Ars Electronica Festival 2014 - Lasergame

A prototype fun installation, the Laser Game was running at the Future Playground of the Ars Electronica Festival 2014. The aim was to reach and hit the buzzer located on one end of the room without hitting the laser beams, in the fastest possible time. Since this was really a barebones prototype, it was pure fun hacking it together over the course of two weeks. It was also a good chance to test new technologies and see how everything fit together.

The setup consisted of 10 small laser diodes, 10 photoresistors, 10 mirrors for doubling the beams, 1 projector for the timer, 1 Lego wall for projecting the timer, 1 smoke machine, 1 fan, 2 Arduinos with Ethernet shields, and 1 DMX controller for win/lose light effects. The control of the game was written in JavaScript as a Node.js application which, thanks to its amazing WebSocket integration, allowed real-time monitoring of the sensors and overall control of the system (calibration, etc.) through a nice and simple web interface. The Node server communicated with the two Arduinos through UDP and was also responsible for controlling the DMX light effects as well as starting and stopping the timer, which was written as a small openFrameworks application.