Homemade and Modified Equipment
Ryan's gun (click for enlargement)
This gun was the second gun that I made. It is fully programmable, by editing the source code and reprogramming the PIC. It is powered by a PIC16F628A and an ISD1416P. It has a clip of forty shots, and shoots six times per second. It has a range of more than four hundred feet. Additionally, it has a red dot scope which allows much more pecision in aiming. This is necessary, though, because the beam is much tighter than the regular laser challenge guns, which is the reason that it has such a long range. Ryan very much likes his gun, and uses it very effectively.
Erik's Gun (click to enlarge)
This is the first gun that I built. It is probably a bit large, and the stock is a definite afterthought. (It has since been redesigned, though I haven't posted any pictures.) However, it is by far the longest range gun in our possesson, with a confirmed range of 500 feet (which is the longest distance we can test over). It has a three inch glass lense, and a 3-9x scope. As with the above gun, the sight is necessary because the tightly focused beam would very quickly become impossible to aim effectively without it. The gun is also powered by a PIC16F628A with an ISD1416P sound-chip and fires around four rounds per second. It has a thirty round clip.
SE Headset
This is the modification that has made the SE vests usable. The gun was removed, as was the sensor in the body. Then an additional sensor was attached to a cord leading out of the vest. This goes to a headband so the wearer has a front and back headsensor. These headsensors have revolutionized play here at the Wytheville Lasertag Club. They do a much better job of simulations a battle because people now have a very hard time firing without being hit. There are two rather unfortunate problems with the current setup. The first is that the replacement sensor modules require a higher voltage than the older modules. This necesitates another battery to give a high enough voltage. This will probably be addressed soon by moving the battery inside the chest sensor. The other problem is that the vests go into a sleep mode after five minutes of inactivity, and can only be pulled out of it by manually pressing the reset button. This is annoying, and also noisy. If anyone has a fix for this that is simple, please let me know. In the somewhat distant future I may try to fix this by putting a microcontroller into one to automate this process. But until I can use the 8 pin PICs, this is not going to be a reality due to expenses.
Other homemade or modified equipment
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These are two more headsets that are used by Ryan and Erik. These are V1 vests that have been modified, in a similar manner as the SE vests, to make them into front and back headsensors. The gun on the lower left is a completely homemade gun and the one on the left uses the shell of an SE gun.
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