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Modding Laser Tag Gear?
digitalsushi writes "With summer here again our thoughts turn to the outdoors, and for two years, my peers and I have tried to find plans online for augmenting our laser tag gear to make it more realistic. We're not engineers, but also figured it can't be that hard to do something with some kind of infrared laser to decrease the beam width. What other sorts of inexpensive things could be added to our gear to make it more interesting? We're using the popular Laser Challenge V2 kits, but any brand at all would be interesting."
What other sorts of inexpensive things could be added to our gear to make it more interesting?
If the sole interest is in making it more interesting, I would suggest attaching mirrors over the electronic targets on your person. This would not only effectively block your opponents shots, but makes them likely to bounce back and hit the attacker.
You sir are, obviously, not a Slashdot reader :)
Please mod your Tron suit for Laser tag.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Upgrading to the real thing?
;)
Paintball?
Exploding blood packs. And lots of them.
Apply modules that translate sounds into amplified waves of destruction!
Now, to find a word or phrase which has power....
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Put them all together and make a giant laser. Then proceed to blow up earth with your frickin laser.
Muahahahahahahaha
Have you ever considered airsoft as an alternative? The guns are expensive but they should still be cheaper then getting realistic laser tag gear and a lot more fun. Airsoft uses air to launch small 6mm plastic BBs and they are designed to look like the real thing. Most guns that are sold in stores like Walmart are very cheaply made and not worth your money. I would recommend getting an AEG (Automatic Electric Gun) from Asia (airsoftshop.com, wgcshop.com) but if you prefer to buy from the US I would recommend combatdepot.com. Airsoft can be dangerous so if you play make sure you are wearing proper eye protection (at least ANSI 87.1). Also be sure to inform any neighbors you have as well as the police that you are having an airsoft game. You do not want the police comming to your house and opening fire on everyone they see.
I'm sure there's a way to rig the equipment so you don't need to wear detectors.
Maybe you should add frickin sharks to your lasers.
You want to fire at your friends and coworkers with real laser weapons?
Or airsoft.
Forget laser tag, buy a couple of masks and a couple of markers. They can be had online for not too much money.
Thank you.. great laugh.
I'm sure lots of people are going to say the same thing . . . but I stand by it.
stun gun mods that shock the wearer when hit, now thats realism.
A bunch of college kids we knew were addicted to playing "Laser Quest, and tried encouraging us (paintball fans) to play.
:)
What a joke.
There's no real incentive not to get shot, besides the lack of points. With paintball you know when you've been hit, because it hurts like hell. Laser Quest's hits resulted in your vest buzzing and your gun not working for a few seconds.
Plus there was no running or ducking in the arena.
Suggestions of wiring eletrodes to the vest to zap players were met with blank stares and hostility. I still think that's the way to go... modify them from "laser tag" to "pain gun tag"
Add in a stun gun for more realism. No more guessing if you hit someone, the twitching will tell all.
I still got this icky feeling from the game last time. Touching last user's half-dried sweat is NOT a pleasant experience.
US combat missions involving laser tag fights? But the public hasn't found out about those yet. . . I mean. uh.
Decrease the beam width? Most laser beams (and I would say all on inexpensive laser tag equipment) are very small width - .8mm less. And if you are thinkg about realism the beam should be more like real ammo... 2.2 mm at a MINIMUM. Making the barrels smaller would be a simple task - and I would think that you would only want that to make the gun look more real. To make it really real, you need full body suit of targets, the guns to make a louder sound when they shoot, and a computer system to manage it all to calculate delays on distance... or you could try paintball?
Forget the damn laser gheytag.
Just play paintpall. It's much more fun.
Bot Assisted Blogging
Your laser gun needs a laser targeting system.
How about just a shirt with a target on the front and back to make it easier for the cops to accidentally shoot you. It'll definitely add to the realism of your experience.
This is a special excite
This
Besides increasing the power to extend the gun's range, maybe a sniper scope?
:-D
Aw hell, just attach an airsoft grenade launcher.
1) Cut old laser gun exactly in half (longitudinally)
2) Discard both halves
3) Replace with this.
Nobody'll be the wiser!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Grab a cheap stungun/cattleprod from the next gunshow, rig it to the relay that activates when the light sensor is tagged. Attach leeds from the stungun to the wearee's body.
Viola, now whenever you get tagged not only are you embarrassed but your jiggling and peeing yourself as well. Fun for the whole family.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. -Fight Club
The "Laser Challenge" sets have a bomb that is ordinarily set off with a toggle switch - one direction for slow fuse, another for long fuse. It's a fairly simple hack to rip out the switch and substitute with an SCR and an IR photoresistor to allow remote detonation of the short fuse option. Then you can set minefields and set them off from a safe distance - Laser Geneva Conventions be damned!
...CO2 laser tag kit, but my brother seems as yet unwilling to test it out. Might just have to force the issue.
How about rigging it up to a stun gun so when you get "hit" you really go down.
How about electrodes that give you a slight (or not so slight) shock when you get shot. Try using Nural Stimulators, used for testing if muscle relaxers are still working on patients in surgery.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
What are you trying to do- burn holes in people? That's making it a bit TOO realistic, IMHO.
What you want to do is use RED lasers for targetting, but you need the beam to be larger than the 1cm it'll spread over any distance. So you need to either fire it into a spinning prism such that it 'scans' a space over an acceptable range, or you need to optically enlarge the beam and recollaminate it.
More fun, I would think, would be to use GREEN lasers. They're visible to the eye, but you would absolutely REQUIRE eye protection for both you and any participants. A green laser to the eye would be temporarily blinding; some red lasers too but green is 'peaked' for pain.
Now you could also use a bunch of stacked LED arrays to make a more realistic beam punch or larger batteries... or...
"find plans online for augmenting our laser tag gear to make it more realistic." More realistic. Yes, so you can feel like you really ARE nerds running around in the woods shooting at each other with laser pointers.
- Nick Busey
www.pedalbmx.com
www.nickbusey.com
As the subline says, I've always wanted to go out in the field with some MILES gear and blank-adapted rifles. It's much more fun when you're stalking around corners with an AR-15 and going BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM at an opponent until his little siren starts to beep. Unfortunately, real MILES gear is GODDAMNED EXPENSIVE and we've been looking for a cheaper alternative which fulfils the same roles (such as, shots fired, which shot from which player hits you, who you've hit, hit percentages, GPS position and bearing tracking, et cetera). If any of you out here in slash-land have any tips, I'd be much obliged.
ALL HAIL THE BEAST THAT ASCENDETH FROM THE PIT WITH HIS CUTE WIDDLE NOSE =^o.o^=
The laser tag stuff that the army mods their weapons with would definatly increase realism. Of course, the guns themselves are expensive enough (at least $750 for a decent AR-15 type rifle, and not from Armalite at that...) and I have no idea where to get the MILES stuff. Some people have suggested paintball or airsoft. I would suggest simunitions. they are paintball-like cartridges fired from real weapons. the police use them to train, particularly for SWAT teams and stuff. http://www.simunition.com is the source.
The More Laws, the less Justice --Marcus Tullius Cicero
...involved tossing CD burners at each other.
Seriously, It's tough to find TV shows that aren't increasingly showing more violence, nudity, etc... Although, Bush is cracking down.
Hmmm.
Here's a mod i just thought of. Go about your daily business. Provide each player with a locator and a gun. Rig the locators to let you know when an opponent (also with a locator) is within a certain range (ie. 50 yds.). Begin panicked drawing of gun and be the first to find and kill the opponent. You must carry the gear at all times, and you must play regardless of your location, say in a classroom or at a wedding. This might be sweet as a campus-wide game. Even better if you don't know who the opponents are!
My peers and I have tried to find plans online for augmenting our laser tag gear to make it more realistic.
Don't waste time augmenting to make it realistic, just use real guns! Besides, the Stormtroopers showed us that real laser guns are awfully hard to aim.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
What other sorts of inexpensive things could be added to our gear to make it more interesting?
;)
Nothing! Just pistol whip each other. That ought to make an interesting/fun game of laser tag.
Red Bull gave me wings and I flew into the ceiling fan.
HAHA Protect the kids. I hate overprotective psycho parents, hey, give them some reality. Guns are a reality, they should respect them and understand how to use one. THat's life.
Using an infrared laser versus a visible light laser to "decrease beam width" makes no sense; the minimum waist radius of a Gaussian laser is directly proportional to the wavelength of light; therefore using an IR laser with the same optics will give you an increase in beam width and an increase in divergence. Gaussian beam optics tutorial.
1) Sensors on the gun, that if triggered, disable it for a few seconds.
2) Somehow, build a bunch of smaller sensors, and by this I mean alot. If every person has to wear coveralls that have a few hundred sensors on them, it's alot harder to cheat and just cover yours with your hand.
3) Have a wearable computer that interprets the sensor data. Not sure how to have it affect gameplay, but it seems you could tell the difference between a "kill" and a "flesh wound".
4) If you have an arena of sorts, have sensors on the outdoor lights for night play. Would be cool to "shoot them out".
5) Have lots of little 4" x 4" mirrors up in odd places, for bank shots.
6) Have everyone wear GPS. Send the output to a modified quake server... let people from around the world watch the virtual version of the game.
Why not make it so when someone gets hit with the beam, they get a nice 9V shock, that'll teach them to get in the way of the beam, and it'd make the game more...interesting!
IR and RF based...! http://www.oscmar.com (click on products)
This kind of modern day stewart smally psychology is pathetic.
kids are the way they are for a reason. violence and competitiveness are part of our genes. and by doing what your doing you are crippling your kids. your children will be laughed at in school and they will be losers in life.
you should be ashamed of yourself.
Wow, how offtopic.
Since we are showing anecdotal eveidence. I was also raised in a house with similar rules. No Bow either.
I now play paintball, enjoy guns and play violent video games.
*shrug*
Feel free to keep congratulating yourself though.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
your kids will get the crap beat out of them in middle/high school.
:must smash...
REmember, the other 2/3rds of the children are being raised with little to no parent supervision...
the rich kid with the bmw get's his jollies by seeing how far he can push meeker kids. while the jocks simply havea n IQ of 30 (collectively) and walk around thinking...
then the other turds, the "i'm cool white trash" to the "we're cool sheep" called the goth crowd (yes you are fricking sheep copying everyone else... just like you tattooed idiots... doing exactly what others are doing, nothing damned origional.)
they will get eaten alive if you dont traing them in martial arts so the firs time they find themselves cornered they can break some jock's arm without bating an eye. Oh and they need to act VERY crazy when they do it...
I smashed one of the biggest bully's in my school's head through his locker. I was not bothered by any of the idiots for the rest of my school life as they were afraid that I would come unglued and possibly kill them.
Bullies and jocks know one thing.... Pain. give them pain and they go away.
Some old geeks running around with laser tag shit shooting each other? Get some paintball guns and stop playing with your thilly lathers.
You can't see lasers until they've either hit you or not hit you. You can see rocks coming, that's the best part! We just need softer rocks, maybe yellow soft rocks. Maybe we could name them based on the sound they make, like Boff or Nerf or something like that. Yeah, Nerf! That's the ticket!
oh wait... DOH!
stuff |
But as a side note, Laser Challenge V2 makes you wear the receiver on your chest, and its an easy thing to cover the receiver with your arms as you shoot at your opponents. You almost need multiple receivers which can monitor hits from all directions, but who wants to buy multiple Laser Challenge V2 setups for one person.
Paintball turns your entire body into receivers. If you crank down the velocity of your markers, you increase the number of people than can stand ( pain threshold ) to get tagged by a paintball. Remember, safety first ( googles and cups? for our male /.ers ).
Seeing a laser tag story allowed me to reminisce a little. I didn't even remember I had a laser tag system until I read the post. Then I remember why I forgot about it in the first place - paintball.
What was lacking from the laser tag game was a reason to stay out of the way of the laser. No consequence to standing right out in the open, and as a kid, our games usually turned less fun after someone threw themselves into the line of fire for no reason.
Enter paintball a few years later. I, for one, am not jumping out in front of a flying paintball. The consequence (and initial sting) keeps the game fun. I don't think I stand alone in this.
Given the opportunity to play either, 99 times out of 100 I'm going to overlook laser tag without question.
