Laser Maze
| These tasks were done as part of MSc Creative Technology, 2019. |
Introduction
One at a time, each person gets a chance to move through the maze without hitting any beams. If a beam gets hit, red flashing lights and an alarm signal that the game is over. If the person makes it to the end and hits the huge stop button, the win is accompanied by green flashing lights.
Implementation
The 4 green lasers are lined along one side of the room, all wired in parallel to 3 D cell batteries. They are not connected to the Arduino in any way. On the opposite side of the room, there are 4 Light Dependent Resisters inside of plastic tubes.
The LDR cells detect the laser light, and the tube helps filter out other unwanted light from strobe lights. The Arduino is programmed to watch the LDR cells, and the stop, start, and reset buttons. The Arduino sends 4 signals back to the Processing code on the laptop: start, stop, alarm, or reset.
The Arduino also powers a servo that turns on a spinning red light when the alarm is set off.(you can delete the code if you don't want a beacon) The Processing code accepts the signals from the Arduino, and displays the state of the game on the monitor outside.
Evaluation
Processing and Reactivision in action
Turns out, it didn't work as well as it should have. With the little time we had to work, we had only one shot to try it out before it was used for the event. We got a smoke machine with the immediate fire alarms disconnected.
You could probably guess what happened next. Yes! We started a "fire". We didn't technically start a fire. The alarms just went off, disrupting class for pretty much everyone. Fun times.
