Creating an Obstacle Course For My ELEGOO Tumbller

When my mother first heard the words ‘Obstacle Course’ she was hesitant. When she then heard that I’d need to have it constructed for about two weeks in order to practise she said “No way.”. And to be fair there wasn’t really any 2m x 0.6m area in the house where I could build this thing without it being totally in the way and inevitably tripped over and destroyed anyway. So instead I decided that best way to go about this would be to tape out the outline of the course and make marks where I’d need the inner walls to be. Hence, I could hide it under the rug and only take it out and insert the inner walls as needed!

So what is this obstacle I need to build? Well Eli must begin by travelling straight through a little gap then make a series of turns to navigate two walls and then put himself in prime position to catch the ping pong balls my launcher will fire at him. Sounds easy right? Not quite. But that’s a story for another day. I’ll update you on those navigation and ping pong launching journeys in some other posts but for now let’s get back to obstacle course building!

As usual, I began my gathering my supplies. In this case, there wasn’t too much to gather. Just some tape, a scissors and my trusty measuring tape. Please note in further pictures that my measuring tape isn’t actually filthy! It’s just sliiightly rusty after all its years of use (and partly because of a little lack of care).

Next I got to work creating the basic 2m x 0.6m outline.

I measured from the inside of each strip to the next and so the distances between the insides of the tape are my characteristic dimensions. I.e. the inner rectangle created by the tape is 2 x 0.6. The width of the tape is not included in the course dimensions.

Now it was to implement those pesky walls. (pleaserefer back to my previous note that my measuring tape is not dirty, it’s just wear and tear; I promise). See in the video how I marked out the right hand side of the course, putting markers at 50cm, 80cm, 110cm, 130cm, 160cm to indicate where walls should be added or where zones should start and end. Refer back to the original course schematic to see where I got these placements from!

Now that I knew how far along the wall should be in the y-direction, I wanted to mark how far in on the x-axis the wall should penetrate. Once again I measured from the inside of the black tape and made a little mark with masking tape as to where this should be. This particular 40cm measurement shown corresponds to the 2nd and 3rd level walls marked b and c in the original schematic.

This was the finished result with all the markings at the end, all ready to be swept back under the rug and out of sight. Clearly I ran out of black tape and had to finish it off with masking tape but it does the same job, even if the aesthetics are slightly compromised .

Now surprisingly, it’s kinda difficult to find things that measure 40cm around the house. Hardbacks are only around 30cm as are the empty cereal boxes we had in recycling and I’ve been too busy to do any online shopping lately [:( ] so I didn’t have any other boxes I could cut up either! Instead, I got my hands on some wood and a saw and I cut out out ‘walls’ to the dimensions I wanted. I made them a bit bigger just to that I’d be able push them in or out and adjust as required, should anything change. I also added easter eggs as the external walls to hold the boards and possibly to help implement my code. I’m still a few short though so if anyone wants to donate some Easter eggs to me, feel free! Also just to note, I intended (and successfully managed) to complete the course in ‘Hard mode’. A big W and some more extra points in the bag.

But overall, this is pretty much the final set up! Some of the spaces are quite a lot tighter than I had imagined they would be. My coding skills will definitely be put to the test here so stay tuned and find out how I get on as I take on the maze!