At one time I thought that the new laser tag things were so cool. Finally an answer to the stick-guns we usually ran around with. When I found out that I could thwart my opponents firing by turning my back, it wasn't quite the answer we were looking for. Turn your back to a paintball, you're just going to sting in a different place.
I'm always a fan of modding things, but I can't see the point here when perfectly viable alternatives exist.
Away from you they are probably already enjoying hookers, crack, and murder.
- if you can't enjoy a simple game of tag, one thing leads to another.
Yeah, but what if their option is just to make it more fun? I say: Batteries + leyden jars + an electromagnetic switch triggered by a hit. Make those hits count!
What I'd love to see is an Ender's Game type of thing in which the clothes freeze up in the areas they're hit in, but that would probably be too difficult.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
The gear is secondary to the tactics and employment of said gear.
For an increase in the realism, go to paintball, airsoft, etc. Back when I was a kid, BBs were the way to go and they are only minimally affected by hiding behind tall grass. (always use eye protection, heh heh) Ten pumps on a red ryder will make you keep your head down.
For a decrease in realism you could use rubber band or nerf guns. I hear water balloons are fun if you have the right kind of participants. {wink} {wink} {nudge} {nudge}
Either way the tactics is the most interesting.
However, since only some of us had the know how to make these mods and they really gave us a big advantage, they were deemed illegal.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I know, replying to myself, but instead of just replying to one of the comments directed at me, I'll just do that here.
So to answer those people who stated that kids should play with guns, please elaborate on why that is a good thing? Do you want them to play with knives too? How about matches? Or do you teach your children at all about the dangers of the world?
Seems like a bunch of people with no children replying, I don't even know why I'm responding.
*sigh*
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
not sure if this helps, but you could try http://www.lasertag.de/
wud
not as random or inaccurate as a blaster, but a more eligant weapon for... more civilized times.
The More Laws, the less Justice --Marcus Tullius Cicero
Set your phasers to STUN!
Easy ones: Mirror armor. Mirror shelter. A dog with zapper on him (Imagine him running around the playing field and people running like all bejeezus to get out of the way :) )
Hard Ones:
Surveillance Cameras around the playing field with a base commander to point and shoot them.
Proxy Bombs that include a flashbulb for extra suprise.
GPS tracking of team members on your pda.
VERY Hard ones:
Some kind of huge freakin' Death ray. I dunno maybe something that sprayed you with tuna fish.
There are many varients of the game Assassin, and there was also a set of rules put out by Steve Jackson called Killer
In Assassin, everyone had to fill out their class schedule, and include a picture, and give it to the person running the game. Everyone was given a card at random (redraw if you got your own card).
The goal was to get your card -- but you weren't allowed to draw on anyone unless they were your target, or if they drew on you first (ie, they were trying to kill you).
I'm guessing that these games wouldn't go down so well in today's high schools, though.
There are some varients that aren't quite as obvious, but use your own judgement
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
We used to play laser tag at night in a nearby graveyard. We'd duck behind gravestones, which was always fun. Also, we had a rule that you're not allowed to shoot unless your chest plate was visible to whoever you were shooting at. Also, lasers bouncing off of glossy gravestones made things interesting.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
...based on bullets and rifles for over 5 years. We have worked most all of the kinks. Any Slashdotters with experience involving sucking chest wounds? I feel this may be a detriment to our penetration into the recreational market space.
Does anyone know if it is possible to obtain a MILES emitters and vests? Legally that is. The actual MILES system used by US .mil would kick ass.
;)
All my buddies are ex military and own and fire guns. We could go out to the sticks miles from anything, with real rifles equipped with MILES, and have a blast playing capture the flag or similar objective based missions. That would totally kick ass, IMO. I even know where to buy blank bullets, which are actually hard to find when compared to the widely available real ammo.
With an M-16 I can hit 2/3 targets at 300M, and 4/5 targets at 250M, and frankly I didn't miss under 250. I wouldn't be bragging at hitting things at 20 meters, that isn't even a challenge (the 1/2 height "close" targets on the range are at 50M)
But you did say you wanted "in your face", yeah - but I prefer a kill from afar
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
I have a feeling if I ran around playing paintball, the HOA would fine my ass as I'd get paint on shit. However if I ran around playing laser tag, they'd probably not care (and even if they did, it's nota gainst the CCnR). Paintball is cool if you go to a place to play paintball, but what if you ard your roomates just want to go play a little game arond where you live?
Plus if oyu own the gear you can run and duck all you like.
Paintball -- the most fun you can have with your pants on.
Seriously (OK, MORE seriously), you can paintball in many more environments than you can lasertag (plus you avoid the toxic complications of Zombie Smoke), and the (small but undeniable) pain of taking a hit is a far better motivator to stealthy movement and quick reactions than a bit of light.
Cheers,
Rob
"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning" - Catherine Aird
Perhaps people don't understand why you think your childern should be punching bags. Who do you expect to defend them and how much should they take before they fight back.
The real world isn't like that.
You are gonna have some weak nerdy kids what with the Renfesting and the no REAL fighting experience. Hell if I hadn't fought with my brother as a child the number of times that my ass would have gotten pounded as an adolescent is huge. While I don't agree with condoning violence, my belief is that it is not good to never let your children give/receive an ass beating now and again. Please don't think im critcising your parenting at all. Just commenting on how violence helped me growing up. I suppose it depends on where you grew up as well...
http://samtron.cjb.net
1. Go out and get a couple of tasers.
2. Aim and shoot.
3. Rinse and repeat
are you talking about a real M16 because I don't think the other guy is talking about a real M-4
- My first thought would be to put a lens over the end of the gun to focus it. Maybe with a focal length of around 10-50 feet; you could probably even use a cheap lens from a disposable camera or similar to accomplish this. I admit that I'm no expert on the matter, but a little google-ing should turn up some help.
- Get a laser gun. I've been to places that use lasers instead of IR, and people show up all the time with their own equipment and whup my butt all over the place.
- Go paintballing, it's much more realistic than any IR / laser game, and you get the "force feedback" effect that's absent with light-based games.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
"Not being engineers", you guys would probably be healthy and strong enough to use this kind of gear - it's a far step forward from the Laser Challenge V2 kits.
A fair bit of warning - Much like every other solution, if you move your games outdoors and make your equipment more realistic, the odds of being questioned, detained, or killed by police start to add up. Please play responsibly.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, when I have kids, I'm going to teach them as much about violence as I can. Extensive martial arts training, stuff like that.
Hey, maybe my kids and your kids can get together and play, and my kids can beat up your kids! Wouldnt that be fun!?
Ok, just kidding. I do fully plan on teaching any/all kids I have as much about self-defense as I possibly can, and that will include extensive training with guns, knives, and "common items" which can be used as weapons in a pinch. I also will be teaching them, from the beginning, the seriousness of what they are learning. There is nothing wrong with letting your kids know how to handle themselves when push comes to shove, just make sure they understand the responsibility that goes with their knowledge.
But maybe that's just me. I always resented my parents for being overly protective in that regard, and not giving me the opportunity to learn how to defend myself - a problem I took upon myself to rectify.
Avoid lasers. The laser-tag-ish games with leagues forbid lasers of any sort because the eye-risk is just too high, especially with magnifying lenses on the sight. Just use an IR LED with better optics and a thinner beam.
;)
I'd say that the big thing is that you want to preserve the notion of combat. So you really need sensors in many places around the body, so that you can run and duck and hide and still get a head shot off.
I'm betting that some fun could be had with a "suicide bomb" option, where you kill yourself and anybody in range.
Gentoo Sucks
you synthesize excited bromide in an argon matrix?
Ive seen it work before. You could probably generate a 6MW beam!
Chris.
I ask for a car and I get a computer. How's about that for being born under a bad
"One of us is nearby... there can be only one!!!"
I was an employee for two years when I was in high school, and I have heard many of the same complaints before. The fact is, LQ is not the same as paintball by any stretch of the imagination. It's a much simpler game, and that is so kids of ALL ages can play. I would not expect anyone over 15 or 16 to really enjoy LQ, it's the little ones that get a kick out of it. To respond to a few of your points:
The incentive to not getting shot is points
Well, the ONLY goal of the game to win, and winning is based on points... So losing points is bad, therefore one should avoid being hit
No running or ducking
Again, this is a game for kids AND teens. Imagine a fourteen year old running top speed with his hard plastic laser out front, and turning a corner. Smack into the head of an eight year old. Switch that to an eight year old running full speed, smack into the crotch of an adult. It hurts. Trust me. As for ducking, it's a dark maze, and we want to avoid injuries as much as possible. You may think it's lame, but again, this is not a hardcore game.
Electrodes on the vest
Again, see above points. We wouldn't have too many birthday parties coming back if all the kids were bawling their eyes out because of electrical shocks, whether they hurt or not.
The fact is, LQ and Paintball have thier own audiences, and you should be aware of that before slamming the game. If you want something fast paced, mature, and semi-dangerous, then play paintball. If you want to take 30 ten year olds to a birthday party game that all of them can enjoy safely, go to LaserQuest. These points of course also apply to the original posted question.
As a final point, if you want to win at LaserQuest, then move slowly, and stay quiet. Sound is the single most important factor in that game. You may note the hardcore players covering the speaker on their gun...
Cut down the sensors so they look less obvious, dress in your favorite gang colors and run through the streets and Wal-Mart with your friends. Unless you were looking for combat realism, then nevermind...
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
you need one of two things:
a) Nudity (which presupposes a mixed gender group or at least a group interested in each others gender) which thus provides the possibility (though unlikely given the laser take croud) or improptu sex.
or
b) An unknowing population in the arena -- as others have suggested, playing the game in an urban area unaware of the game ads the element of police officers and atf types seeing you run around hinding and pointing guns -- and thus the added risk of being actually blown to hell.
Either way, your juices should really flow.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Perhaps someone could modify the symbol bar code reader gun (the type used in cash registers) for use in the laser tag game. It would not be very realistic I suppose but it would be pretty funny.
Hmm... actually, do you think this would work?
For each joint, do the following:
Take a small-diameter piece of pipe, and wrap it with heating coil. Seal off one end. Wrap around the pipe with insulation to prevent burns, but not so much that heat won't be able to escape. Fill most of the inside of the pipe with sauter, leaving just enough room for a large diameter nail to be inserted. Insert the nail, which should be long enough to not be completely enclosed when fully inserted. Seal off the opening enough to prevent sauter from leaking when melted. Weld the nail's outside end to a hinge, which is in tern welded structure that can be fitted firmly around one side of the body's joint. Do the same with the pipe. Further insulate the whole thing.
Repeat with each joint, and for tougher joints, use several.
Then, modify the laser tag system so that when it's been started, it activates the heating system for all joint limiters. When a hit is detected, the heating coil is shut off for a joint. In seconds, the limiter should become stuck. At the end of a game, they could be reactivated, heating back up and thawing the joint, or simply removed by removing the parts that wrap firmly around the sides of your joints.
Would this work, or not? And more importantly, would it be a lawsuit waiting to happen?
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
I've got two kids, but they're 2.5 and 10 months so I can't compare.
Speaking as a kid who never got a gun bought for him, it builds irresponsibility when peer pressure and your 'own' money the first opportunity you get to by a non-bullet projectile firing gun you do so, don't tell your parents, and then shoot your best friend in the face embedding a BB in his chin and breaking a tooth out of face - permanently.
If you are involved with your children, and introdcue them to a BB gun or whatever when we are in an environment that promotes 'playing' with weapons for any reason the parent needs to be involved and aware. Taking the stance of 'you can't have one' just makes the child go around the parent and learn the hard way vs. learning the right way.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
The problem with this logic is that children cannot yet understand the seriousness of what they are learning. I don't think that teaching a kid "martial arts" is gonna help them that much anyway. Just let 'em go at. If you feel that training is necessary Amateur Wrestling would be the way to go. Nearly every fight I've ever been in ended up on the groud. Chokes and locks are a bitch(ever see the Gracies on UFC?). Especially if the other opponent is untrained.
http://samtron.cjb.net
The laser tag pistols themselves are not lasers. They are just an infrared light focused by a lens. Basically a tv remote with a trigger. So here we have 2 options for widening the beam: use a different lens or use one of the guns to program a universal remote and play with that instead.
