Welcome to the Gopher Madness page, a production by Gopherphobics Anonymous (aka Winter, 2002 ME333 Team 25). The purpose of this project was to produce a carnival-like target practice game. Taking a variation off of the beloved "whack-a-mole" genre, a long-time carnival favorite, this game is operated with a common laser pointer. Instead of hitting the targets, each will have a photoresistor which can detect the beam, send a digital signal to the handyboard and score it. When a target is hit, its corresponding LEDs light up, a beep is heard, and the handyboard receives a digital signal. The original plan called for a wedge-shaped device with four solenoid powered gopher targets in two rows with a rotating, DC motor powered target at the back. A sign mounted to the back would house a larger-than-standard back-lit LCD able to easily print messages to the player and continuously update the score. The motion would be random. The difficulty in the game was based on the speed of target movement. In addition, the game was intended to be scaled in difficulty with different targets worth varying amounts of points and the challenge incremental with time. However, due to many technical difficulties, the final product had a more modest list of features.

The final product looks exactly as planned, however only two of the five intended targets are used. Also, the throw of the targets is only about 1" whereas the initially proposed throw was 6". The two utilized solenoid powered gopher targets (the front two) have fully functional actuation and sensing. Although problems permeated this project, most of the difficulty dealt with mechanical aspects of moving the solenoid-powered targets. The pages of this site detail in depth how the project was constructed and the problems that were encountered.