7 replies to this topic

[Carbon]

Make Magazine recently had its Gadget Freak Design Contest, and the winner was this rather scary/cool Vulcan mod. It's a heat-seeking, auto-firing Vulcan. And yes, there are instruction on how to make your own.

This amuses the hell out of me.

Edited by Carbon, 02 September 2010 - 08:18 PM.

[HasreadCoC]

I had an idea for this once, seems like it would be far more helpful at an indoor war (like lasercraze wars) than any "claymore" or "mine," though a LOT more expensive than those choices

Edited by HasreadCoC, 02 September 2010 - 11:25 PM.

[CAPS]

Its only a matter of time before you'll hear "They destroyed your sentry gun!" in nerf wars
But that is seriously badass of a toy.

[kidame tomanaka]

I dont think many moders in the nerfing community will actually know how to work with one of those boards, lucky for me my school just gives them away so i will be attempting to work on this! concider it a " class project"

[eddieoctane]

I dont think many moders in the nerfing community will actually know how to work with one of those boards, lucky for me my school just gives them away so i will be attempting to work on this! concider it a " class project"

I'm inclined to think that more people would be capable of building a sentry gun than you'd think. The physical construction aspects of this design are certainly within the abilities of most of the people here. And I don't think the tracking system is that complicated, either. Circuit design isn't that complicated of a thing. The majority of engineering programs require some kind of course in automatic controls and computer science, and that's all you really need to put together a sentry gun. If I remember correctly, there are quite a few engineers and engineering majors on this forum. A handful of motion detectors, some limit switches, a servo, and however you're tempted to wire up the firing mechanism. What makes this gun so nice is the compactness of the control box and sensors, but I had access to a circuit board etching machine in my high school electronics class (probably still do, have to call my old teacher) so this is definitely within the realm of somethign I could do, although solo this might take a bit longer. It's definitely somethign you cold do for a senior project (in high school or college), though convincing a teacher that something like this is appropriate for a school might take some work. I have an idea for my capstone design project, now.

This is a sick upgrade for a Vulcan, though. I guess my big question is can the Vulcan be used as a regular Vulcan, or only as a sentry gun? I feel like so many of these sentry gun setups compromise the original functionality, and with a setup this compact, there's little-to-no reason to do that. If anything, that lawnmower battery should let you do more with a Vulcan, and then set it up as a sentry if need be.

[Mehku]

I think I just had a nerdgasm.

WANT.

[taerKitty]

Not being that familiar with MindStorms, but would that be a feasible platform for this? (If so, I might see myself buying one.)

[eddieoctane]

Not being that familiar with MindStorms, but would that be a feasible platform for this? (If so, I might see myself buying one.)

Probably not. I doubt the Lego motors are powerful enough to turn the vulcan quickly enough to hit a moving target. I'm not sure of what sensors Lego makes, but I don't think only 4 sensor hookups are enough unless you just want the thing to wire off a trip-wire setup.