Use your imagination, it's just a flashlight.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
There is just a little difference. The real M16 shoots 5.56mm lead slugs at a velocity of about 950m/s. Airsoft guns shoot 6mm plastic pellets at a velcotiy of around 30-100m/sec depending on gun type. Now not only should it be apparant that the gun won't even shoot 300m, it should be equally apparant that it is far less accurate. He isn't talking about the accuracy of the shooter, rather the accuracy of the gun. For a real fiream, this is nothing special. It should be essentially dead on at 20m. For a plastic BB gun, that's a little different.
Back when I was in college, and Laser Tag was relatively new, some smart-aleck wag figured out that it was nothing more than a glorified remote control.
He got a programmable remote (a real one, that read another remote's signal, then duplicated it), put the Laser Tag signal into it, and voila! He had the Laser Tag equivalent of a sawed-off shotgun. He could take out several players at once with it. And often did.
Mount one of these. Years ago, all us neighborhood kids would put regular red lasers on Laser Challenge guns and played at night. We would have gone apeshit over the green ones, though obviously there's cost to take into consideration.
We used to play some lasertag in highschool. My personal favorite hack used a magnifying glass and a poster tube to make a long-range sniper-style rifle.
CONSTRUCTION: basically, i took the IR LED and lens off the old gun. securely insert the proper size magnifying glass lens into one end the the poster tube. Insert a plastic cup that fit inside the other end of tube, but can slide forward and backward in the tube.
ALIGNMENT: using a penlight, stuck through the opening in the plastic cup, determine the focal length of the setup. In a dark room, you can project an image of the lightsource onto a wall by adjusting the distance from the cup to the lens. find the proper locationa and mark it.
FINAL ASSEMBLY: put the LED from the gun into the cup at the end of the tube. remove all excess cardboard of the tube. Firmly attach to the gun. (we used duct tape).Go out and test!
RESULTS: basically this allows you to focus the beam more tightly. the downside is that you have less cross sectional area to the beam. this makes things harder to hit. the upside is that you have a more concentrated beam. this means it travels father. In side-by-side tests with fresh batteries, the modified gun shot fully 3 times further, but you had to be DAMN accurate.
get a good optics book (or even a general physics text) for more on the lens setup.
Why not do what all case modders do... Add a window kit and a neon light. This way at night you can use the light to see where you are going.
you should teach them about guns much as you taught them about the bow and arrow. both are weapons and both are dangerous. you say you taught your kids to respect the bow, well you could do the same with guns. much as you've done with knives and matches.. i fail to see why you totally ignore the gun altogether and pretend it doesn't exist..
People always talk like using a laser would help, but I don't think so. You want it to be:
1. an intense beam;
2. a narrow (almost collimated) beam;
3. but not too narrow;
4. the right color of light; and
5. cheap.
Item 1 can be accomplished with a laser LED, but I think that would be overkill. In fact, it's a little dangerous. It's likely that somebody will get it in the eye eventually, and that might lead to a permanent injury. I would buy a bright LED and replace the bulb with it. Maybe I would use a small resistor to bias it. My set takes 6 AA batteries. This will surely provide enough voltage.
Item 2 is almost accomplished with the lenses onboard. It would be a little hard to move them. You might just add a small lens when you install the LED. I wouldn't bother.
Item 3: Why bother with all the fussing about with lenses? I want a spread. My aim is lousy!
Item 4: The reciever may have a narrow band reciever so you may need to use a special color. I know that for my Laser Tag set the color is green. LEDs are available in red, orange, yellow green, and blue. The spectrum of a laser is extremely narrow. If you buy a red laser LED (say 632 nm), and your reciever is green (500 nm), you won't get anything. The spectrum of the ordinary LED is quite broad, so you will probably hit the right wavelength if you match it by eye.
Item 5: Yeah, you know it's cheap this way. You could even put 3 or 4 of them in there and still not hit the $1 mark (unless you shop at Radio Shack, then they'll be $1.19 each--sucker!).
I would take out the old bulb, remove the glass, and solder an LED onto the contacts (so as not to damage the original gun with my mod). I might add a resistor for biasing (really depends on the voltage of the socket). I might use a potentiometer so that I can dial up the brightness. I might take out the green filter. Maybe not. It shouldn't attenuate the beam that much.
Really what do you want to improve about it.
The whole making it hurt idea has already been said. Paintball and the plastic BBs and all that.
Do you want longer range? You could replace the IR LED with an IR Laser and make a sniper rifle. Just make sure that you wear eye protection.
How about IR gernades. A bunch of leds and a battery with a timer. Just press the buttion and toss.
IR shot buns. a lens that spreads the beam out more but also shortens the range.
IR Claymores.
IR landmines.
I mean use your imagination.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Back in the day when LazerTag was really popular, someone sold a "GI Joe" knockoff that was compatible with the LazerTag gear. The only down-side was that the "GI Joe" receptor didn't count to 5 like LazerTag receptors (minor mod required.) And the whole thing looked fugly.
So, I went to Radio Shack and picked up a plastic kit casing, and re-housed the modded board in the new casing. It was just a plain black box with a round receptor window, but it did the job.
The really cool mod was the gun. I took it apart and put it in a water gun housing that looked exactly like an M4A1 carbine. (You may think of it as a "short M16.) Yes, it really looked like that! It was even the real size and everything. I instantly became the cool guy at LazerTag parties, although I had to keep the gun out of sight until after dark. (And we only played in empty fields owned by people we knew.) Other guys painted their LazerTag rifles to look cool (camo was popular) but I had a freaking M4!
My M4 had a decent range, but I didn't try to keep the beam tight. As a result, it acted like a high-power shotgun. Great for open fields, not so great when I followed one guy into a barn. :-(
Or you could try paintball. These guys ( http://www.tactical-paintball.com ) sell some VERY realistic paintball markers...magazine fed, no "hopper" and the CO2 tank is concealed in the stock of the gun. Pretty sweet stuff!!!
Hey, thanks for pointing this out. I didn't make myself clear enough before. I'm not saying that my children shouldn't learn about the real world, and I do teach them about that, but that's different than thinking that hurting other people is a form of entertainment.
My oldest is 8, and we are considering sending him to karate or tae kwan do. If I were a gun person (i.e. own or use), I would certainly teach my children how to handle them and fire them.
There's just a difference of opinion about teaching your children about violence and that it is not a good thing, and at the same time teaching them how to deal with it appropriately.
God what a bag of worms I opened. Really, it's not my fault, I just was commenting on the second article linked about parents wanting to ban violent toys!
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
Last time I rode a bicycle on a ramp was in middle school.
Blar.
Allowing your kids to play with (toy)guns is a good thing because:
...)
1. It provides an outlet for naturally-occurring aggression that is cheaper and safer than Ritalin
2. It stimulates fantasy and role-playing, and encourages the discernment between fantasy and reality (with parental influence, of course). The kids can see and feel for themselves that a plastic gun is 'fake'.
3. Keeping things away from your kids supposedly because they're dangerous when they're really not undermines your credibility as a parent. (Dad says that guns kill people, but Billy's sister is still walking around after Billy shot her. I guess Dad doesn't know what he's talking about. Oh look - a stove!)
4. They're going to when your back is turned anyway. You can be part of the process or not (no, don't swing it - look through the sights like this
I want my kids to know, understand and master the dangerous reality of our world, and that's why I teach them to play with and use guns, knives and matches.
Easy to do. Get a lens (convex, glass better than plastic, so it doesn't absorb the IR). Try surplusshed.com or something. Any lens that'll fit into a tube you like (maybe into the gun's barrel). Make a disc of the same-diameter, and drill a small hole into it. Glue it into place inside the barrel/tube one focal length of the lens from the end of the tube. Next glue the lens into the end of the tube. This will collimate the light, causing the light to travel in a straight line, giving a focused dot.
If you want to get it into a good focus, try taking a light bulb, and assemble the tube/pinhole with the light bulb on the side of the pinhole. If the lens is at the right distance, a dot of visible light should be visible on the far wall. (you are imaging the pinhole onto the wall.) Advantages: narrow beam width, cheap, easy to build, pretty tough. Disadvantages: lose lots of signal, can't cheat as easily :P.
Good luckIt's called the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System, or MILES. It's been in use in the army since the 80's. They even make sensors for tanks and Humvees, as well as individual soldiers. The laser transmitter attaches to the barrel of an actual M-16, and is activated by the sound from the firing of blanks, so you approximate the noise and weapon kickback you would with firing an actual round.
Some links (the second with pictures):
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/miles.htm
http://www.peostri.army.mil/PRODUCTS/MILES/
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
Additionally a higher setting can be used to totally vapourise your opponents creating real suspense in those show down situations.
Pulse timing.Not only does an overly-long pulse duration let players cheesily "hose" the arena, but it kills batteries faster. A shorter pulse creates a more technical and responsive game.This may be done in harware with a rheostat, or require some sort of chip flash to adjust.
Retaliation time. the time after receiving shot that one can still fire; this should be only long enough to allow a shot if the trigger was in mid pull when hit. Will require some tweaking to perfect. Any longer destroys the already meager consequences of a hit. Also requires some major chip-foolery. These 2 changes will make a more robust game by far.
Sync. If there are odd delays between trigger-pull, beam and sound, you will have as much fun as a novice palm user with graffiti has.
Shiny housings, poor sensors. It is incredibly frustrating to see a legitimate hit get ignored, especially since most equipment exposes the firer on trigger pull. Often there are not enough sensors to really detect a beam's strike from angles where the users percieve a sensor to be. Equipment that has a shell over the sensors also causes problems.
MaterialsGet as many sensors as your group can stand to wear, and if possible make sure that center-of-mass hits are longer than limbs. Last of all, make your own gun shells. Nobody seems to make a solid, balanced off-the-shelf gun.
I have run hundreds of laser tag events for novices and competitiion class players, designed and tested competition game formats, and competed in the Zone Internationals.
And to all the paintball loving smartasses, didn't you read the question? If paintball is a "more realistic mod" to a Laser Tag setup, is live ammo an "even more realistic" solution? Tryit, and let us Taggers know how that works out. Or just realize that good laser tag is simply a different experience, and not one you experienced at Qzar one time.
Looks good for your age..
I have two children and my wife feels pretty much the same way you do about guns and children.
My own view is a little more realistic. We live in a world where violence, whether we like it or not, is a reality. While I have never owned an actual projectile weapon (what purpose would it serve in suburbia other than to get into trouble shooting holes in things?) I did however have plenty of toy guns growing up. Later, I fired weapons (M-16s) while in the Air Force.
Amazingly enough, though I've never been sat down and explained the nature and dangers of guns, my exposure to such things (including the main topic of laser tag guns) hasn't yielded a psychotic lunatic nor even a mild gun fanatic. To be honest I'm with the crowd that was able to figure out what a gun was on his own (kids really aren't stupid if you give them half a chance) and will take them one way or the other. A weapon in the hands of someone with no morales is a bad thing. A weapon in the hands of a responsible person is a good thing. A toy in the hands of anyone is still just a toy.
I suppose the question is, do you fear weapons or do you fear your children can't make correct decisions on their own?
Does no one remeber PHOTON? Damn that game was so cool...
Ok, how about from the other side. Although I'm plenty old enough and married, I don't have kids. I do however have parents.
They started to raise me your way. They realized their mistake when I got bullied by a girl. They spent a lot of time to undo what they previously taught me. My siblings were not raised that way.
Violence is part of nature, it won't go away if you ignore it.
All true wisdom can be found in sigs.
Paintball or airsoft is better for outdoors than lasers. Lasers are kinda gay. Projectiles are sooo much more fun. They are also expensive and require more care than cheap plastic laser guns. You get what you pay for. Make weapons using PVC pipes wrapped with insulation and duct tape. If you get bored with shooting at your enemies, try beating them with a large, blunt object. You can make short swords, long swords, two handed swords, rapiers, pikes, poles, pole-axes...
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Got news for you, wrestling is a sport, not a way to defend yourself. Physical conditioning aside, a wrestler is at a great disadvantage against a martial artist whose skills include grappling. The Gracies are not wrestlers, they are martial artists, practicing a form of jiu-jitsu that they have developed. Look at your old videotapes that shows one of the Gracies against the 300lb wrestler. The guy was easily twice his size, yet Gracie (Royce?) (sp?) forced him to submit.
