Solenoid and Pin

So how would this gumdrop popping work? I've come up with a few ideas that combine mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and hydraulics to achieve the desired popping and disappearing effect. The designs all have their strengths and weaknesses. Each concept sketch has a high level breakdown as well as a walkthrough of the mechanism.

This is a quasi-passive solenoid and pin design. It attempts to combine electrical drivers with mechanical locking to reduce the amount of power needed to breathe life into this game. Let's take a more in-depth look at the parts of this concept drawing.

Here's a high level overview of the design. There is a housing with large empty shafts arranged in a grid to hold the gumdrops. Each gumdrop shaft contains grooves for a locking pin. The gumdrops have an internal spring + pin mechanism, and are attached to compressed solenoids. The housing and gumdrop assembly sits on top of a large permanent magnet. Let's take a look at how the mechanism works.

First the gumdrop is fully hidden by the housing. It sits on top of a compressed solenoid, locked in place by a pin.

A current is sent through the solenoid such that the magnetic field created opposes that of the permanent magnet. This upward force is enough to compress the pin's spring and push it back into the gumdrop. Freed from its lock, the gumdrop shoots upward as the compressed solenoid naturally decompresses to its normal length.

The gumdrop has popped out of the housing. No additional power is needed to keep the structure up. The solenoid now acts as a spring, mechanically bearing the load of the gumdrop and jumping players.

To retract the gumdrop back into the housing, a current is applied through the solenoid in the opposite direction, creating a field that attracts it to the permanent magnet. The current shuts off once the grooves align with the pins, which shoot out and mechanically lock the gumdrop back in place.

No power is needed to maintain the gumdrop in its hidden and popped state. Power is only used to transition between the two states!