Liz over at Raspberrypi.org posted about this project – check out more info here!
More than a year ago, a presented my own Robot Version of the Maker Faire Robot, you can see here and here.
For this 2015 edition, i wanted to do something more ambitious and, of course, focused in kids and entertaiment. I am a fan of the star was sague, i always dreamed to be one of the star wars universe character, pilot a x-wing, fight against Darth Vader…so i decided to create my own version.
I wanted to help the rebels!!! :-)))
Some time ago, i saw a project of someone (i don´t remenber who, sorry), that created some targets managed by ATtiny24 microcontroller and that worked independently. This project inspired me to do something similar but pretty different.
The idea was to create something similar to an arcade but, at the same time, with a retro look. Finally I decided to create a machine like the old carnivals. A gun where depending the number of successful shots you can won a price, of course, it should include electric elements like Arduino and raspberry, sounds, score board and a remaining time. The difficulty should be progressive, to allow the kids to play but, at the same time, be interesting for the big ones.
In order to do something different and try to get the people felt like in the middle of a battle, I added a system in the gun that not allow to Use it like a Tommy gun. If you shoot continuously, the laser will heat and you have to wait some seconds to get it ready. When the gun is not ready it starts to vibrate and a red led starts to blink. When the targets are running quickly and the laser gun is blocked due to it, the experience is great, you feel very nervous!!
The design is scalable, now the system have 5 targets but is very easy to add more. Each target is managed by an Arduino, that controls servo motor and the infrared receiver. Each Arduino with the others using I2C and With the raspberry using pyserial. I know that is possible to communicate with the raspberry using l2C , but i don’t had enough time to investigate how to got it due to the voltage difference between both systems, so I decided to connect using a USB cable.
The installation size is more than 2 meters high and 1 meter width. The structure is made of wood and is easy to dismount. The roof and external part are trash bags. I want to add in the future some kinds of light strips, in order to do more inmersive the experience. You can see the final result in this video