Practical martial arts are the way to go to teach people young and old self-defense, discipline, confidence, and courtesy, if taught correctly. Note I said "practical". If you're kicking at your opponent's head, spinning around, or hoping to God you don't end up grappling, it is NOT practical. Nothing wrong with sport-oriented Tae Kwon Do, just don't expect to do well in a bar fight.
In fact, no martial arts style is the be-all and end-all of fighting skills. Study several. Learn each well, and then move on to a totally different style while still developing your skills in the earlier style and bringing what you learned to your new style. Study Kenpo, jiu-jitsu, Okinawan karate, Aikido, Kali, etc. Learn from them all and remember that they are all right for what they teach (when taught properly), and that they are ALL wrong for what they do not teach.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
I'm 22 years old, male, went to public school and have never been in a fight. I've never been beaten up, mugged, attacked, or attacked anyone else. Ever. The closest I got was play-fighting as a kid, and that was never with the intent to actually hurt anyone. I don't know any martial arts (except for some basics with a Katana), I've never held a real gun let along fired one.
'Course I *do* live in Canada...
I've been looking at and yearning for one of those fancy green lasers at think geek.7 /
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/5a4
Maybe this is finally something that would be useful for the device. I'm sure the laser could trip the photo cells on the lasertag gear. Just strap them to the sides of your guns and set up some sort of circuit to interface with the trigger. That way, it would be more realistic. You'd give up your location when you fired. It'd look cool as hell too.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
That's the obvious mod - enough juice to put a serious hole in something would be a really cool mod to make. We're talking "Tool Time"-caliber power.
Of course, it's not terribly practical, but if practicality was the point then you wouldn't be playing games like laser tag in the first place, anyway.
So just amp the suckers up and go for some serious pain. Or at least give DARPA some ideas. Bwah-ha-ha!
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
take a regular old remote control with you. it's really short range, but it'll most likely get everyone in a really wide radius, including yourself if you're not careful.
I think we can all agree on this: As with everything in life, one should experience/practice/eat/whatever many things in moderation. Some competitive, and possibly violent sport such as paintballing, or sportshooting in MODERATION can be very healthy, and a great learning experience. At the same time, other activities to even-out the violent activities, such as painting or cooking, when also practiced in moderation will yield a very rich learning experience, and probably a well-balanced life/mental health/ability to defend ones self in more ways than one.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Laser Tag is unrealistic by nature. It's a real world attempt to approximate a form of combat that only exists in fiction, IMHO.
Do you want "realistic" Star Wars or "realistic" Star Trek? Or better yet, PHOTON... Cough... hack....
Ok. That's not going to work but you can take the premise of laser tag and play with it. Ideas below (feasibility will vary):
Remember "Laser Tag" was meant to be just that. Tag. Our imaginations automatically take the guns and vests somewhere they may not be able to go.
Add in scenarios like "Capture the Flag" or "Hold Hill 529". Or better yet a grenade like gadget that will exploded if handled for more than x number of seconds or minutes. A weird form of "Hot Potato".
Modify the gear for team play. Different sensors can disable the entire teams in different ways. Add in a randomizer so you can have a "Critical Hit". You'll have to continually experiment but it could be fun.
If you add in the scenarios or campaigns with hardware that doesn't "die" but renders an inactive penalty for being scored a hit that can make for a funner game. Or reacts in either ways, lights up their vest making them an easier target.
You could even have a multitude of "gear" and reactions. A RadioFrequency gadget that may make vests "sing out" like a sonar ping, or a remote control gadget that allows you to trigger someone's gun or grenade.
Rather than one team versus another team, you could have multiple teams with different scenarios or goals intermixing.
I always thought it would be fun to add in robotics or a "remote" component. Automated defenses or some players that remotely control certain defenses. Maybe some more advanced or hardier embedded or fixed weaponry. Or a series of trips and traps that can placed, moved, and or modified.
The cool thing is if you work on the gear it's reusable, and tweakable. That could add some fun to the game but it could also kill it. Some folks can't handle having a game where the rules can be tweaked. For those regulation tennis may be more suited to them.
Technology can be something to play with. If you've got the folks who want to play. If Society for Creative Anachronisms can go at each other with swords and armor, why not this?
Have Fun!
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
Compare this to the minimum angular diffraction for the laser diameter and wavelength. Then choose a lense that minimizes the angular diffraction. Alternatively, choose a lense size that minimizes the laser dot size at some particular distance. The two methods shouldn't be practically different at these scales.
Unfortunately I don't have easy access to my textbooks at the moment, but if you want help on the math and physics you can send me a message.
Mathematics is not a crime.
Violence is to be avoided. My children will be taught to walk away if possible. They will be taught to RUN away if walking away is not possible. And if running away is not possible then I feel sorry for the bully that picks on them. Provided they are well-adjusted members of society, the people best prepared to deal with violent situations are the LEAST likely to find themselves in one.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
I saw a 140W water-cooled CO2 laser that sold on ebay for just over $300. If you could manage to make that portable, it would be about as realistic as it gets.
And, even better, it gives you real incentive to avoid getting shot.
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begin-soapbox
I've got two kids, and I'm teaching them gun safety, how to fight (including how to seriously disable your opponent), and how to handle a knife (as a tool). Not because I want them to become violent, sadistic, megalomaniacs, but because I want them to know what will kill someone. That way they know what _not_ to do.
They already know that you never, ever, point a gun at someone unless you are going to kill them. We don't even tell them that shooting someone can wound them (they get enough of that from the movies).
There is a balnce that needs to be maintained, teaching the kids responsibility for their actions, and making them understand that the repurcussions for their actions can be, in kid's-speak, "really, really, bad."
To not teach them anything would be a greater evil. If they are just taught to loathe and fear any weapon, they will either a) loathe even legitimate uses of that tool, b) rebel against their parents and cause greater damage than if they had proper respect of the tool, or c) when inadvertantly exposed to such an item, they will not recognize it for what it is, and, in the great tradition of non-reposibility, shoot their friend and try to sue the manufacturer for their incompetence.
end-soapbox
--- This
More importantly, Lazer tag usually is a dual system: a red light beam used SOLELY for sighting purporses, and a radio wave that goes through things like your shirt, etc. to hit the sensor. even if you try and cheat.
Mirrors bounce the light beam but at most will block the radio wave, not bounce it off of you.
For simple ways to increase your lazer tag fun, you can try the following. 1) Turn up the volume. Make the vest SCREAM in pain when you are hit. 2) Get more sensors. Shoulders, chest and back are fine, but how about a head shot for extra points. 3) Go for mines, as disccussed earlier.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I had a programable TV remote that we set to the laser tag freq. It worked like a shotgun. It did not have much range, but it could hit several targets all at once!!
I only referenced the Gracies as far as chokes and locks, not as am. wrestlers. And besides I dont know jack shit about any "martial arts". I do know that I've been in dozens of fights and hardly ever hit someone, it hurts my hand far too much. I've also been hit some and it hurts very much as well. So I try to avoid it. People freak when you've got their air cut off and you are laying on top of them though. I just wish people would fight one on one nowadays. It's always gotta be a group jumping somone else, or someone getting shot.
http://samtron.cjb.net
There are enough police who rely on "racial profiling" that it's worth mentioning. Which is to say, it's implied by including the skin tone of the victim that if the it had been a white kid, the law enforcement officer in question wouldn't have been so quick to shoot to kill.
Put a diffraction grating on the front of your gun, instant spread fire gun :)
With a sophisticated laser tag system, you get real time stats, game rules enforced by the equipment itself, etc. etc.
Paintball _is_ fun, but it's a different type of gameplay.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Children naturally misunderstand power. They see television, or just other kids running around shouting bang and, if sheilded from the responsibility surrounding power, think that's something they can apply to help themeselves feel better. Then, parents hide tools that are (improperly but widely) associated with power from their children and the children naturally become curious about it (Sex, guns, etc). It is a recipe for the worst kind of disaster. Hiding things from children is never a realistic option.
Also, kids need to become responsible as early as they're capable of it because that is the nature of life. Since Mogg met Og parents have wanted their kids to continue a carefree childlike existence that... never existed. If Og took a second to think back on middle school, and ask himself if he was surrounded by happy peppy people all of the time or if a few of the people in his life were sometimes troubled he'd be moving in the direction of waking up. People come in all shapes and sizes, try to help your children deal with that as early as you can. Some of us think that helping them understand self defense (and whatever tools relevent to self defense the parent finds appropriate) is a Good Thing(tm).
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MILES uses real weapons with blank rounds. The MILES laser transmitter clamps into the barrel, so if you do manage to load a live round, you destroy the transmitter and the weapon, but not your target. The "bang" of the blank round triggers the laser transmitter. So you have to lug ammo
and magazines around. All the real-world problems of jams and misfires occur, too.
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If you're hit, it beeps. Loudly. Continously. And you can't turn it off. Only a referee can turn it off.
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If you're hit, you're dead. You're carried off to the "dead" pen. Often, becoming "dead" means an extra 20-mile march or some similar unpleasant detail.
-
In the newer versions, beams are coded, and you can tell who hit whom. Soldiers who miss too much get sent to the rifle range for extra training.
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Scores affect your real-life Army career. Why send losers to war?
The latest generation gear uses GPS and data links so that indirect fire weapons can be simulated. But you probably don't need that.Established October 1996 - 7+ Years on the Internet
And im sure their site looks EXACTLY like it did back in 1996. You would think they could make a nicer, more modern looking site in 7+ years!!!
I used to know a guy in the National Guard, and he said every so often they would run excersises where two "teams" were formed with opposing objectives.
n hall/9_ 11/features/28041-1.html
r ticle.cfm ?Id=763
They use real guns modified with a laser in the barrel and use blanks in the exercise to add realism.
I did a little google research, the system is called MILES (Military Laser Tag).
A little bit of info about the marines using it is available here:
http://www.dcmilitary.com/marines/henderso
Also, it looks like the military may replace this system with an RF based system:
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/a
So, maybe there will be some surplus MILES gear on the market at some point - if so I would imagine it would be exactly what you're looking for.
There are, of course, a couple possible problems. Even surplus MILES gear is probably going to be damn expensive. Also, the removal of the laser system could result in an operable weapon. If the last part is correct, then you won't see any MILES gear unless you find it on the black market.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
Will your kids be born because you fixed some hooker's motherboard?
Hey, maybe my kids and your kids can get together and play, and my kids can beat up your kids! Wouldnt that be fun!?
I'll tell ya what, you teach your kids all that, I'll teach my kids skills that don't involve violence. Then, your kids can come over and wash my kids cars for some pocket change, ok?
In the Air Force we where using "MILES" gear
.. just like paintball
a commercial industrial strength laser tag, and
after some rather rugged encounters...dropped
weapons, banging around...etc
The strength of the beams got out of hand and
when shot with them, the intensity was such as to
create quarter sized bruises
but with infrared spectrum light beams you can't see. Good way to lose an eye and the range was
way beyond any paint gun.....hehehe
How about replacing the the LED emitters with actual laser diodes and replacing the IR recievers with ones that will detect the laser beam. There is one problem with this, the beam will probably now be too narrow. The only thing I can think of is to replace the sensors with ones that have a much larger surface area or install a lens that will refract the beam into the sensor. Im not really familiar with the hardware so I dont know how big the sensors are to begin with.
~Tommy Boomfiger http://www.gotapex.com/forums
1) I don't know about you, but I rarely feel paintballs through my clothes (I have to constantly check myself when I'm under fire).
Pain is not something I would associate with paintball. I mostly associate paint getting everywhere and trash bags to contain it.
2) The POINT is that what these guys are REALLY looking for is a developer's kit for the "commercial" laser tag systems. I guarantee you could have a real fun time with that if you're a little technically inclined.
You could make the system portable and lug it into a gynasium or the woods or where-ever.
Some of the more sophisticated systems have fully programmable vests and guns with a LCD display which link via RF to a central server... you can pick firing modes, simulate area attacks, count ammo, track hits on different sensors, stream audio, etc. etc. And if that isn't enough, and you need the pain motivation, they make packs that vibrate, and yes, even shock you. (Usually the shock is a feature that surfaces due to a broken vibrator motor but I digress.)
Can you imagine the cool shit you could do with that and a developers kit? You could play Halo outside, complete with in-game chat.
