Table of Contents
Laser Maze
The Laser Maze was created for MakerFest in 2013, then upgraded for Maker Faire Milwaukee in 2014, and somehow I (Pete) volunteered to build it for Maker Faire Milwaukee in 2015. Oh, and then Vishal took over most of the hard work.
I'll be cobbling together into on how it works (or should work) here. Please add info or let me know.
BOM (Bill of Materials):
- 12 hand-held laser pointers
- Mounts for laser pointers
- Mirrors
- Solar Panels (Josh from Brown Dog Gadgets has provided)
- Teensy (I can supply one)
- LED display
- Big button
- Piezo/Buzzer/some sort of noise making thing… (????)
- Fog machine
- Software
- Stands (I have 4, do we need more? Ben Nelson has more!)
- AAA batteries (We need a lot! Or another solution… see below)
Adam said we should set up lasers, bounce them off the mirrors, and make them all hit the solar panels, which should all be located together in one location. Things may go out of alignment, so we should mount things as solidly as we can, and make it easy to adjust/calibrate.
I want to use just an Arduino (well, a Teensy) and LCD display, and avoid using a computer if possible, just to make things easier to run/manage.
We may need to build mounts for the lasers. We should be able to 3D print some if needed. (Zip ties are currently slid into place to turn the lasers on by holding the button down.)
We should consider using C or D cell batteries wired to the laser pointers instead of the AAA batteries, so we get longer run-time and less battery changing.
Here's a photo of the 2013 set-up. (Photo by Eric Schneeweis.)
Blog Posts
I'll be documenting the build on my own blog, and I'll share those links here:
Links
I've found a few other laser mazes documented. I'll add them here. Feel free to share any with me.
Project Members
- Vishal R.
- Adam C.