My laptop is a Sharp MM20, which I knew I was going to spraypaint eventually, I just needed a reason to. After about a year of wear and scratches from abuse, it was time.
I’m replacing the harddrive in my laptop with a 4GB flash card. It should be faster:
/dev/sdb: Timing cached reads: 3532 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1766.79 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 58 MB in 3.10 seconds = 18.
We were thinking it would be cool to have the LCD display be on the arm, instead of the side of the gun.
So we have modified roller-blading wrist-guards for the purpose:
Watch Karl Show It Off!
Karl’s Mom helped with the sewing. Next we’ll add buttons for mode and backlight. I think they will be very thin and unobtrusive.
Here it is, the big milestone: our first real gun!
From this: To this!
You can see how we have gutted an air-soft gun, and inserted our led’s and switches to turn it into a lasertag gun. All of our guns will be interchangeable as they will all have the same Cat-5 Pinout. Eventually we will have an array of guns and we can change their properties in software. (Reload times, shots per clip, damage per shot, etc.
Here are some pictures and some short video of our first prototype gun!
A more or less finished backpack.
2x4 Gun and LCD wristband
I love having good tools, and this $40 soldering iron is the best $40 I ever spent.
Nicd battery pack! With velcro! And Kyle explains it all! Sort of…
Karl and I have taken our backpacks and spraypainted them camo! And we have installed a few components for two test boxes. (Radio, Mainboard, and ISD) You can see me wiring the usb port for the usb key thing. (It stores your personal stats)
More to come as we prototype our first two boxes!
The next step in our Lasertag construction project is the preperation of the boxes for our components. We have decided to put all of the electronics in a backpack. But the backpack will need some I/O. We need a rj-45 for the gun, two for the arm-band, a usb for the key, and a hole for the power switch and power plug. How do we do it? We need square holes… Well, the best and nicest way I can think to do it is to use a little thing called a roto-zip bit.
One of my personally favorite websites is YoureTheManNowDog.com. (You may have noticed the cameo in episode 1.) Founded in 2001, an uncountable number of spoofs have been made, and are stored at the sister site, ytmnd.com. There you can setup your own account and create your own YoureTheManNowDog’s! I love it.
Also, being in Tampa, I live close to the Scientology headquarters in Clearwater. Recently a YoureTheManNowDog has been created that exposes some of the terrible things that the church of Scientology has done.
Ok, I have a seceret: I am a Myspace sellout. Everyone around me was like ooh yea, check out my myspace! Or Ooo, your myspace is sooo cool. Or, Wow, your myspace cures cancer. Well, so I made one, and added friends. I soon realized that Myspace.com is interesting. (Although it sucks too. Ads everywhere, people’s pages are often littered with cpu sucking garbage and animated gifs and crappy css.)
My friends and I are currently constructing our own lasertag guns using this as a base.
Here is our checklist:
Construct electronic components using the above milestag components.
Get and modify vests to hold components
Melt aluminum and pour guns into molds! Rock on!
Connect it all together and play!
We’ve go the electronics together. The vests are on their way via UPS, and my friend Karl and I have the furnace ready and we can melt aluminum!