Your friends are playing dumbass laser tag designed for the spawn of Soccer Moms. And no one who plays laser tag competetively plays with only a STUN penalty for getting hit. You get hit, lose points, get hit enough, you're out.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
My first two years of college we played with the knock-off Laser Tag gear. We found that IR Remotes triggered the sensors. For what its worth they don't like it when you play in a university building. Even if its an EE building. Ah well, we moved on to steam tunnel exploration.
Weilding a gun in public is also not a good idea.
Put them in Karate. It's non-violent and actually teaches you to AVOID fights like the plague but, if they're ever attacked they will be able to defend themselves. The bonus is it's great exercise and builds confidence. Head in the sand upbringings will only lead to disaster.
Dont be a wuss, get a paintball gun instead. Much funner, and more realistic too.
Is there already such a thing as a line-of sight fiberless fiber optic radio? That's what I've always thought would be cool.
--digitalartform.com
Infra-Red remotes triggered our Laser-Tag knock-off sensors. After getting kicked out of the EE building on campus we moved on to steam tunnel exploration.
Thanks for the input. I was in Tae Kwan Do for some time, but left because the owner was a d***. Never went back. I have no experience with Karate, so it's nice to hear someone who knows recommending it.
.22).
Someday I may own a gun, at which point I would definitely teach my children about it, and possibly how to use it (depending on their age) effectively. I'm actually a qualified "expert" marksman (at least with a
My point was not that I was not going to teach my children about violence, or not teach them about the tools of violence, I just don't feel it's appropriate for them to view these things as toys, i.e. something to play with.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
Though the question was 'how can I make laser tag more realistic'. The answer of paintball is almost a legitamate solution, but doesn't answer the actual question posed
I think what people are trying to say is: Make it more dangerous. Improve the "laser" to the point where it can do damage. Coming back from a game where your opponent looks like he has chicken pox from all the burn marks would make it a little more fun.
Are you to wear special safety googles while playing? How do you avoid looking at a faulty gun where the trigger has stucked?
Good equipment has multiple vibration feedback, loud audio alarms, etc. etc. Also, you're looking for a place that offers multiple styles of gameplay (elimination, predator/prey, team play with 'respawn' area, etc.)
As to the hand block shenanigans... the really good equipment uses a type of narrow band IR that is transparent to flesh, or they have really large sensor areas (or multiple sensor areas) that are difficult to cover with limbs. Moreover, the guns are usually two-hands-required-to-fire, so if they're being retarded and trying to block, you're shooting them on the other exposed sensors and they're not returning fire.
My big issue is with people who "dance" in an attempt to keep you from hitting their sensors. God, do they people realize they look like handicapped children at a Yanni concert?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Back many years ago we made our own version of laser tag - CAR laser tag. Best played at night - We took 5 sensors and mounted them to a board which we placed in the back window of the "it" car. Reasonable boundaries in the city were set, and the car that was "it" got a 2 minute head start. The remaining "chaser" cars (often with 3-4 laser gun wielding idiots each) would then attempt to find and chase down the "it" car until all of the sensors had been shot. Then it would move to the next car etc. Winning car was the one that managed to be "it" the longest. Needless to say, this resulted in many Rockford-esque moves, insane speeds through back alleys, power slides and every other traffic violation you can think of. Now that I think about it, I hope I never have kids.
I have played both Laser Tag (Q-zar) and Paintball and I enjoy both, but I don't think you can simply compare the two on the basis of what incentive there is not to get hit.
The variety of gameplay possibilities the realtime scoring and rules management system in laser tag games offer, make the experience completely different from Paint Ball.
If you want an incentive not to get hit in laser tag, then I suggest a game of Q-Zar Eliminator. When you get tagged, you loose one of your preset amount of "lives", and when you have lost all of them you are simply out of the game. You loose. You can steal lives from other players if you shoot accurately enough, a game rule which would be completely unenforcable in Paint Ball. You have to watch your ass, if the arena is well designed and set with the right ambient sounds and lighting, this can be a truely nerve wrecking experience. I have never experienced the same amount of suspence in any game of Paint Ball I have played.
If the reason you prefer Paint Ball is that it hurts when you get hit (which supposedly would give you an incentive not to get hit), then I must question your understanding of the game.
Paint Ball is NOT about not getting hit. Paint Ball is about winning the game. To win the game you sometimes have to make sacrifices and take casualties. Get the flag and take it to the goal. If one of your team survives and accomplishes this, the victory is yours. Paint Ball is not a war simulation. I have seen plenty of trained military personel get their asses thouroughly spanked by more sports oriented teams, because they don't understand that it isn't a problem if you take a couple of casualties on you way to the goal. In Paint Ball pain is temporary, honor is forever, and there are no points for second place.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Looks interesting.
http://lightbrain.8m.com/mtdesign.htm
We used to have a few trees in the neighborhood that produced shitloads of crab apples (that's what WE called them; they could have been any kind of apple). About mid-August there were enough apples to fill 2-3 Radio Flyer wagons full.
We filled 'em up, made teams and some ad-hoc defenses and had at it throwing apples at each other. A strong 13 year old can throw an apple hard enough that it hurts at close distance (across a residential street), and invariably at least one kid (usually the one who cried the most) got one right in the mouth, and usually one that had gotten kinda mashed and full of sand or something.
Ideally the apples could be picked up and used for several fights, although advent of the yellow jacket season usually put a limit on handling of half-rotten apples.
You won't have kids. Untill you get an atitude correction. Probably from the guy washing your car who's fed up with your arrogance.
A) You making more money that a Peace Corp worker, doesn't make you better. Nor does it make you better than the guy washing your car.
B) Teaching your children things other than being liberal does not make them stupid. One has nothing to do with the other.
C) Learning Martial arts is about self disaplin not violence. Something children, and most adults these days could do with a fair dose of.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I actually have quite a bit of experience in this area... a rarity when it comes to /. topics. ; )
One thing that really makes laser tag much more fun and realistic requires quite a bit of hardware work, but the results will be well worth your while. It's possible to remove the sensors from the vests and wire them into an ordinary gym headband... I can't describe how to do this in specific detail without drawing diagrams and actually demonstrating, but hey, if my friends and I did it (and we have little to no experience with electronics), how hard can it be?
The effect on gameplay is astounding. It's much more realistic and fun for everyone if the area to cover is the head rather than the chest. This way, if you want to cover, you can't just crouch down behind, say, a low wall or a tree stump... you would actually have to hide your head in order to avoid being hit. My friends and I had a rule in which you couldn't fire unless your vest was showing, so as to prevent you from just covering your vest and such... this prevents that, because if you're covering your head (say, standing behind a tree) you're not going to be able to fire well anyways, due to the obstruction of vision.
The main problem is that creating the headbands is time-consuming, and can be expensive if you want a sensor in the back of the headband as well, since you would need 2 packs for each. (we tried using sensors bought from Radio Shack but they had a range of less than 10 feet) But if you're actually looking for better ways to play laser tag and not paintball, i would definately say go for it.
One of the interesting things about laser strike is that the gun produces the IR beam.
:)
What I wanted to do is cover the players with IR diodes and put the photodetector on the rifle itself. This way, you could use an expensive sensor in the weapon for accuracy, and cover the player in inexpensive emitters. This will of course disallow the use of night vision goggles.
Each diode on the target player will flash in a combination or sequence that allows the system to determine where the target was shot. This would incur penalties such as leg shots, or weapon failure. A blood loss system could be used to determine when the player is no longer able to stand or fight due to the calculated loss. This would be managed by a server of some description, with data exchange over radio link, be it tones over an AM link or WiFi.
Finally, it would be fun to add a gas flash burner to the gun to make it crack when it fires. Night time laser strike would never be the same. Just no point blank shots though.
Paintballs travel at 300 feet per second. At 50 feet, that gives you 166 ms to see the paintball, determine where the paintball is going, and get out of the way.
Which doesn't happen. It's a little more realistic at 100 feet, and fairly easy to do at 150 - but again, this assumes that you happen to be looking at the person shooting when the paintball is fired, which in most cases is not true.
As for military types, I'm guessing you havn't played in at least 10 years, or you hang around with a lot of wierdo survivalist types. Go to any commercial field, and the vast majority of the players will be 10->18 years old, some with parents. The demographic is pretty much the same as the amusement park crowd, with less girls (as is true with most athletics, unfortunately.)
paintball
The biggest problem I have with laser tag is that I've seen too many kids cheat by simply convering up the IR detectors. The best mod would be to make the entire surface of you and your gun a detector, so you couldn't block it. Then narrowing the beam might have some meaning. Oh, and actually being able to hear the device over the noise in the arena might help too -- I was never quite sure what it was trying to tell me.
Rifles *RIFLE* the round - it's the angular momentum of the round that delivers the majority of the long-range accuracy. With Airsoft (or paintball, for that matter), you're dealing with a basically spherical projectile, which is not rifled.
paintball
Stop arguing which is better and accept there diferent, in paintball it's a case of when youre shot you act like youve been shot (not to hard given the pain if you got shot on a soft spot), with laster tag, you run back to a recharge point and contine.
:)
It's like arging betwen Counterstrike and Team Fortress, diferent games for diferent people.
But yes I would like to see laser-tag improved:
To reduce the beam-size you must increaase the density of sensors on the body, ideally going onto sensors which are like EL-string and forming a whole sensor 'net' around the body, to eliminate intentional beam spread you'd want the target area to be the same size as the barrel, so you'd be talking a net with about a 1/2 inch spacing, that's not cheep.
Other improvements, get rid of the reality nuts and send them paintballing so we can turn the arenas into safer more adventuous places
We had quite the arms-race going among our laser tag group some oh... ten or more years ago. The main fray was between me and another electronics-savvy kid named Dave. I made decoys (flashing lights, to mimic the hats, for night time play) and also took the three broad emitters from my (useless) starbase and implanted them in my pistol. (a la "the grenade") The pistol was then a fearful object... anything within 20 feet in a generouls 150 degree cone would take a hit. Excellent for when being chased - just point behind you and pull trigger while running. Of course anything beyond 20 feet was safe from the effects. Had to be careful around walls though - it was quite possible to hit onesself (via reflection) when shooting at a target that was standing by a wall. I called that a "ricochet".
:-)
Dave's weapon of choice was a true grenade.. a small ball with about ten IR leds on it, and a long run of wire to a jack that plugged into his rifle. He'd chuck the grenade (like up onto a building roof where I was standing...) and fire the rifle. The grenade would then most likely start delivering hits to anyone nearby. Thank god for helmets - those babies were hard to hit from below, though they rendered you basically deaf when you were wearing one.
All of our tech was based on the guns, since at the time we weren't capable of reproducing the low frequency pulsing that the LT targets required. (it was right about 2khz iirc) The frequency was very high tolerance at least for us back then, I'd guess now at about +/- 10 Hz. Oh, I also added a "reset" button to my rifle. It cut power to the batteries when pressed. Useful in theory for if the gun "locked up" which they sometimes did when running around with them, but in practice more useful to avoid that nasty "cool down delay" after firing for ~20 sec straight. Just tap the reset after it went into cool down, and it was ready to fire another 20 seconds.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Maybe www.dark-tag.com is a better option?
not only will this make it easier to be seen (hence more skill in hiding) but it will also prevent outsiders from mistaking you for doing something bad. Last night I heard a dog barking and saw out my window someone wearing mostly black clearly hiding in the alcove of a garage door. My first reaction was not oh some kids playing laser tag, but hrmm what is he up to? And I looked out the window trying to both be seen by him and figure out what he was doing, After I realized they were just playing laser tag I wasn't concerned, but if I had poor eyesight and was more paranoid I could called the cops on them. If the owner of the garage saw them for example, she might have thought they were tagging, and called the cops.
preferably with some girls involved.
TODO: come up with a clever sig
The first (and only) time I tried paintball, it was with a few co-workers at BFG Paintball in Milwaukee. Grime-covered place, kept playing the same 3 songs from The Matrix soundtrack the whole time we were there, and the floor was too slippery from months of uncleaned paint to provide any traction.
Several of the players brought their own guns, and then dialed them up to the maximum velocity allowed by the range. They'd then crank the velocity up even higher when the ref wasn't looking.
People were lying about when they got hit, and the folks that brought their own gear were most interested in raising welts on other players. I punched a guy in the visor after he went full-auto on me from ten feet away -- after I had already been shot. I was walking off the course (with my muzzle-sock on) when the asshole popped me.
