Introduction: Arduino Laser Wand

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Step 1: Gather Materials

Materials needed:

  1. Arduino
  2. Breadboard
  3. 4 or 6 wires, depending on the laser
  4. Laser(6 wires) or laser pointer(4 wires)
  5. USB cable
  6. 10K resistor
  7. Photo resistor
  8. 1 jumbo straw

Step 2: Strip the USB Cable

Cut off the end of the wire that is not USB. Then, using scissors, carefully strip off the end of the black wire around the end of the cable. Inside, you will find four smaller wires. Strip off the end of the red and black ones. The other two wires will not be used.

Step 3: Making the Wand

These steps are complicated so pay attention

  1. solder your laser to some male to male wires and then solder that to the USB cable that you stripped the wire off of
  2. cut the straw in half length-wise so that if you flatten it out, it will be a rectangle.
  3. cut the straw width-wise into a two thirds piece and a one third piece
  4. fold the smaller piece in half hamburger style so it looks like a triangle, now this piece will hold all the wires that you soldered
  5. put the laser in the longer straw piece and tape it
  6. tape the straw pieces together
  7. now for the final step, GLITTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (glitter glue is also great, for this one we used a simple pipe cleanerw)

Step 4: Set Up Breadboard

Plug one leg of the photoresistor to analog input 0, and the other leg to 5 volts. Plug one leg of the regular resistor to Analog input 0, and the other leg to ground. Attach an LED or buzzer to digital pin 13.

Step 5: Code

This is the code that we used:

void setup() {

pinMode(4, OUTPUT);

pinMode(13, OUTPUT);

}

void loop(){

digitalWrite(4, HIGH);

if(analogRead(0) >750){

digitalWrite(13, HIGH);

} else{

digitalWrite(13, LOW);

}

}

You might have to adjust the 750 for the laser you are using.