Thursday, May 3, 2012

Mod Night Happenings

One of our modders taking a break from work to talk to YOU!
Just finished another successful Mod Night!  We covered a lot of ground on a LOT of projects and, as always, it's just fun to be in the company of hobbyists who also happen to be good friends of yours!  It was also inspiring to have Iron Man playing in the background as we watched Tony Stark build up an advanced prosthesis far more advanced than anything WE were working on!

We opened up that Star Wars blaster tonight too.  Good ol late-90's-era electronics!  Shouldn't be too difficult to convert to an LTX blaster, so understanding what we've got to work with on the inside gives us a better idea of how to lay it all out.  Once we get blasters like my Pulse Rifle, German's Rayven, and Sundawg's Stampede running with Arduino-run blasters.

Speaking of that, Sundawg made some great progress cutting/fitting this pipe that'll house the lens for his dual-purpose blaster.  On the one hand, it's a modified Stampede, shelling out Streamlines up to 60 feet at 4 darts per second.  On the other, it'll be a beast of a laser tag blaster with excellent range, sending beams of IR Light over 1,100 Feet!  Either way you look at it, this Stampede will be something to fear for both the hobbies I enjoy!

I'll have a full post up with updates about my Pulse Rifle a little later.

7 comments:

  1. great to see some work on the STAR WARS blaster mike, im sorry i didnt get to check it out online while you were working on it! the sundawg looks awesome!!! Sam

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  2. How often do you do the mod nights?

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    1. Whenever we want to. We've been doing them more frequently to prepare for our 7th summer season of laser tag, but there's really no set schedule as to when we have them.

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  3. Should have used the other photo you linked ;) That pic made my day.

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  4. What is the difference between LTX blasters and other laser tag blasters? Is the frequency or wavelength of the beam different?

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    1. Laser Tag works by sending "coded" patterns of light to a sensor. Most laser tag systems don't use these same patterns, so the sensors that are designed to pick up said patterns can't understand them if it's not the right one. Think of it as speech. The system "talks" in a certain language that is different from other systems.

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    2. Man,compared to a few springs and a plunger tube LT is really complicated!

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