When the Spy vs. Spy game came up (end of the day, where one person on each team secretly works for the other side), the spy on our side snuck up behind people (me included), then shot us each in the back with the muzzle touching us. That welt bled. Took six weeks for it to heal fully.
Moral? Never play paintball with people you don't know, and never play it with people who aren't 100% honest. Seems like there are very few honest people in paintball.
Me, I'm never playing paintball again. The guns are amazingly inaccurate, and the players who play all the time have guns that spray full-auto paintballs everywhere. Takes the equality out of the game.
My thought was to trigger a taser wired up under your shirt. His was bullets.
Perhaps rubber bullets. (but the taser thing would work with video games).
So you get hit, your in a big boatload of pain for a while and fall and thrash on the floor for a while. So what? You wanna "play war" little boys? Then stop pretending that's it's blood and pain free.
Ok, forget lasers. Use rocks.
This army recruitment crap of paintball/laser tag/video games is just sick. I'll take my bugs bunny and itchy and scratchy any day than the sanitized faux-violence on the TV and in these "games".
Wanna play? Join the services. If you lose and you're lucky, you still might have 3 limbs and some of your hearing.
M.I.L.E.S. (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagment System, in case you were wondering) is horrible. It is awful. It is so atrocious that I can't truly capture its badness except to say that it sucks about as much as a black hole. Don't look into it. Don't consider it. Don't mention it...for gawdsake, don't even think about it.
I have been in the Army for about eight years now and I honestly cannot sum up how much I hate this system. I once told myself, "Self, I think I could be happy doing anything as long as I don't have to wear M.I.L.E.S gear." Since I told myself that I have spent significant time in swamps, deserts and everywhere in-between and I can tell you as a bone fide user that I preferred being in a hostile combat environment where I was getting shot at over wearing that crap in training.
Fortunately for you I find it very hard to believe that you would find any that works on the market, and if you did, the last thing your neighbors or police would want is you and your friends shooting real machine guns at each other with real (blank) ammo and then trying to explain that its just a game.
Stick with Laser Tag...trust me on this one.
Viola: 1. A stringed instrument of the violin family, slightly larger than a violin, tuned a fifth lower, and having a deeper, more sonorous tone.
Voila: Used to call attention to or express satisfaction with a thing shown or accomplished.
The thing that makes paintball "better" (really, different) is SENSORY FEEDBACK, a portion of which is the momentary pain if you get hit.
I think part of the problem here is the parent poster seems more interested in proving how big of a man he is than seriously discussin the merits of the sport. Getting hit by a paintball, in normal circumstances (i.e. the guns being used have been properly chronographed and you're not in playing a seriously competetive tournament), hurts about as much as your little sister pinching you. It's annoying, but you quickly forget about it. I have seen plenty of birthday parties of 10-year-olds playing paintball and never seen any of them put off about getting shot. They do very much like shooting their parents, however.
What makes paintball "better" is you can SEE when you hit someone. You can FEEL where you get hit. You can HEAR shots that whiz by your head. You can HEAR shots that hit objects near you. AIMing is much more precise activity. You can move anywhere in any manner, and you can score hits on any part of an opponent's person or equipment.
Laser whatever is much more "ethereal". Everything about it is more "simulated" - you can't really see when you've hit someone, or tell where you've been hit or by who, or see or hear your or other people's shots, as they're just photons.
Those reasons also make paintball much more fun to watch.
paintball
They were green guns, that you held with two hands. There were switches to have a wide, but short beam, or a narrow, but long beam. You could also set to single shot, semi auto, or auto I believe. There was an ammo counter as well, and if you slapped the bottom of the grip, it reloaded. The target was either the gun, or a sensor attached to a headband.
It was easily the coolest setup I've ever used, very effective, and didn't look completely dorky, definitely for college age kids, and it had awesome range.
Does anybody have any idea what the name of the system is, and where I might still be able to find one?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Technology has changed drastically since the 80's when I used to play Laser Tag, Photon, etc. These days you can buy fully programmable microcontrollers (Microchip PIC16F628A) for less than $2 a pop. I'm currently in the middle of a couple different IR projects with microcontrollers, so the potentials of this type of project are fresh in my mind.
I would create the entire thing from scratch, as opposed to modding existing equipment. The circuit would be extremely simple (a PIC, a transistor, a few resistors, IR emitters and detectors, and push buttons for firing, reloading, resetting, etc).
You could either just use IR LEDs, or get emitters that already modulate at some frequency. If you also encode data on your carrier then you could enable options like friendly fire, varying weapon damage, etc.
Some ideas that come to mind:
Use FM RF transmitters to relay all data back to a central data collection point to show game progress real-time.
Use an IR transmitter modulated with a special code to reset each player. This would reduce cheating.
Similar to above, use an IR transmitter (with a different code) that can be used to heal people. This unit could be placed in a fixed location, or you could have a medic type player that only has a weak weapon.
Use virtual ammo, implemented as above. Once your weapon is out of ammo you have to pick up additional ammo, which recharges your weapon.
Just like Medics in TFC, you could allow medics to infect enemy players. If a player is infected then they constantly emit a signal that would infect their teammates. Anyone infected will gradually loose health until they die. This could be implemented with a couple weak IR transmitters directly on the player. Of course medics on your own team can heal infections.
Put a IR receiver in the weapon and not just on the player. Thus if it is possible to shoot at someone, it is possible to be shot. That has always been my biggest gripe about laser tag - people holding their gun around a corner where you can't see their sensor.
I could go on and on, but I suppose that's enough rambling for now.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
It would help if you had a clue what you were talking about. Extensive training with guns, knives, and "common items"? Do YOU know how to do this? Do you, despite being the inventor of "chi fist" even know which martial arts specialize in knife fighting and the relevant differences between them? Or do you simply intend to enroll them in your nonsense martial art?
If you really want your kids to grow up knowing how to handle themselves reasonably, I recommend enrolling them in something other than Karate or Tae Kwon Do which have been recommended here. Young adults aren't going to be able to hit that hard - either enroll them in Escrima if you're seriously afraid for their safety so they can learn knife defense, or let them do something like Judo where their ability to hit won't influence the outcome of an encounter as much. And when they get older, enroll them at wrestling in school - I've seen seasoned wrestlers give black belts in Jujitsu a hard time.
Teach your kids something useful, but know what you're doing first.
C) Learning Martial arts is about self disaplin not violence.
The original poster states this was a joke after he said it, but it betrayed his true intentions. The fact is, swimming or tennis or any sport can teach discipline. Martial arts has done a good job wrapping itself in Oriental mysticism, when Jet Li can utter some tripe about "to defeat your enemy, you must first know yourself." Fact is, it is interpersonal combat, in the same way boxing is. Boxing has a purer spirit, and it's place in American history especially is more pronounced. If i was going to teach my kid anything about combat, it would be to box. May not help him much in a street or bar fight, but that's what guns are for. Oh wait.... just kidding.
"If you would kindly ignore the incentive that I'm telling you about right now, then there's no real incentive to be a better laser tag player."
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
That's why Karate is perfect. Another bonus I didn't mention is that when it's time to go to University they can teach Karate and make a decent wage doing something they like instead of flipping burgers. If they turn out to be entrepeunerial they might even open up their own dojo and make a permanent career out of! One of my neighbours owns a dojo and they drive very nice cars and have a beautiful home so I figure it must be a good business!
Erm.. how about let them do as they wish within bondaries and if they wish to learn then teach them?
Forcing anyone to learn anything does more harm then good. It's ridiclous to go "hey I want to teach you to shoot someone... oh who cares if you want to, pick up the gun and come with me to school". Forcing someone to do something is no different then your parents forcing you to live within a restricted world..
I like muppets.
So essentialy your training your kids to be your unholy ninja force of the night? Sir, I applaud you.
Sodium Tag.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I have played lasertag and paintball, both have their problems:
Paitball:
Paintball tends to be expensive compaired to lasertag.
Paintball can cause minor injuries (yeah, I know, sissys not apply, but girls are less interested in getting all banged up that boy are.)
People who 'bunker' in lasertag aren't a hazard to life and limb.
Paintball is fun until you have some jerk show up in your casual game who has spent $2000 on gear. What's the point of that? It isn't really a big test of skill to use digial semi-automatic equipment to power paint the other team.
Location: you have to pretty much play at a field, unless you have lots of friends to play with and your own 'back 40'.
Lasertag:
If it's really sunny out, just forget it.
Covering sensors. On purpose or accident, it sucks trying to shoot someone with a covered sensor.
Range. You have none. Laser tag is great for simulating handgun battles, though.
Corrective fire. You can't really see what you are hitting. Aim VERY carefully.
Batteries. Not as pricy as paintballs, but you will go through them like crazy.
Popularity. Paintball is way more popular, or at least more organized.
Both can be fun, though.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Change the rules and the equipment a little. Allow potentiometers on the guns to tune the LED output. Let it range from 90% to 150% power or so.
Allow three LEDs of the player's choosing per game. If you burn out an LED during the game because you were trying to shoot too far, tough shit.
LED choices could include bright LEDs with small angles to wide-angle but dim.
This would add an interesting element of strategy.
I suppose disco balls could, too.
Wes
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
i think the obvious solution is a combination of paintball with laser tag. it could be called laserball or paintag [either way].
seriously, combine the best features of both.
take the "feel" nature of the paintball with the enforced nature of lasertag.
upon being shot, the system could disable your paintball gun in milliseconds preventing any type of cheating.
you just have to detect the paintball hits and rig the paintballl guns to be electronically disabled.
take a hint from the US, include depleted uranium in the paintballs and attach geiger counters to the paintball guns.
obvious!
Since there don't seem to be that many suggestions around here other than "Paintball!" or "MILES!", I figured I'd pitch in. :-)
First off, don't bother with lasers. Too complicated, what with the eye-damage regulations. If you want to reduce the beamwidth, there are a couple of measures that you want to take. Firstly, ditch whatever IR and visual LEDs on the emitter. Replace them with high-efficiency, low-angle versions. Search for something called OD50L. Then (here's the clever bit), extend the barrel by 6 inches with a length of 1" ABS tubing, or something. Cover the end with a plastic cap, and drill a hole in the middle so that the hole and emitter LED are aligned. If you've got a 6" extension, that'll get you a beam angle of about one degree. You'll probably want to do something about the wasted power hitting the inside of the cover. The alternative is to mount a convex lens (IR lens... not your average glass jobby) with the transmitter LED at the focal point, so that you've got a parallel (but wider) beam coming out of the end.
Of course, that doesn't give you any visual feedback of your targeting point, so you might want to add some sights... I remember a "laser" tag system from when I was tiny that had a tube mounted on top, in which was mounted a sheet of perspex at 45 degrees, with a pinhole under it and an LED below that. The pinhole made a red dot appear in the center of the sight. Very easy to build, and you could even rig it for calibration quite easily, if your beam accuracy made it necessary (think about putting the pinhole/LED on a low-pitch multi-thread adjuster in 2 dimensions... not too hard
Hmm... just had a thought. If you need the sight to work without power, you could replace the LED with the luminous head from a watch-hand.
Actually, if you're going to go about calibrating your sights, you might as well make the IR LED unit plug-in, and make an identical one with a high-efficiency optical LED. That way, you can match up your sights to the fitted optics without needing a target to shoot at. Alternatively, watch your shots through a webcam, and adjust appropriately.
Generally increasing the number of target points has to be on the list as well. If you're up to increasing the number of receiver phototransistors (I presume that's what they are), do it, but don't just leave them dangling on their own. Instead, find something that's going to act as a good concentrator. What you want is a reflective surface that will tend to direct incident light off to one side, or that will just diffuse light really well. You want to be mounting the phototransistors so that they're looking approximately parallel to the surface, so that a hit within a (relatively) large area of your diffuser will result in a large enough signal going in to the receiver to trigger it. That makes your whole receiver module large and flat, with a small number of connections, which is precisely what you want.
If you want to do some severe modding (as in time consuming, not difficult), you could make hand grenades quite simply. Take the circuitry from one gun, and build a shell for it out of IR LEDs, wired in parallel with the original output LED from the gun.
There are high-power IR emitters with 120 degree output, so I'd use a few of those. You'll need to arrange extra power and switching, but that's relatively trivial. Then make mechanical arrangements for the trigger switch to be pressed once and once only at the appropriate moment. Left as an exercise for the reader. Similarly for landmines, etc. If you embed the inner workings in potting compound (and are damn careful where you aim it) it might make an effective indirect-fire round, too...
