Video games are great and all, but sometimes you just want the thrill of manipulating actual objects in addition to watching action on a screen. This must have been the reason why Nintendo’s Duck Hunt became so popular despite the simplicity of its gameplay. Prolific hacker [mircemk] similarly made a computer-plus-physical game called “Laser Shooter“, which somehow reminds us of the good old NES game.
The game is based on an Arduino Nano, to which five LEDs as well as five photoresistors (LDRs) are connected. When the game is started, the LEDs light up at random and the player has a limited time to “shoot” the corresponding LDR with a laser pointer. This time limit is decreased as the game progresses, and the game is over once the player fails to hit the target on time. The “Game Over” message is accompanied by a sad tune, but luckily no giggling dog.
Complete schematics and code are available for anyone willing to try their hand at replicating or improving this game. And no, you can’t simply sweep your laser across the five LDRs all the time, because you lose if you shoot at the wrong target. For more laser pointer-based games, try this Laser Command clone or this laser tag badge system.
Looks like a fun project, but I’m pretty sure you can detect and display hits with just LEDs if they are of a similar color to the laser. Even one of those LED array modules so you can score the accuracy.
As stated on the project page, it’s based on the design from: https://elektro.turanis.de/ which is worth a visit. Look for: “Alien Invasion”
Great Game Idea.
Just made me search for a few LDRs to check,
get the Multimeter
and the Laserpointer out.
About 5k in the room light- and below 1k with the laserpointer shining onto the LDRs.
Might be a good idea to use this as application example for our MYCO project
Very basic programming in 4 BIT
https://www.facebook.com/groups/269499491046124
A great idea.
Dug out some LDRs, measured them:
resistance in the room, then laser light onto them,
about 20k down to 1k..
Nice! But it would be better (and harder) if the laser does not stays on, but just flashes briefly when one hit the button. Like with a real gun…
Who wants can change the laser pointer into a pistol …
Its really amazing how simple, yet effective this is. We featured this project in this weeks episode of The Electromaker show: https://youtu.be/bX4L1LFXZXE?t=1232