Starting with today, I went to that electronics place on canal street. Unfortunately, they do not carry solenoids out of all the other stuff the have. I inquired about the relays that uses solenoides, but they were not much cheaper than the solenoids available online.
During the two times in class, we found and desoldered 5 stepper motors from old computers. We discovered that they have 21 steps per revolution, which was enough for the 9 possible states for each motor controlling 2 displays. To maximize the use of the revolutions, I also decided to use two steps for each state; a total of 18 out of the 21. I made cams for these motors in SketchUp, now with soother transitions between each state. Xavier plans make them out of wood using the sketches.
In the Arduino code, I modified the player function to be more intuitive. Instead of clicking the joystick then tilting to make a move, I made to make a move when the button is pressed and the joystick is tilted simultaneously. Although the joystick can only be clicked in it's default center position, a separate button can be used to make a move.
Currently, I am finishing up on functions that will run the motors for the display using multiplexers to make it possible to have more than 14 outputs for Arduino (24 are needed fo the motors alone)