Help with giving a bubble gum machine some life!

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Hi, sorry if I post this in the wrong forum, but since I don’t know what’s needed I thought it might go here.

So, I have this Beaver Wizard gumball machine that I would like to bring to life. From the top. Of my head, I would like to use a sensor that lights up a LED wire hooked up to the spiral part in the stand. You see, when you put a coin in this machine and turn the know, a gumball is dropped down the spiral tube below the actual machine.

One idea would be to sync the speed of the gumball falling to the LED Wire so that the light kind of follows the gumball.

What would be the easiest way to do this? Would it be with a motion sensor to trigger the coin input? Do I need to look into and learn ESP32 to program the wire led?

Appreciate any help :slight_smile:

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ESPHome is your friend:

Honestly the possibilities are rather endless. If this is your first project, I’d break it into smaller pieces. So first nail down detecting a gumball, then move to LEDs, etc.