spatial gameplay - aligning vs expanding

gameplay parti: best I can do right now for an “image of the game”, might be a bit subtle but most of the key ideas are in there.

Laser Station Model

Here is the current working model for what the final laser station housings might be.  The objectives: ease of assembly and reduction of custom pieces, which has lead to almost entirely off the shell parts, from the steel plumbing pipe used for the structure, to the Sono-tube cast concrete base, etc.  Primary customization would be the need to weld a stud to the end of the laser shaft for the drive train attachment and the soldering of tabs onto the end of the hand wheel to trip the photo interrupter. One order from McMaster, one from Jameco and a trip to home depot should produce all necessary parts.  Custom piece fab time should be relatively quick or inexpensive.  The biggest obstacle in this design is where and how to decouple the drive train electronics from the control due to the need for continuous rotation.  To achieve this I will de-couple the crank encoder and motor control from the micro-controlled system mounted on the rotating shaft.  The photo-interrupter at the hand wheel will trigger pulses on the IR detector in the hollow of the base to communicate rotation back to the microcontroller and will independently drive the motor through a timer based circuit mounted in the base.  This will allow all other i/o (indicator, laser sensor, xbee, etc) to be housed on the rotating arm.  In the end more complex than I imagined, but the price is paid to allow the laser to be controlled by motor which opens up lots of possibilities for cross reality gameplay

laser game prototype

Laser Game Prototype #1 from Thomas Kearns on Vimeo.

Here is the first working prototype of the electronics of one module for the physical game in my trans-reality game for my thesis at DePaul. Shown is the photo-transistor based sensing of a standard laser pointer. Sensitivity is controlled by a potentiometer. Visual feedback is by way of a tri-color LED variably throbbed by 555 based timer circuits, modulated by digital potentiometers, green when laser is aligned, red when not. An IR detector is used for monitoring the "cranking" up of power, and controlling the rotation of a motor that will be used for alignment. As power is added, the throbbing slows down once the player stops cranking (to run off to the next laser station).  The “drip” of power is sped up when not succesfully aligned.  This project is running on an Arduino microcontroller utilizing Zigbee based wireless communication which allows ad-hoc mesh networks of these stations to form scalable site specific instances of the games. 

The next step will be to build a second one of these and to put them both in mockup housing/mechanical assemblies so that game play can be tested.  Hopefully in a week or so we will be able to give it a go and then I can move on to the digital game.