GordonSmith

That one's the emitter. The sensor () is below.

Hmmm, I sifted through those addresses, and came across a link to http://www.mikesusan.com/lasertag.html, which may be what I'm looking for. It's compact, doesn't necessarily have to work with commercial sets, and I can run it off a 9V battery. The emitter is pretty straightforward (), as is the sensor (). A question remains (as I can't seem to find an email address on the author). Do you think I could attach multiple IR Receiver modules to the 567 in the sensor, instead of multiple 567 outputs to the 555 timer? Also, I think the 161 chip is a 74x161 counter (say, DigiKey part #296-2096-5-ND), but could someone more knowledgable than this humble llama confirm that?

Tried, but no response yet. I've found several email addresses for Mr. Bodger, but some of them are bouncing back. I might not have hit a "live" account yet. -G-

Hmmm... The bar displays look interesting, but I think would be difficult to run off a battery. I spent the weekend looking over the shift register information, and think that the best solution would be a bidirectional 8-bit shift register, with some sort sort of limiter that when all 8 LEDs are lit, it doesn't increment any more. Same limits on the decrement function, so that when none of the LEDs are lit, we don't fall further below zero. Would something like http://www.eelab.usyd.edu.au/digital_tutorial/part2/register06.html work, but expanded out to 8 bits? I'm still not sure what the limiters would look like, but I'm still fumbling along... Thanks for all the continued suggestions, I appreciate them! -G-

:) Actually, that's where I got the part #. I'm trying to put together a tag gun for my physics class as a "learn how to do machining" course. However, I couldn't find the parts in Newark, hence my search here. -G-

Thanks for the leads. I looked them over, and the first one is for a numeric display, which is too tech-y for what we want. The second looks to be a binary counter, which is also not quite there. The last knight-rider diagram is really cool, and I may build one for another project, but also not quite right. I think I may not have described it quite enough. Think of the LEDs as the counters from a battleship game... 0 = oooooooo 1 = xooooooo 2 = xxoooooo 3 = xxxooooo 4 = xxxxoooo 5 = xxxxxooo 6 = xxxxxxoo 7 = xxxxxxxo 8 = xxxxxxxx So the number of lit LEDs tells you the number you're on. Thanks again for all the help. -G-

I'm trying to cobble together various circuits into a coherent whole from what I'm finding online, and was hoping I could get some help locating or identifying alternates for the following IR3T07 (IR Preamp) MP1826 (microcontroller) UM3562 (sound generator, maybe??) Thanks! -G-

Greetings, I'm trying to put together a project for some students, and it's a bit out of my field. The portion that's stumping me right now is to get a counter that also backslides. The output is 8 LEDs. Everytime we receive a pulse, the number of lit LEDs should increase by 1. However, every two minutes (or so, adjustability would be nice), the number of lit LEDs should automatically decrease by 1. The more compact the circuit the better - we're space limited in the housing. Thanks for your help. -G-