End Game.

I just wanted to pop up a quick video of the end game. As you can see once you are on a later wave you don't have much time to reload if you are out of ammo. Lesson, always carry a backup. ;)

Added display.

finally finished the front console. Here's how it looks now:

I

Here's a closer look at the display, I can't believe I spelled 'Defense' incorrectly, Actually, that's it, that's errm the English spelling, and errm if your English it's the American spelling. ;)

And one of the demo messages:

That's all for now.

:)

So while I was trying to find the best place for the solenoid it became apparent that the further back the better. I redesigned the bracket to be a simple strip with a hole to hold the solenoid.

And the solenoid core is simply held in by a screw, here is the final design in place, notice the screw at the bottom:

The electronics for controling the solenoid is simple. I used the example at Arduino's own site (LINK). But before I would hook the targets up to the Arduino I wrote a test program to turn each of 5 outputs on and off. I tested this with an LED hookup:

Once that was tested I could replace the LED's with the transistor circuit as described in the Link above, and hook up the outputs to the targets. (Which were now held together on a strip of 1x2 wood.



Next I would have to add something to detect when the target was down.

Prototyping and Target Re-Design.

Once I knew that I could knock the target over with my little Airsoft gun I had to find out if I could pop it back up. I sent off for five of these little 12V solenoids. (Link to allelectronics.com).

They arrived and I attached one to my prototype target, that had now lost some metal of the bottom and gained some weights instead, This helped me balance the target better.

Here is a video of the solenoid test.



At this point I was just connecting the solenoid terminals to a 12V battery pack I had.

The bracket for the Solenoid was quite complicated as I had to add an extra flap to stop the solenoid core from falling out as it was not retained by the solenoid itself:

This would turn into a much more simple design by the end of the target creation so I won't talk about creating the bracket now.

It was also time to redesign the target as it was quite over worked, but that's how you learn lessons I guess.

I changed the core of the target from the 'U' shaped assembly to a single block of wood:

With a hole in the corner to hold the hinge pin:

And sanded so as to clear the target as it moves:

The targets are cut from the aluminum sheeting I had:

And the hinge holes Drilled in the hinge flaps:

The target is attached to the holder with a short length of wire coat hanger wire:
(Bend one side of the wire before you put it through the hinge holes and the other end once it's through).

Lastly for weight and as a handy way of balancing the target I put a small bolt through the bottom corner and used washers and nuts to get the balance just right (Sorry this picture isn't the best I hope you get the idea).

Next Time, the new solenoid design...

Hi All!

I'm using this Blog to describe how I built my Arduino Controlled Airsoft Zombie Game.

Here's a video of a game test.



It's not finished yet, there's still work to do. I need to add the LCD display so you can see what game you're playing, add more games and of course add some LED's to the front panel, (Everything looks cooler with LEDs).

Over the next few days, weeks, or whenever I will post details of how I built it.
The first thing I knew I was going to use was the Arduino micro controller. The Arduino is quite accessible for people wanting to dabble in Physical Computing so it's the platform I chose. Before I went out and bought that though, I got myself a $10 Airsoft pistol from Walmart and a box of 10,000 plastic BBs. I wish I had got the biodegradable ones now as every now and then one will escape my garage and make it out into the wild.

I already had some thin aluminum sheeting from an earlier project, as well as a bunch of wood scraps so I built a test target, this design would change quite a bit as the project went on, but here is an early test to see if the Airsoft pistol could known down the target. REMEMBER EYE PROTECTION!



It could. :)