what we needed but luckily because it's aluminum and plastic we can cut it down with pretty much any woodworking tool another consideration for the leds on the original table we had one strip of leds that went from side to side but we want to make sure that this set can work on pretty much any table and it doesn't really need to go all the way across so we're breaking it up into two individual led strips that will come in from the outside of the table that way if you're using it on ping pong table it works if you're using it on your dining room table it will work and because of that we have two connections to our board instead of one so we've had to add extra wiring and make concessions for that but this just breaking it down into two pieces makes it a lot more flexible of a product so we've got all of our components made and some vhb tape so that we can temporarily or semi-permanently attach them to the table so we're going to go ahead and get everything in place get it all hooked up and start testing we've got some black tape electrical tape around this box to hold it together because we want to test all the connections and make sure everything's good before we actually glue the box up i did want to mention another thing about these boxes we're making a box but another option for this is to buy a project box you can buy a plastic project box which is a solid box except for one side that has four screws so that you can open it up but it's thin plastic so that you can mill it you can drill holes in it and do whatever you need to make it fit your project that's a great option and there's tons of different sizes out there all right so what percentage of success do you give this uh 75 success i think there will be one component that doesn't work like it should and i didn't actually do the math to see if there were four components but so we have uh one side that doesn't seem to be working correctly which means it's probably this connector because both the button and the leds of each side go into one of these so there's probably a loose wire inside here but we're about to find out yep yep those cold solder joints just popped off was it the blue one blue and yellow yep so there's your problem yep what's going on here all right so i think the problem is that the female header pins i use to mount this esp board are not actually like lined up correctly and they're not so i have a feeling when i squish these two things together it will power up all right yep so it's just a matter of these pins right here not seating all the way in there which means that our system probably worked fine to begin with but either one end of it was not connected or the other end was not connected one end has the power the other one has all the buttons and the leds believe i have all the wiring figured out turned out one of the pins on the esp module is just not usable i don't know if i fried it or what but moving to a different pin now has all the buttons and all the leds working so now i'm adjusting the code because since we changed the led layout we had to change the way the code works and i'm just adjusting the game to go from 21 points to 11 points we're making some changes like that following the international ping pong rules and i think now it's ready to go so green means that you are currently in the ping phase and once you win the ping you become the server like that and then once you get your first point goes right there and then every time you get a point it just adds to it until you get to 11 then you win we've got all these different components worked out and obviously it's still not a final product but i think it's a lot more refined of a prototype than what we started with the initial one just was hot glue and wires and a simple box with some tape and it totally worked but now we have all the different components figured out to where we could take each one of them and source the materials to make ourselves or get them manufactured by somebody else the point of this video is not to sell this product at all the point of this video is to give you some encouragement about taking your ideas to the next level taking them past that prototype stage and building them into something that you could actually put out into the world for other people to enjoy and if this video gave you some of that inspiration or ideas we would love to hear about it down in the comments please let us know down there this video is a little bit different for us but we've got tons of other types of projects that you may want to check out so be sure to watch those also if you'd like to find out about some of the products that we do have coming up soon head over to iliketomakestuff.com and sign up for the newsletter that's it for this one thanks for watching we'll see you next time hey i'm bob and i like to make stuff today we're going to take a good idea and make it better can't say boop hello it's like a little dancing man actually in the leg so that you could kick the butt you can't see my foot there's no sense of me doing that now i can like that gosh gosh\n"