jkovarovics

FWIW you can get away with running a single data wire to both your ESC's. It would clean up wiring and code a bit. I started with two thinking I would allow for slightly different speeds in each then went to one.

Also, you'd be fine with a brushed motor in a rapidstrike. No stepper necessary and to be honest, using a stepper assuming every step is successful is tough in an environment where some darts may not want to be pushed. You'll get slippage at some point and it all goes downhill. The key to select fire is the indexing switch with both a stepper and a brushed motor. I use the stepper/indexer combo in my blasters to give them some intelligence. If the pusher mech doesn't make it around to the switch in a certain number of steps it knows it's slipped, something didn't go well, reverse direction and spin back to home. If that doesn't happen in a certain number of steps, something is really wrong. Using a brushed motor is as simple as spin till the switch is flipped, you've fired a round, either do it again or wait for trigger release before firing again.

Well, if you're making a turret then it all makes sense. Are all the turret-electronics included in the blaster's suite? Do you see a day when this develops into a smartgun?

The turret requires two more stepper motors, and a couple of homing switches. The previous version used a single microcontroller to control both blaster and turret. I am going to change that when I redesign the turret such that each requires their own. I may downgrade the controller on the blaster to a cheaper one in favor of having wifi on only the turret. I don't know yet.  Regardless I've had interest from people wanting to integrate a Raspberry Pi as well as operate it via a wired controller instead of wifi. I'd also like to work in RC receiver plugs so it can be controlled a number of different ways. As far as it becoming a smartgun, yes. The possibilities are really endless. Facial recognition is possible as is shape and color recognition. Motion control, IR signatures, Kinect integration, tank treads, etc. All possibilities. I spent a hackathon at work developing a game server that you could log into. You could choose between multiple turrets, auto aim based on cubicle location, and even steal a turret from someone else to turn it against them. I've seen a few Nerf turrets that are usually just servos pulling a trigger. I want to give people an entire platform to work with while also having the option to carry around just the blaster.

Have you seen the falconer mk I/II? It's also a 3d printed flywheel blaster.

 

I'm not 100% sure I understand your goals for this, but for me, it is way over-complicated. You've got a microcontroller run blaster? That feels like overkill when a switch between a run from the motors to batteries will do the job; but I'll admit you've got some cool bonus features in as a result (empty chamber detection/avoidance).

Yep, he and I bantered back and forth a bit through Thingiverse, each complimenting eachothers designs. I am yet to see a working version of it.

A switch between the battery and motors requires a physical hand to operate. This was originally a wifi enabled turret not a handheld blaster which then developed into a blaster that can convert between turret and handheld.

I don't know why you need the IR sensor since dry-firing a flywheel blaster doesn't hurt it anyway, and it requires all those extra parts like the microcontroller.

It's not about damaging anything it's about rate of fire and speed. The IR sensor senses when there is a dart in the firing chamber. The first time you pull the trigger it advances quickly to the first dart filled chamber and skips empty ones after that. If you were to put a dart in say a Mastadon you'd either have to physically advance the drum to that dart or fire a bunch of times until you reach it. As a turret controlled via web interface the IR sensor can be used to create a heads up display of loaded and empty chambers.

Got locked out from making new posts. Gonna tackle these all at once.

I am happy to see that you are still around. I backed the Kickstarter campaign, and was disappointed when the goal was not met.
Personally, I like the idea of a rear-loadable drum for flywheel blasters. I would love to print one of these up, for use with different motors, though.

Thanks man. Much appreciated. I'm not goin anywhere, just had to regroup a little and figure out how to proceed. I'm actually almost ahead of the schedule I laid out in the kickstarter excepting the fact that I intended on having the turret version ready by now too. I decided to focus on the blaster first. The turret is a whole other ballgame. Most of the interest in that comes from makers wanting to get in there with a Raspberry Pi and get facial recognition going. I'm wanting to do some of that myself.

Are you using a regular push-type solenoid as your dart pusher?

I'm actually using stepper motors for both the revolver and pusher. The pusher mechanism looks a lot like the rapidstrike mechanism minus the gearing. I hadn't even torn one of those apart. I just sat down in front of AutoCAD and started putting together the most simple mechanism I could think of.

I could see a blaster like that going down well at a sci-fi based LARP as well as NERF wars. I certainly know a few people who might be interested it.
 

I've thought the same thing and this was actually one of the reasons I decided to open source the project. I live right next to Dragoncon and I have a few friends that are into cosplay and LARP. I wanted to make sure someone in that crowd could make a cool sci-fi version if they wanted.

Also:

I love the interest in the modular design. That came from getting parts to fit on my printer but ultimately made the whole thing modular. I could swap out the revolver with a belt pretty easily and now that I'm looking at it, I could make a mag slot as well. If only mega mags were easier to come by. It would take redesigning a good portion of the blaster to make it elite compatible though. Too much of it is based around the diameter and length of the megas.

Thanks guys. I figured Nerfhaven would be more receptive to this and I understand being hard on the new guys. It's a common forum thing to weed out people who don't search for stuff before asking.

Like I mentioned, I'll do an alternate design that takes mags and shoots elites. The FDL-1 was an exercise in making a revolver work. It plays much like Langley describes. You fire off enough shots to hit a target or two and fill the gaps. I wear a bandolier full of megas and pull them out as I need them. The IR sensor makes firing off a single shot super fast too. Given a single dart on the ground in front of you, I can get a shot off extremely fast. That's probably more of an office situation than out on the field but still. Removable drums would be cool. I thought about that early on but the way the revolver mounts to the stepper motor makes it tough. Maybe I can come back to that later after I get the turret base up to snuff again.

3DBBQ's stuff is wild. I dig it. I'm not sure what that style is called that he leans towards with the pump on the bottom and a kinda s-shaped body but that's actually what I was looking for for an NIC blaster.