A-MAZE-ing Labyrinth

Inspiration

Since we are all stuck at home, it seemed like a good time to bring out the old games we used to play as kids. We are bringing back the wooden labyrinth game but with a modern twist.

What it does

Similar to the classic wooden labyrinth game, you are to guide your marble (in this case, your bunny) from start to finish. On your journey, you will have to move the joystick in different directions to avoid the holes and dead ends. So have fun watching your bunny hop from side to side when you tilt, and please don’t kill it...

How we built it

Our A-MAZE-ing labyrinth is created out of two Arduino Uno's. Each Arduino communicates through Bluetooth transceivers and one acts as a sender while the other acts as the receiver. The sending end uses a joystick shield that controls the labyrinth with the analog sticks. An OLED screen is attached to the joystick for fun animations while the game is running. On the other end, the receiver side uses two servo motors and two QTI sensors. The motors help maneuver the labyrinth while the QTI sensors sense for the marble. If it falls into the wrong hole, one sensor will send a signal over to play a sad/angry emoji. When the marble successfully makes it to the end, a different sensor tells the OLED to play the winning animation.

Challenges we ran into

While creating this project, we ran into both hardware and software problems. For the software side, we ran into issues where the code would not talk to each other through the Bluetooth modules. Information that was sent over from the sender side didn't match on the receiving end and this problem took a bit longer than anticipated to fix. On the hardware side, the main problem was getting the QTI sensors to detect the marble moving at a fast pace. This problem was tackled when creating a few tubes to guide the marble when it dropped into a hole.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to complete the model of our labyrinth. Besides that, we are both satisfied that we completed our first hackathon.

What we learned

We learned that combining items together can cause a lot of problems. When adding the OLED with the motors and detection, any delays that were added to the animations would have to be completed before anything else would go on.

What's next for our A-MAZE-ing Labyrinth

In the future, we want to redesign our model to make it more visually appealing for the user. Looking even further down the line, it would be a huge achievement to see our product sold in stores and online to beginners and coders of all ages.