Raspberry Games — Motion Game Console

A camera-based motion game console for a 4–6 year old, built for a Raspberry Pi 3B. The child moves in front of a camera and on-screen games react with colorful visuals and sound. No controller — the body is the controller.

How it works

A cheap single camera feeds frames to lightweight OpenCV motion detection (no MediaPipe — too slow on a Pi 3B). Instead of tracking exact body parts, we measure motion energy in zones of the frame and map that to game actions:

Zone signal	Game action
top	Jump
left / right	Punch left / right
total	Dance energy

This runs at ~20–30 FPS on a Pi 3B, so reactions feel instant.

Games

• Jump! — jump to make your character jump (first game / MVP)
• Punch it — punch left/right (planned)
• Dance Along — move to the music (planned)
• Simon Says — follow movement prompts (planned)

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi 3B
• Arducam Pi Camera Module v2 (8 MP IMX219, fixed focus, CSI ribbon) — or any USB webcam
• HDMI display/TV + audio out (HDMI or 3.5 mm speaker)
• 16 GB+ SD card

Setup

See docs/setup-pi.md for the from-scratch Raspberry Pi setup, docs/kiosk-autostart.md to boot straight into the game, and docs/design.md for how the code is structured.

Run

# Test the camera + motion detection standalone (shows live zone values + FPS)
python3 src/camera.py

# Play Jump!
python3 src/game_jump.py

Project layout

src/
  config.py      # tunables: resolution, zones, thresholds, debounce
  camera.py      # capture + motion-zone detection (threaded)
  game_jump.py   # Jump! game
  assets/        # images + sounds
docs/
  design.md      # architecture (living doc)
  setup-pi.md    # Raspberry Pi setup guide