Hello there! Remember LaserBox 2.0 a couple blog posts ago? Well, we finally started building the full scale version, aka. The Laser Maze 3000! We took the sketch models that we made last sprint and scaled it up to fit the average adult human. As Mary mentioned, we got several sheets of cardboard last Sprint from Sara Hendren that we are using to assemble our box. In order to make our box easy to break down and store, we decided to make it modular. We bought several 10' PVC pipes and cut it down to the following sizes: six that are 7', eight that are 4', and four that are 5'. Along with the pipes, we bought fittings to hold our PVC pipes together and take apart to store away so that it doesn’t take up a lot of space.
Our skeletal structure with just the PVC.
We attached the cardboard to the PVC with velcro to make the structure very strong. In addition we added a cloth covering to the top of the structure to keep it as dark as possible so that the player can see the lasers when going through the maze.
Velcro holding the cardboard and PVC together; fully assembled box.
You are probably wondering why we have two sheets of cardboard attached to the PVC pipes. There are two reasons. First, the extra cardboard increases the structural stability of the maze. In addition, we needed a place to house all of the electronics that we use to power and control the lasers. We took the four lasers from our previous sketch model and evenly spaced them across the side of maze. The inner two lasers are attached to servos and will be moving up and down in a vertical line. The outer two lasers are stationary and will be bounced across two mirrors each to create a total of 10 beams throughout the maze.
Laser integrated into the cardboard; housing for the laser.
In order to enhance the laser beams from each of the lasers, we used a fog machine. You can see the laser being bounced off one of the mirrors creating another beam.
Integrated electrical and mechanical system.