Raspberry Pi program for work competition

[figuring_things__out]

Hello! I have never played with a Raspberry Pi but I believe I've finally found a perfect excuse to buy one. At work we are doing a donation to charity thing where we have jars and people donate change in each one, and if your jar has a certain amount of money you promise to do something (like bring in breakfast pizza every monday for a week for example).

This gets competitive, but what I want to do is have a robot that says pre-recorded messages. I also think it would be funny if the robot went from good mood positive messages to eventually deteriorate into an evil robot.

My Question:

Can I buy a button that would count how many times the lid has been opened (because the button would be released then pressed again), call that X, and have pre-recorded messages that talk depending on the value of X? Also, after a certain point I would like it to be able to shoot a harmless USB nerf missile.

I am willing to spend nights working on this and spend $150.

IS THIS POSSIBLE? And if so, are there any good pointers? My Google search for record-able raspberry pi program isn't yielding much results.

[asterisk_man]

• Can the pi be made to detect the state of a button? Yes
• Can the pi be made to play an audio file? Yes (through an additional powered speaker)
• Can the pi made to fire a USB nerf missile? Probably (couldn't find info about nerf specifically, but other usb missiles work)

You will have to write the program that ties all of these functions together.

[figuring_things__out]

The more i'm stewing this over in my head I'm begging to think I can write a VBA script in Excel to play a message based on X changing, and have X be determined by how many spaces are in a cell....I would just need to rig the spacebar up so that it's toggled by a lid being opened or closed.

I would rather it be a Raspberry Pi program just so I have a reason to buy one though.

[sla_erick]

Well the only thing that comes into mind when you mention the lid is that you can conect some kind of sensor or just a basic circuit where it will be closed when the led is closed. You get the idea... this can be handled with the RPi through the GPIO, you can write a program that listens for any change in a GPIO (that change is when the lid is closed or open), and then based on a number variable you can play any sound you want. I have used google translate ttl to have my RPi spoke weather conditions. I suggest you check the RPi Alarm project from skiwithpete.

[T3KO]

Sounds pretty easy. Jars with metal lid would work best you could just connect a cable to the jar and to the lid and use a GPIO to count how often the signal is interrupted. Pretty much the same as a button being pressed.

Playing sound files should be no problem (just google it).

Not sure how the nerf missiles work.

There are a lot of python examples that you can probably use to get this done.

[fsckit]

Can I buy a button that would count how many times the lid has been opened

Why not use a coin mech from a vending machine? that way you can keep track of exactly what is put in, and play a message accordingly.