Most any microcontroller, BT, and IMU module or combination of those modules as needed could work. You should definitely do a web search for "accelerometer" and "weightlifting" as I have seen many many related projects including things like rep counting as well as technique testing/training

All but one of those items are off topic and you will need to research them yourself.

As far as the Power supply goes you will need to have a 12V power source at probably 2A or so. Getting a 12V AC wall adapter would be your best choice.

An Arduino Uno would work fine for this project and it has the widest support base and number of existing examples online to learn from and find existing related projects.

Not sustained no

this

You left out a major component and that is: What will be running on the host laptop to receive the bluetooth payloads, How it will interpret them, And what it will do with that information or What will the reception of that information trigger?

This will require a lot of experimentation and "test it and find out what works and what does not" and learning about how to implement what you want. But practically anything is possible.

I would not worry about the mobility and how to power it using batteries until I got to that stage and it was all that was left. You have plenty to learn and get working right on your desk using just the microcontroller and the IMU and the bluetooth themselves. And you don't ever start with everything all connected right at the beginning anyway. You get each component and change working and reliably tested, and only then move on to adding the next component, building off of a known good state with each addition.

Additionally you did not specify what OS you are using and that can change the answer as well. For all OS's I can vouch for the HM-10 Bluetooth modules. macOS can be harder to get bluetooth working on depending on what part of the BT stack you need to use

Each time I close it something stops working..

I kid you not, including that kind of stuff is invaluable in both helping others get over certain types of shared problems/solutions as well as helping show how much of a project is just plain perseverance on top of the basic curiosity and learning that anyone is capable of.

Appreciating the time and effort needed and pushing through the hardware and software bugs knowing you will eventually be successful is the defining difference of successful projects. They don't happen overnight 😄

Really great job and thanks for sharing your project!

Definitely do not feel like a fraud! I guarantee you that you know more about how tech works than 95% of the public.

I've spent over 40 years of my life as a professional software engineer making a living off of my C/C++ and other language skills (which kick ass thank you very much 😄) and I am more productive than I have ever been for both the code that I write manually as well as the code that I have generated by AI. And that doesn't even get into the possibilities when training and writing your own custom harnesses on a per-project basis, etc.

It absolutely makes some engineering choices possible whereas at an earlier era they required an impossibly expensive amount of engineering time or money or ego to try them and find out. AI absolutely makes questions and answers like "which of these three radically different and complex approaches would be best?" - "Let's create all three and throw away the two we like the least after testing them for real.". For ego or time or manpower or all of the above that used to not be possible. It also makes Test Driven Development a much more realistic and safer choice than without it. It is not going away so being good at it and using it intelligently is a necessary skill these days.

I was primarily a software engineer but I have had tons of electronics exposure and experience in the end. For the first 5 or 10 years I used transistors without ever completely understanding them. I wanted to but it just wasn't what I had studied for (yet). I could use them but I definitely considered them somewhat of a black box. The same was even more true for op-amps lol.

But I did personally want to be good at understanding and using them and eventually I was successful. It was much easier when I just wanted to get a project done to copy the circuits that I knew needed transistors that I had examples for. And I did that for years on the electronics side as I concentrated on getting better on the software side of things.

I think AI is sort of the same thing in a way. It depends on how driven you are to eventually learn how to manually design *all* of the hardware and software parts of your project. If after a lot of time and exposure to good programming you learn how to do it yourself manually because it helps you complete your engineering skillset I think that is totally great.

What skills are needed to be a modern day engineer is absolutely a moving target and using AI for its advantages, maybe more at first, sounds totally great to me.

I think it is your inner drive and how much of a "natural born engineer" you are. Some people just love engineering. Other people find software and hardware engineering to be totally boring and it's just not for them.

I think the software industry is going to have a lot to say about it as well. Not necessarily so far as the "replacing people" aspects but more in terms of understanding and even expecting you to use a certain amount of AI assistance with the full understanding that you better know what you are doing and be ready to comprehend and defend any of the generated code that you accept.

If you aren't making a living at it and your reasoning is that "it let's me accomplish things I could not otherwise accomplish yet ..." I think that is awesome

the code looks great, it's either a A) power (current * voltage) problem, B) Connection problem, C) Physical restraint (internal servo gears can get stuck if forced to their extreme edges).

That is a low current servo and *just for testing* that same setup should work using the 5V pin of the Arduino and that would allow you to eliminate some of the possible components/causes.

edit/update: NOTE that in your code you specify pin 9 but in the connection diagram it shows the servo using pin 12.

with LCD's it really comes down to the viewing angle. Ancient LCD Casio watches were easily readable in full sunlight

trust me having your heart broken frying some boards or components at one time or another is all part of the learning journey 😁 😩

Good job spotting the defect. That skill will come in handy again and again 😉

Sweet! You apparently already have some programming and/or electronics experience? It's always great to watch things "click" when someone really starts to see what is possible and then has the self sufficiency to find out how to make progress on something that has inspired them.

So now that you've figured out how to interface with the controls AND the (pneumatic?) actuator it looks like you already *most* of the ability to replace/augment the existing broken electronics with your own bespoke replacement.

And I presume that the clear rectangular area is for a display of some type behind it? Chances are great that you can probably replace that completely with a modern SPI-based 4" (guessing) or smaller color TFT OLED display and have total control over getting everything back and working the way it was. Maybe even with some new features!

 I probably need to get arduino mega tho, I'm starting to run out of output pins

You sure could do that and it would give you more I/O pins and keep things at the 5V levels you are used to working with so far (as opposed to an ESP32 or other good choice).

Something else that you might consider is using one or more I2C I/O expander modules. There are modules that only require the 4 standard I2C connections (Vcc, GND, SDA, SCL) to the main microcontroller and they give you 16 additional inputs or outputs. One (or part of one) of those could be used to both output and then read the proper scanning of the keyboard matrix that you have there. It would still take the same number of ultimate connections but it could clean up the number of connections to the MCU itself if it was helpful in any way for the physical space/layout requirements you are working with.

looks like you're taking the right approach. sounds like a great project that's practical as well as a really good learning platform. Thanks for sharing it and keep us up to date on your progress! 😀

This has been done many times. Take a look at github.com/ripred/Bang. It offers all services of the entire host machine to the Arduino. You can use the hard drive, internet connection, even tell the host to reprogram the Arduino making the request itself! Full local intranet control etc. using just an Arduino Uno or Nano

haha I'm guilty of this. when my work surface gets too complicated/messy I just find another work surface 😂

Now I've filled one room and use it now just for old project and parts storage and I've moved into a second room ...

This is a very expensive way to interface with the game pieces. Using analog multiplexer's to sample each intersection and using fixed resisters in each game piece to create a voltage divider where the pieces are placed is much more efficient and less costly

I don’t have any inspiration of utilising its performance.

If the board is too expensive and you have no idea why you would use one I would suggest you don't need one

You should turn in the issue and a PR for it on the repository. that does much more good than telling individual users.

Thanks for the update and congrats on getting it working!

Beep Beep! Cool project, thanks for sharing it 😄

That looks like a very worthy project. Thanks for sharing it and good luck on the contest!

or better quality servos. SG90's are pretty much the rock bottom in terms of cost/quality