Project: Custom Settlers of Catan Board

Settlers of Catan is a game in which players assume the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop settlements and cities while trading and acquiring resources.  Players gain points as their settlements grow and the first player to reach ten points wins.  There are a number of expansion packs available for the game as well.

For a period of time, this was a very popular game within the family.  However, setting up the board was cumbersome (as was clean-up).  So I decided to build a custom Settlers of Catan board (actually, I built two) using wood, an Adafruit Feather board, and NeoPixel LED lights to ease the setup.  Upon powering the board, the layout of the various resource tiles (rock, wood, sheep, brick, and wheat) is randomized.

I started by build the basic wooden board.  I did this by cutting several 1x3 boards into eight different pieces measuring 24" in length.  Using Elmer's Wooden Glue, I glued each of the boards together.  Once dried, I sanded the board down until the creases between each board was hardly noticeable.  Then, using an existing Settlers of Catan board as a template, I traced the diamond onto my board.  Where each tile was placed, I used a 2" drill bit to cut a hole halfway through the board.  I then used 1/8" drill bit to drill the rest of the way through.  Finally I stained the board with a nice dark Jacobean color stain.  

Next, I made a nice outline to the tile section using some scrap leather and blue glitter paper from Hobby Lobby.  I used little trinkets, also found at Hobby Lobby, to mark each of the different trade ports; different color gems denoted the different trade ports.

Next, I populated each of the holes with NeoPixel LED lights from Adafruit.  I wired each of the LEDs in sequence (a long and tedious process) and connected the LEDs to an Adafruit Feather microcontroller board.  I programmed the microcontroller to randomize the lights upon bootup (less than about 100 lines of code).

Finally, after testing the board, I covered it with Park's Super Glaze finish for that nice bar-top look and feel.  Some additional trinkets from Hobby Lobby served as game pieces.