Laser tagging (homemade laser tagging game)

[Bart Bervoets]

After playing laser tagging for a few weeks, i was wondering if it would be
possible to design a simple
version of the equipment for practice purposes.
Pulsing a laser pointer should be not so hard but i'm not so sure of the
receiver end.
Ideal would be the following:

Sender, laser pointer built into toy gun, trigger will allow pointer to
pulse for a quarther second
and then go off, repeated pulling of trigger will cause pulses but never a
continues beam.
Receiver end will start beeping and/or flashing for 4 seconds when hit, gun
would always be connected to receiver and
would be disabled during the 4 seconds of being hit.
I know the equipment is available but very expensive, and it should be
possible to create this.
Eventual option would be a player hit counter, but that's not important at
this stage.
Any suggestions?

Bart Bervoets

 

[Homer J Simpson]

I know the equipment is available but very expensive, and it should be
possible to create this.

Isn't there a cheap toy version?

http://search.ebay.com/search/searc...&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=&fsop=1&fsoo=1&fgtp=

 

[Bart Bervoets]

Isn't there a cheap toy version?

Yes, there is, but i wanted to do slightly better then just that.
Of course i could use the toy version and modify the electronics, but the
toy version does not use a laser.

Bart Bervoets

 

[Homer J Simpson]

Yes, there is, but i wanted to do slightly better then just that.
Of course i could use the toy version and modify the electronics, but the
toy version does not use a laser.

I assumed it would use the laser pointer type laser.

 

[Eric R Snow]

After playing laser tagging for a few weeks, i was wondering if it would be
possible to design a simple
version of the equipment for practice purposes.
Pulsing a laser pointer should be not so hard but i'm not so sure of the
receiver end.
Ideal would be the following:

Sender, laser pointer built into toy gun, trigger will allow pointer to
pulse for a quarther second
and then go off, repeated pulling of trigger will cause pulses but never a
continues beam.
Receiver end will start beeping and/or flashing for 4 seconds when hit, gun
would always be connected to receiver and
would be disabled during the 4 seconds of being hit.
I know the equipment is available but very expensive, and it should be
possible to create this.
Eventual option would be a player hit counter, but that's not important at
this stage.
Any suggestions?

Bart Bervoets

Greetings Bart,
You could use any cheap IR remote control to pulse the laser. You can
buy IR remote control kits. You can build your own reciever using the
info from this link:
http://www.epanorama.net/pdf_redirect.php?url=http://www.imagineeringezine.com/PDF-FILES/40krvr1.pdf
You can use the output that pulses the IR LED to pulse your laser
pointer. Since the laser is pulsed at 40kHz and your reciever is made
to only recognise this frequency it will ignore ambient light. You can
use a 555 timer circuit to turn on the remote for the 1/4 second
requirement. The reciever can be used to trigger another 555 timer
circuit to disconnect power to the firing circuit for the 4 second
requirement. Google for IR remote control and 555 timer circuits.
There is a ton of info on the web about these.
ERS

 

[SDC]

After playing laser tagging for a few weeks, i was wondering if it would be
possible to design a simple
version of the equipment for practice purposes.
Pulsing a laser pointer should be not so hard but i'm not so sure of the
receiver end.
Ideal would be the following:

Sender, laser pointer built into toy gun, trigger will allow pointer to
pulse for a quarther second
and then go off, repeated pulling of trigger will cause pulses but never a
continues beam.
Receiver end will start beeping and/or flashing for 4 seconds when hit, gun
would always be connected to receiver and
would be disabled during the 4 seconds of being hit.
I know the equipment is available but very expensive, and it should be
possible to create this.
Eventual option would be a player hit counter, but that's not important at
this stage.
Any suggestions?

Bart Bervoets

Do you need to disable the gun for 4 seconds, or just have the receiver
ignore it for 4 seconds?
If the latter, you don't need the gun to be always connected to the
receiver.
The 40kHz sounds like a good idea in theory, but when I tried using a laser
pointer for data transmission a few years ago, about the best I could get
was 1kHz. That might have been due to the particular brand of pointer that I
used, from "Jaycar" in Australia.

.... Steve