Next thought... Kites. If you're playing outside, a kite would be a damn good way to lift an emitter over cover, assuming you've got an effective way to eliminate friendly fire. Launch the kite first, then run the emitter up the line and either trigger it at the top, or arrange for it to parachute down once it gets there. Actually... Sod it. Go for a UAV. Arrange for a model glider to be circling over your enemy's position, constantly broadcasting your shots downwards.
Hmm... Food for thought. I'll be back with more after sleep.
Step 1. Remove Laser from lasertag gun ;)
Step 2. Attach to live-round fire arm
Step 3. Get arested and sent to the arse pounding penitentary.
Step 4. ???????
Step 5. Profit
1. take a ready made tron suit. ebay is good.
2. take the tron suit apart
3. paint it a different colour
4. voila! a home made tron suit.
by tron suit guy
I have to agree against traditional martial arts. Practical versions are better, but 'taditional' is most definately worse.
Karate, for instance, is largely set-piece. Actions are done in a specific way and that makes your opponent predictable. Yes, you can beat someone when sparring, but you'll end up relying on them always following the rules of karate.
You then get into a real fight and discover that your opponent is not predictable and you lose all advantage. You just cease to be unpredictable.
FGD 135
Im not sure how long you can make the rotation, but a corkstrew (sciam.com) lasertag gun might be really cool.
Always carry chambered! If you're trying to beat the bad guy to the draw, the extra half a second it takes to rack the slide WILL cost you your life.
Glad I do not live in the USA. Seriously you guys should take a step back and see how things work anyway else in the world (not counting war zones and third world countries)
I laughed so loud reading this post that the same thing happened to me :)
These wouldn't require anything but some imagination:
This is exactly how I was taught. Avoid the fight if possible, but if you need to, use the force needed to stop the fight in the least amount of time. Since I learned a combination of Tae Kwon Do and Hap Ki Do, this generally involves breaking joints or bones, or other things that apply large amounts of force to small areas.
Not a sentence!
In high school, some friends and I got laser tag guns and were playing in a park at night. A friend and I were hiding in a bush when we heard a vehicle pull up behind us. All of a sudden a spot light shines on us and we hear "TURN AROUND AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP!" "Uh, oh, shit." Police pulled us out at gun point, everyone else had to come join us and we were all made to sit on the ground at gun point. Being the young easy going kids that we were, we laughed and chuckled at being drawn out at gunpoint over laser tag. Backup arrived and they were joking around with us and being cool. All in all the night ended with the original cops telling us they could give us trespassing tickets and giving curfew tickets to those who were under 18.
Good times.
I seem to remember back many years ago (10+) there was Laser Tag gear out that looked much different than the ones shown on lasertag.org. As a matter of fact the ones I am thinking of were quite realistic (in color at least). They were black guns, kind of futuristic, with these velcro sensors that you could put on your chest (with a black harnass or silver vest). The sensor had a red dome on it with LEDs in it. That was the good laser tag gear... not this new green and red junk that Walmart is selling... those look like the competing brand out at about the same time (even had a TV show with that brand in it).
Now the question is do I still have that stuff floating around my parent's house???
We used to do this with Miles gear in the army. Who says war can't be fun?
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/lazertag.html
I'm surprised nobody brought up this little gem.
I've played both. The problem with paintball is that the advantage is typically to the players with the most money to spend on gear. LQ at least offers some amount of balance by providing the gear for you. That said, hardcore LQ players will happily educate slow ass paintball players what real reflexes are.
They'll also teach you the folly of the 'pain gun tag' idea. Personally, I can tag you fast enough and often enough that A: Your pack will never come back online and B: You'll wish you'd stuck with paintball.
Simple facts:
Paintball is high impact and low speed.
LQ is high speed and low impact.
In LQ, it's about speed, consistant accuracy and reflexes (also known as skill) and not who can lay paint the fastest. I'll cut paintball some slack and offer the tactical experience is good. Then I'll take it back because LQ games can be far more complex and adaptive.
Average, decent LQ players can fire 100 shots a minute without resorting to (limited interval) rapid fire. Paintball players may or may not be able to lay down that kind of fire, consistently, without running out of ammo.
A good LQ player can lay accurate fire in a full 360 degree arc without ever changing stance. The same player can also translate this to a paintball field with stunning effect, in addition to being accurate from an off-axis firing position.
A fast LQ player can read body language fast enough to dodge a laser beam, forget about your slow ass paintballs fired from a limited arc posture.
In an LQ arena, running is a bad idea because you're playing in a literal maze. The best LQ players can move at full speed and stop on a dime, because they don't have massive beer guts to weigh them down, while depending on a 10+ shot per second paint marker to keep the other team at bay. Plus, there's kids in there, man, what are you thinking?
Speaking of other teams, most LQ competitions are *three* team games, in a 1v1v1 environment. Paintball tacticians would probably go 'tilt' with that kind of concept.
And as another poster mentioned, you'll never hear the best LQ players coming until your pack tells you they're there. A light footed LQ player is also not fun to play paintball with, for the exact same reason.
Pound for pound, LQ players stack up to paintball players with ease, but the reverse is not true.
Oh, and you can play LQ in a tux.
</troll>
- billn
Chemical Lasers!
My biggest issue with laser tag is the lack of physical feedback. It doesn't even nessisarily have to hurt, but it's GOT to be something more substantial than a weak vibration. I'm thinking of adding big relays tied to the trigger that kick the gun with a nice solid thud or something everytime you fire. Likewise the vests when you get hit.
,a href="http://www.softwareandstuff.com/h_misc_super flyzap.html">Electric Fly Swatter Raquets. Seriously, those things BITE. Hell, with as cheap as they are, you can probably cannibalize the components and line the inside to the vest with mesh, tied to the relay that would normally indicate your hit with the buzz effect. And all it'd take is another could off AA batteries. AND the beefy relay to thud the vest.
Of course, it can't be hard to design a vest that'll shock you everytime you get hit if you're looking for something more potent. Like those
Don't forget to ask me about my acid paintballs...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
What other sorts of inexpensive things could be added to our gear to make it more interesting?
Linux, duh. You could use the beams to send binary-encoded data as standard input, and flash the LEDs, which I assume the gear already has, to signal output.
Actual thought I just had: instead of emitting a fairly standard sound to signify a hit, acquire some digital recorders (talking picture frames and gift cards come to mind) and record stuff into them, then hack them to go off in place of the usual speaker. One could even have a bunch of them per suit, and have a [pseudo-]random circuit to trigger one of them each hit.
Also, I think it would be fairly easy to add more sensors.. that would make it better, I think.
Read; Write; Execute
7) Profit!
Anyone remember those sega lock-on things. They where quite good considering they where only a gun and a headset. Several game modes and teams. They where quite robust also. Coolest feature though was the huds that showed your score (Just a small bit of plastic that reflected the letters). http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Station/5487/laser tag/lockongear.html
cat
Firearms ownership is a cultural legacy in the US that can't be wiped out. And in a real world where bad guys are armed regardless of the law, that legacy is actually useful to society. It permits citizens to be personally responsible for their own safety if they so choose. Additionally, and probably more importantly, it allows citizens to have the means to resist the sort of tyrants that in the past have made a large number of countries into horror shows of citizens being abused and murdered by their own governments. Law-abiding citizens who own firearms have caused nothing near the mayhem that governments have historically wrought on their own peoples. So the man who legally carries a firearm and has never harmed anyone isn't the bane of society.
Those of us in the world who have entrusted our governments with the sole power of lethal force are in far more danger than those places where good citizens are trusted to have the ability to defend themselves and their families. History is pretty clear on this.
Realistic Star Wars Blaster Battles.
The Conclusion?
The current game technology isn't there. Even WITH green lasers, (Though, that's getting somewhat closer.)
What I suggest is the following. .
Full clips of tracer rounds! Those things actually look like Star Wars blaster bolts! And looks are the first step.
Sound? Well. . . Get this: When you fire a gun, you get a lot of fast-moving hot gas, right? It makes sound. Okay. So then you have silencers, which are good at diffusing all that fast-moving hot gas so that it makes very little sound. Right? So then why not a gun modification which doesn't just kill the sound, but rather changes it? I mean, why not? That's what vocal cords do. There's a thousand different musical instruments out there which take moving air and shape it. Sure, you could probably spend millions of dollars screwing around with phonics technology trying to come up with just the right noise, but the fact of the matter is that it could be done, and once you know all the right shapes of metal tube to use, the finished product is low tech and as easy to produce as a kazoo.
So then you'd have both the looks and the sounds!
How about the feel?
Beats me. What does it feel like to get shot with a blaster round? Or a tracer round, for that matter? Probably not good. (Keeping in mind, safety isn't really much of a concern with me, particularly since I don't imagine a properly cool Star Wars blaster system is going to materialize any time soon. Wear a jacket or something and try not to aim for your friend's head.)
Anyway, I suspect the formulation of the flare could be tinkered with. --If you think about it, you'd only really need enough burn-time to last the half second or so that the projectile is airbourn, so the material could be gone the instant it hits the target. Magicians use stuff called 'Flash paper', which is chemically perfect for the job. --Makes a nice rosy blaze for a second or so while you produce your pidgeons or whatever, and then it's gone. You can light the stuff in your hands and not get burned. Neato! In fact, you could even put enough flare material in the round so that it burns for a second after it hits the target. If you formulate it just so, you could probably even get it to flare up for a moment after striking. I bet you could also make a gram of theatrical flash-powder go off on inmpact as well to make a little flash and 'poof'. (Though, I suspect that would be rather pushing the safety margine a touch!)
Anyway, for the final effect, I'd want the projectile to have a second, paintball-like component, except rather than dye, it would be filled with a black chalk dust to simulate blaster scorch marks on targets. Now, honestly. Tell me it wouldn't look just desperately cool to be able to riddle walls with realistic-looking blaster impact marks!
So. .
Sounds like a blaster, Looks like blaster fire, and everybody knows when the target has been hit.
And finally, you could wire your combat area up to play John Williams over a global sound system. .
Yes, actually, I HAVE thought about this rather too much, which just goes to show; that which influences you when you were a kid, has a tendency to stick.
Now, if I could just think of a way to integrate all of this clumsy blaster stuff with some of those cool light sabers. .
-FL
nihilism. Yes, Martial arts has a good press agent. No doubt about it. But that doesn't detract from it's basic qualities. Particuarly those stemming from the way it is taught. Boxing may teach respect and disapline, if so good. But I'm no Jingoist, I don't need the system to be American to be effective. I grew up a small kid, youngest in the class. I got in plenty of fights. Those stoped AFTER I took karate. I wasn't worried about acting tough, or establishing myself. I didn't have to any more. Reality is that people fight. And if it does happen it may not be your sons choice. The bully will decide to start the fight for him. The bully will pick on the easiest target. Don't be that target. Confidence is like bully repelent.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I was stopped one day by a cop while walking down the street. The car zoomed in front of me, a cop jumped out, pulled out a gun, and pointed it at, of all people, me. I found this behavior odd, and not at all to my liking. And then he yelled "put down the knife."
Knife. I had picked up somebody's discarded plastic halloween samurai sword, which I had found by the side of the road. It was clearly plastic, more round than blade-shaped, and did I mention perfectly white? The amusing thing was the baffled look on the cop's face when he heard the sound it made skidding across the cement towards him. I guess that finally shattered his illusion of the ivory-smuggling holigan he thought he had cornered.
He appologized, said some lady up the street got skittish and called the cops, and when on his way. I left the ivory knife there for the next kid to find.
The ______ Agenda
... you can buy 3M Scotchbrite (the reflective stuff on high-vis jackets) by the metre. I don't know how much it costs. My GF wants to make a whole outfit out of it. At least I'd be able to find her easily in dimly-lit clubs...
Actually you shouldn't assume that I am from Europe simply because I am not from the USA. As a matter of fact, I am not from Asia or Africa or even North/South America either. "Where else is there?" the crowd calls - I am from Australia.
According to this data, back in 1999 (newest data I could find in a hurry) our national gun deaths (excluding suicides) was 84 (50 homicide,28 accidents,4 legal invention). How small a city in the USA do you need to look at to compare to our national gun death total? For everyones info the national population is about 20 million.
