Open Source Paintball Board (OSPB) - Electronic Notes

So the wife is working the OU football game (she is a Paramedic and I love her tons for letting me do this stuff!!!) and I flipped on Transformers - Revenge of the fallen.. Wow, great looking, but missing something. I dunno.. A PLOT!?!?!?!

So since I can multitask I decided to do a little work on the project!

Some electrical considerations....

The RACEGUN F1 noid (Jucomatic)
5 - Volts (Datasheet)
1 - Watt (Datasheet)
200 - mA (Datasheet) (Better performing, but higher power)

The Racegun Sear Tripper Noid
5 Volts (Measured)
1A (Measured)  HOLY CRAP! thats 5x the F1!!!

Older SMC Racegun Noid
5 Volts (Measured)
90 mA (Measured)

I had high hopes that I would be able to run the noids direcly off the Arduino to conserve space, but that wont be possible. Im going to have to use transistors for the switching as per my prototypes in the video.. Not the end of the world, but more space will be needed.. :-)

I have come up with a few different possbile formats for the board and these are based on a few options...

Using the Arduino Nano
Pros - USB for updating the programming
Cons - Size.. Not sure if I can cram it all in with a 9v battery. Might need to consider LIPO or some other battery.

Using the Arduino Mini
Pros - I think I can make it all fit inside of the top 1in of the grip frame (Laying side to side) and it will make a 9v battery fit.
Cons - To program it, it requires a special cable (5 dollars)

Also, I figured out how Race was able to get such high shot counts out of their charge and the basic idea is like this.. Most battery powered electronics run on either 3.3v or 5v as their voltage of choice. Since Race used a 5v battery, it didnt have to reduce the voltage at all to make it usable.. Other guns im supposing are using something called a Linear Voltage Regulator which basically takes the 9v from the battery, dissapates 4v of it into heat, and passes the resulting 5v to the electronics.. Now there is a more expensive version called a switching voltage regulator, which doesnt convert the extra voltage into heat, but its more expensive than the standard version. My personal choice is still to use 9v batteries even though they arent as efficient simply because I have run out of juice on the field and not had my charger. Whereas everyone on every PB field has a spare 9v batt floating around..