(Another box checked on the ACES Project fantasy list) To support a rich ACES' introduction to Serial Communication a recreational Arduino UNO activity has been developed based loosely on the 1970s Mastermind board game (right) that include hardware and software assets.

A unique feature of the SerialMastermind UNO PCB are milled out slots for the pair of Fusion360-designed, Prusa-printed hoods (below, right) developed by J. Dolgin (ACES '20) that shields each player's secret LED Code from view.

The UNO PCB Appliance is designed to bind two Arduino UNOs and exploits both its hardware UART and SoftwareSerial UART library to achieve an interactive two-way experience. A custom SerialMastermind class was developed to handle the exchanges, the analysis, the scoring, the responses, and the winner declaration.

RSGC ACES Library: SerialMastermind

As the images below suggest, this is a two-player Arduino UNO game in which users attempt to guess their opponent's secret code, depicted on RGB LEDs, through deduction.

For example, if your opponent's code is RBR and your first guess in RGB, you will receive a response code of 11, meaning you got 1 colour in its correct position and 1 colour that was not. On your second guess you submit RBB for which the response code remains 20, confirming that 2 colours are correct. If your third obvious guess is, RBR, the response is 30, you are declared a winner and the code will turn on your Winner LED to inform the audience of your superiority :)

Click the images below to enlarge...

Populated (Hoodless) PCB	Hooded ACES' Serial Mastermind as UNO Appliance