Now perhaps our road death toll might be a world competitive, but remember that we are the land of Mad Max.
When you have "killed" someone you do then get this persons target as your next target ?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I agree My mother sent me to all sorts of training (in all I learned 4 different forms of martial arts). My grandad taught me about firearms. And I took it on my self to learn about different forms of fighting with swords (but that was just display type fun) However I never ever really got into a serious fight I always either walked away or talked my way out of it. It wound the bullies up more when I would not respond to their chicken insults much more than hitting them. However nowdays (now that I'm an old fart) when some friends start messing about fighting I can't hit them or do anything nasty from the fear of causing them serious damage. But that's another thing the martial arts taught me, self control. However I am still learning a new skill Marital arts (2 months and counting)
Unless there are some new models I don't know of, they're just way too large. We used to use little squirt guns that we could palm off... I think they were like 2 for $1 in the early 90s. You might be able to get something at the dollar store these days... And well, they cost a whole lot less than a supersoaker, so it wasn't as big of a deal with they got confiscated.
And well, there was always hitting the person with a rubber band, for the really stealthy.
It's the concept of stalking people and having 'contracts' on each other that I'm guessing would be more of an issue if you got caught. (it'd probably be good to make sure that any game materials clearly explained that it was a game, and where to find the rules, etc, just incase someone acts stupid, and gets stopped by some authority)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
SFX : CRACK-BLAMMO!
Minmei : My name has become a killing word...
Yeah, that one was going to go over well with the Macross fanboys...
"Stupid! Stupid stupid stupid stupid! I touched the hot wire right there - I'm an idiot!"
Real lasers are a really horrendously bad idea.
m l
c s/ cfCFR/CFRSearch.cfm?FR=1040.10
m
... further info .... Bad turns to worse, I noticed that all the current laser pointers are class IIIa!
Here's my stock answer:
"Laser Pointers Pose Risk For Children
Following two reports of eye injuries from children's misuse of hand-held laser pointers, FDA warned parents and school officials about the risk.
Laser pointers are generally safe when used as intended by teachers and lecturers to highlight areas on a chart or screen. However, price reductions have led to wider marketing, and FDA is concerned about promotion and use of the products as children's toys.
Light energy from a laser pointer aimed into the eye can be more damaging than staring directly into the sun. Federal law requires a warning on the product label about this potential hazard from lasers. Momentary exposure, as from an inadvertent sweep of the light across a person's eyes, causes only temporary flash blindness. But even this can be dangerous to someone who is driving or performing some other activity for which vision is critical."
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/departs/1998/298_upd.ht
"(6) Class IIa laser product means any laser product that permits human access during operation to levels of visible laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table I, but does not permit human access during operation to levels of laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II-A of paragraph (d) of this section.
\2-
\2\ Class IIa levels of laser radiation are not considered to be hazardous if viewed for any period of time less than or equal to 1x10\3\ seconds but are considered to be a chronic viewing hazard for any period of time greater than 1x10\3\ seconds.
-
(7) Class II laser product means any laser product that permits human access during operation to levels of visible laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II-A, but does not permit human access during operation to levels of laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II of paragraph (d) of this section.
\3-
\3\ Class II levels of laser radiation are considered to be a chronic viewing hazard."
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdo
10^3 seconds is just shy of 17 minutes. Add two Class II or IIa pointers together (a visible and an IR) and it's into Class III territory.
More:
"Class 2 lasers are low power visible (400- to 700-nm wavelength) lasers and laser systems which cannot emit radiation in excess of the AEL based on a 0.25 second exposure."
http://www.navylasersafety.com/faq/technical.ht
Note the warnings about them being a chronic exposure hazard.
And in the end, something going wrong with a laser pointer can potentially cause it to put out hazardous levels.
"(8) Class IIIa laser product means any laser product that permits human access during operation to levels of visible laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II, but does not permit human access during operation to levels of laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table III-A of paragraph (d) of this section. \4-
\4\ Class IIIa levels of laser radiation are considered to be, depending upon the irradiance, either an acute intrabeam viewing hazard or chronic viewing hazard, and an acute viewing hazard if viewed directly with optical instruments."
So the new Class IIIa laser pointers can potentially cause spot blindness from one exposure!
Happy Fun Ball
It's Happy! It's Fun! It's Happy Fun Ball!
Yes, Happy Fun Ball, the toy sensation that's sweeping the nation. Only $14.95 at particpating stores!
Get one Today!
Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Happy Fun Ball.
Caution: Happy Fun Ball may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.
Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.
Do not use Happy Fun Ball on concrete.
Discontinue use of Happy Fun Ball if any of the following occurs:
* Itching
* Vertigo
* Dizziness
* Tingling in extremities
* Loss of balance or coordination
* Slurred speech
* Temporary Blindness
* Profuse sweating
* Heart Palpitations
If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.
Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.
When not in use, Happy Fun Ball should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration...
Failure to do so relieves the makers of Happy Fun Ball, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.
Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
Happy Fun Ball has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is also being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Happy Fun Ball comes with a lifetime guarantee.
Happy Fun Ball: ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!
Allow me answer all of your specific questions before I elaborate.
Unreliable? Absolutely. To test out MILES gear soldiers will often resort to setting off the laser by tapping the sensor on the front of the unit (this is referred to as 'dry firing') and attempting to kill each other just to verify that their equipment works. If, after several likely unsuccessful attempts they do actually kill their buddy, he has to slink over to a referee and claim his equipment went off for no good reason and have his gear reset. Interestingly, there is a high enough incidence of the gear spontaneously going off and 'killing' players that this is utterly believable. When batteries begin to get low, then the gear often gives a 'false positive' and kills you...sort of an electronic death rattle I suppose. I have also had my equipment set off by flourescent lights and other RF emitters.
Breaks down a lot? As a unit, we are often issued at least 10% more units of MILES than we need because they expect to have at least that much of stuff fail during use. I personally think it is horrendous that the government continues to invest in a system with that kind of failure rate.
Inaccurate? Sort of. It's a laser, so it shoots straight, but mounting it onto your weapon so that straight for the laser corresponds to where you are pointing your rifle is a pain in the ass. The system comes with some mounting brackets intended to mate properly with an M-16, M-4, etc...but in practice using these alone results in a very loose attachment with the laser rattling left, right, up, down and everywhich way...and those few degrees of difference in aim at the barrel result in dozens of meters of difference for your target downrange. By its nature MILES will also never be able to accurately simulate the ballistic arc of a bullet over a long distance...not important to most people, but for training soldiers, a significant point.
How else does MILES suck, you ask. Well, I'll tell you since you're interested. Perhaps most importantly, the designer of the system is clearly not acquainted with the most basic concepts of ergonomics. The heart of the system is a metal box, roughly 8x6 inches positioned directly between your shoulder blades...interesting location when you consider the targetted user group often wears 60-80 pound rucksacks that have to press down on this godforsaken piece of crap and drive it right into your back. Moreover, when worn as designed, MILES has some critical cabling that runs across the chest harness horizontally, about 3-4 inches below your throat. Given that anyone using MILES is going to be jumping, rolling, and crawling around, can you think of a worse place to run a line that can, and often, does effectively strangle the wearer? If you can you are more creative than I am. Then there is the halo...or as I refer to it, the crown of thorns. MILES uses a conceptually interesting idea where the target can be hit in the head or the torso. It accomplishes this with the 'halo' of sensors that ring a user's head. When shot, this halo broadcasts an RF signal to the harness, which registers the kill...theoretically. To make this work (READ: suck even worse) there is another of those evil metal boxes on the halo. (This is one of the major failings of MILES...the halo doesn't really work very well without a helmet to put it on. Take the weight of a helmet, then add about a pound and a half of halo, which only mounts off-center, thus unbalancing the system, and imagine wearing it for 2 weeks to a month straight during an exercise.) This box is needed to hold batteries and the RF transmitter to communicate a hit to the harness. Now, imagine you are in, oh, say a foxhole with another soldier. One of you gets shot in the head. Your halo sends out the RF signal, and does it register with just your harness? Of course not. You're both dead, thanks to MILES.
I think that about sums up my major issues with MILES. Bottom line is that I cannot believe that f
How about some actual useful links? That should suprise the heck out of everyone. ;'P
The Lazer Tactical message board: http://members5.boardhost.com/lazertag/index.html
More technically oriented Laserforums: http://www.laserforums.com/forum
1 Source Laser Tag forums: http://blackbelt.novahq.net/forums/
1 Source Laser Tag website, home of FXonixs homebrew laser tag gear, classifieds, and loads of links: http://www.1sourcelasertag.com/
Miles Tag, a homebrew laser tag system in progress: http://lightbrain.8m.com/mtdesign.htm
Frag Tag, a homebrew laser tag system using the same protocols as Miles Tag: http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/fragtag/index.htm
Dave Bodger's Lazer Tag info. One of the first homebrew systems, compatible with the old Worlds of Wonder Lazer Tag and Tiger Electronic Survivor Shot, with tons of options: http://www.cix.co.uk/~lasertag/lasertag.htm
Tagcon Midwest- Stargate in King Arthur's Court: http://www.tagcon.org/mw/
Steradian Tech- pro laser tag gear, quite expensive: http://www.steradiantech.com/
Tag Tek- homebrew WoW/ESS compatible gear: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sparta/setup.htm
Fiat Lux ESS compatible kits- They don't sell outside the UK, but good reference site for the rest of us: http://www.fiat-lux.org.uk/
Lazer Skirmish- Commercial site, use for ideas and inspiration: http://www.laserskirmish.co.za/
The Complete Tagger- Hints and modifications, PDF file: http://img-srv.everestwebworks.com/w2/Pictures/My% 20Files/1022260.1/tct2.pdf
Upgrading WoW guns and sensors by Public John aka Lazerbait- Faster rate of fire, linking gun to sensor, autofire, etc. by Public John of the Seattle Laser Tag group: http://members.aol.com/publicjohn/index.html
Vishay Semiconductors- IR Receiver modules page. 36 to 56KHz: http://www.vishay.com/ir-receiver-modules/
Ward's Natural Science Lens page- Glass lenses, 38mm, various focal lengths. $1.50 each: http://wardsci.com/product.asp?pn=160433
WoW/ESS signal format from Steradian- Helpful info on the signal format and frequency of WoW Lazer Tag/Survivor Shot guns and sensors. http://www.steradiantech.com/lasers/tech.html
If you are anywhere near Seattle, WA, the Seattle Laser Tag Yahoogroup and website: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/seattlelaserta g/ http://www.seattlelasertag.com/
I'm personally working on better sensor heads. 99.9% of the homebrew gear uses the Vishay remote control receiver modules, and their performance in sunlight is terrible. I am also thinking of building a system that is compatible with Survivor Shot while still supporting other options like shooter ID.
And as far as using real lasers- bad idea! Laser pointers are -not- eye safe. In fact the current crop of Class IIIa pointers are rated as a potential hazard from a -single- exposure. Even the older Class II/IIa are considered
Right. There you would use crossbows shooting sharpened stakes!
Wow. Thanks for the reply, the info is very much appreciated. I've never read anything but positive descriptions of MILES, so to hear a no-bull assessment from someone who's been there and done that is very enlightening.
Good thing that MILES isn't a *real* live weapons system!
Where is it?
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
99% of what is said on that web page is just plain bullshit, except for the hop-up. Everything about rifling a sphere (there's no such thing) and everything said about paintball markers is just wrong. No concept of angular momentum whatsoever. Ugh.
Airsoft barrels are not rifled because you can't rifle a round, plastic BB. And there is NO SUCH THING as a rifled paintball barrel - they are all smooth bore.
paintball
There's two methods... IR-LED (in cheap systems) or IR-laser diodes (in more expensive commercial systems). The latter requires multiple sensor areas with a certain amount of optical engineering in the vest, but it's more accurate. I am aware of ONE system that actually uses the sighting beam for registering hits (the "SLR" of lazer tag systems) , they modulate it with on a low-duty cycle PWM scheme so it doesn't make the laser look like it's flickering.
The grandparent was insinuating that radio waves are emitted from the gun to register a hit... this is false. Radio spreads too much to be useful for aiming (worse than non-laser infrared). However, RF COM-link is often used in commercial equipment to trasnmit realtime information to and from the game server.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON