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..

Open Source Paintball Board (OSPB)

Alright!!! 2 bits of good news!!

NEWS 1!

Got the Arduino NANO in and while it might be tight, I think it can definitely work! The package came with pin headers on it so thats why its so thick.. If it were ever to be in a real gun, the headers would be removed and thats where the connectors could go.

Here is my vision as it stands today :-P The board would go right behind where the button pad currently sits. The USB connector would NOT be on the board, but would be routed to where the LEMO connector is. Micro USB will fit in the same hole, just need something to fill in the void space. There would be a small board where the trigger button sits, and this would also house the transistors to fire the solenoids.

Still trying to work in a OLED screen in there somewhere but babysteps right?

This week sometime I should recieve my protoboard (for prototyping the trigger mount).

-2x Hbridge in a IC package for driving the solenoids

-Frame to mount it into for testing
-Connectors so that I can stop using aligator clips (Finally!)

NEWS 2!

Like everything in life, its all about compromise, and one of the things I had to compromise on was power usage. The arduino platform is good, inexpensive, and EASY to design, but the downside is that its not really that battery friendly. Well I did a test and the board uses 13mA running just the code. Each time you fire, the 5way uses 7mA, and the MQ uses 9mA (getting my sear tripper in soon, so I will have figures on that! Thanks NewRaceOwner for loaning!) Running some rough numbers they are coming out to be better than I thought! With some extra programming to enable sleep modes, and disable a few things we arent using (ADC, Timer1, Timer2, Spare digital pins) we should be able to make it more than usable! Might not be as efficient as your Tadao, but I dont think they could build their first board as quick as I am doing either.. Compromise!

As always I appreciate the feedback so keep it coming! I love those feature requests too since even though I might want something, I want to make sure its something that others will want too!

Tetravaal

The old Racegun board

So while we are on the topic of replacign the old board, I thought I would take a moment to document what its specs are for posterity..

Board Information

0.72in Wide

3.48in Long

Processor - PIC16LF873-041SO

Firmware (Of processor NOT the Race program itself) - 9.8.2002
Serial Com provided by a intersil ICL3221CA (Bottom right of board)
Memory storage (settings) provided by 24LC08B (Below the silver capacitor)

Battery Information

4.8v Ni-MH (made up of 4x 67AAAA cells)

600 mAh

MicroMolex Connector (I will try to look up the PN for these).

Oddly enough it looks like the board was programmed with normal serial commands.. I know people (the 5 of us who still use Raceguns!) have been struggling recently due to a lack of programming cables/charging cables but this one looks to use a standard TTL/UART interface.. Connectors for those are cheap (search ebay for USB to UART), and then you would just need to connect the pins to the correct pins on the connector..

 You COULD even build in a connector into it and make the board USB programmable! I would get one of the ones on EBAY that has the cable all made with just the pins on the end.. Plug them in the correct order and it should work just fine with the current RIP software!