Help starting lasertag system project

Would you want to be compatable with this system ??

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Time is money.

How much money do you have.

Good luck

You will need it.

donald

"BoysBoysBoys" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

How about any books or collage classes that will jump start me in that direction?

I am very sorry.

But to do a project like this will take some years to get the knowledge required.

Please do not stop on my account. Please do get started and jump right in.

There is a lot to learn in so many areas that is will just take time.

Just don't expect to get a lot done between now and next summer. But do expect to learn a lot between now and next summer.

Good Luck

donald

"BoysBoysBoys" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...

Good idea. Start with a primer, to prepare yourself a bit: Half way down this page:

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Thanks, Frank.
(remove 'q' and '.invalid' when replying by email)

A collage class would not help you...

LOL Sorry College

Oh no I was not planning on doing this now, I know it may take a few years. I would just like someone to point me in the right direction to obtaining my goal. What college classes should I take, what should I major and minor in? what books do I need to read? What kinds of jobs will give me the hands on experience in order to start a project like this?

Thats a cool Ferrari over there, I would like to build one.

Where should I start ??

I am sure you know all about Ferrari cars, so you can help me get started.

It seems that you have a bigger head for ideas than talent to build things.

Start learning microcontrollers.

Here is a start:

With 3,900,000 hits I am sure you will find something to get you going.

Maybe even the first ten hits.

Good Luck ( you really are going to need it )

donald

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Hi, Do you have an electronics background? Do you have a software background from desktop applications or servers? If you don't have any of the these, you have a long haul ahead.

The problem you are looking at has four or five facets.

1) The analog electronics in the guns and vests to drive and modulate the laser and sense hits. There are books with small laser and electronics projects that would give you a place to start playing with smaller projects and get the knowlege to extend into these. I think Steve Ciarcia of Circuit Celler fame did a laser tag construction article back in the 80's for Byte Magazine. It might be availble still.

2) The communications link to the base station. There are lots of eval boards and stuff that can be bought for Zigbee and other short range protocols. I am working on some projects right now with a Zigbee kit from Freescale Semiconductor. Linx also sells modules that use the

900MHz band. Most of these are buy a board or module type things until you get far enough along to need something close to production. Freescale has lots of stuff on Zigbee on their website as well as free code libraries for simple applications.

3) The embedded system in the guns/vests to count and identify hits, drive the gun modulator, and communicate with the base station. This does not look like a complex task, you might be able to do it in basic with one of those "basic stamp" things. The processor in the Zigbee module would have plenty of power left to do these tasks.

4) Battery charging and power supplies in the guns/vests. Most of this can be learned from app notes from the chip manufacturers. Linear Technology, National Semiconductor, and Benchmarq/TI all come to mind as places to look for this information.

5) The software for the base station to track players and hits and timing and all the other stuff. This is intro programming stuff I think.

The first thing in taking on projects is to break them down into pieces. Figure out what you know and what you need to learn for each piece. Start reading and experimenting with some of the pieces that you know. Add the next piece and so on. Don't give up.

Powells Technical Books in Portland, Oregon USA is the best technical bookstore I have seen. They have intro books on the laser projects, intro books on the embedded programming and about anything else (and a really nice cat). They will be happy to do mail order off their web site as well.

Good luck and start building stuff, it's a heck of a way to learn.

Bob

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That helps out alot, I don't have those backgrouds, but I am a tech for a laser tag arena, all I do though is replace worn out leds and modular jacks and trouble shoot laser guns.

Well that is about the best place to learn about Laser Tag. Lewin Edwards has a good book called "So you want to be an Embedded Engineer" which could be a good read and I intend to get it for myself shortly. If you want to take a college course then I would recommend taking it in electronics more than software because IMHO that is harder and it is easier to pick up software through fiddling with home projects than hardware is.

If I were you I would get some simple development board for $50 or so and start trying to make LEDs flash on it or set up serial communication with a PC as a good starting project. I started out on PICs and found them pretty easy to learn but there are people on here who can't stand them - it depends on taste really.

I would also ask why you would wnat to re-invent laser tag unless it is just to see if you could. Why don't you add something to the mix like a proximity detector for other players so you get that Aliens tension in the game?

Three methods spring to mind - which may or may not work:

1) Bright Infrared lights/LEDs on a player which will illuminate an area around them which could be picked up by IR sensors on the detector. Lets you know someone is hiding around the corner. 2) Omni- directional ultrasonic transmitter on player recieved by another player which could possibly give an indication of the direction of the other player. 3) Weak radio field. Direction finding may be possible and you migth be able to detect someone hiding behind a wall.

Of course this is assuming a dark closed in maze-like environment like all the opnes I've ever been in when playing laser tag.

My whole idea and the reason that I am so passionate about laser tag is that I want to turn it into a competetive sport. There used to be a system that allowed that, but it is no longer supported and the company that makes them. They have a new system now that was designed for the new unexperienced player, and no longer allows for competetive play. You cannot adjust the ir pulse rate, and there are far more ir senors on the vest so they are easer to tag. You used to be able to actually dodge the ir pulses, you can actually see a clip of them doing this, (its in divx format)

Hi, even the basic gun/target is a hard problem. The analog stuff will kill you. It is not too bad in the transmitter - just a little filtering. In the receiver it is tricky.

I did a little bit of the Worlds of Wonder Lazertag electronics (actually software), and they had amazing problems with the receivers. I think they ended up turning the sensitivity way down - If you were in a white painted room and someone shot anywhere, you were likely to be "hit" by an IR reflection. So they could have a rifle that could hit you at 100 yards, but if it was shot in a room, everybody was dead. (Now that is called a RPG). I think if you look at a commercial lazertag installation you will see lots of dark, non-reflective surfaces.

Steve

There is no "x" in my email address.

On Wed, 04 Oct 2006 14:32:26 -0700, in comp.arch.embedded Steve Calfee wrote: snip

Arghh, sounds like a job for

"Artificial Intelligunse"

What ever did happen to AI?

martin