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Modifying a paintball gun with HC12 motorola board

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Xenocide187

Member
Here's the story:
Me and my friend decided to develop a modified paintball gun for our senior project. We wanted to have a laser range finder and an electronic air pressure controller interfaced with the gun and the HC12 board. We encountered two problems; One, the company that made the laser range finder would not give us schematics, so we have no idea how to hook it up to the board. Two, we are still confused on where we can find the controller. We have 80% of the programming done, all we need to worry about is finding and installing the hardware. So what do you guys think? Any help will be appreciated.
 
If the laser rangefinder has an LED, segmented display, you can decode the display data. I think that's your only practical hope.

PS. I wouldn't controll the pressure, I would control the elevation as its much easier to use a drive motor and a potentiometer for position feed back. Keep pressure constant.

If you i
 
Thanks for the tip about the rangefinder. It does have an LED. Wonder why we didn't think of that. Thanks.

What do you mean by controlling the elevation? Sorry if my question was too vague. Our project was to have a paintball gun automatically adjust the pressure based on the distance found by the rangefinder. It will also display the best angle to fire the gun with the changed pressure. It will have an accuracy of 265-285 ft/s with angles from 5-45 degrees(with +/- 5 degrees).
 
I would think that it would be very difficult to adjust the pressure in the way you mentioned and that it would be easier to merely have a motor change the angle of the gun and have an algorithm figure out how the projectile will arc. Also, if you use a rifled barrel and a decently powerful paintball gun, you may not have to arc the projectile too much if the range isn't very far

Edit: After a little thought, I think you may want to focus a bit on the gun itself and try to minimize error that way. I would say that you would probably want to try higher pressure gas like NO2 instead of CO2. That and a rifled barrel will reduce variation in your shots.
 
Originally posted by: aka1nas
I would think that it would be very difficult to adjust the pressure in the way you mentioned and that it would be easier to merely have a motor change the angle of the gun and have an algorithm figure out how the projectile will arc. Also, if you use a rifled barrel and a decently powerful paintball gun, you may not have to arc the projectile too much if the range isn't very far

Edit: After a little thought, I think you may want to focus a bit on the gun itself and try to minimize error that way. I would say that you would probably want to try higher pressure gas like NO2 instead of CO2. That and a rifled barrel will reduce variation in your shots.
Click to expand...

The idea was to have the user carry the gun, so it is needed to tell the user what angle to fire. Since we are low on funds, my cousin was kind enough to donate us his gun, which uses CO2. Most paintball guns use either compressed air or CO2. The main reason why we wanted to control the pressure was so that we can control the velocity of the projectile. We figured that the only way to control it was to increase or decrease the air pressure.
 
Originally posted by: Xenocide187
Originally posted by: aka1nas
I would think that it would be very difficult to adjust the pressure in the way you mentioned and that it would be easier to merely have a motor change the angle of the gun and have an algorithm figure out how the projectile will arc. Also, if you use a rifled barrel and a decently powerful paintball gun, you may not have to arc the projectile too much if the range isn't very far

Edit: After a little thought, I think you may want to focus a bit on the gun itself and try to minimize error that way. I would say that you would probably want to try higher pressure gas like NO2 instead of CO2. That and a rifled barrel will reduce variation in your shots.
Click to expand...

The idea was to have the user carry the gun, so it is needed to tell the user what angle to fire. Since we are low on funds, my cousin was kind enough to donate us his gun, which uses CO2. Most paintball guns use either compressed air or CO2. The main reason why we wanted to control the pressure was so that we can control the velocity of the projectile. We figured that the only way to control it was to increase or decrease the air pressure.
Click to expand...


Rather than changing the pressure, just put a second laser on the gun. Instead of using it for rangefinding, use it to paint the target. You can use a motor to aim the laser further downward the further away the target is. The user will just need to keep the dot on the target.

 
I think the best way would bo to email motorola on how to obtain a small quantity of the chips. Do you know how to flash the chips? Because I am having trouble finding flashing info for the MCF52xx series (32bit CPUs) for a project I have in the early stages.

Your project sounds very interesting. I assume you are using a GPL/GCC compiler? I would go for the painting the target approach as if you try to change the pressure you could have problems with the balls not getting enough velocity to burst or the pressure requirements changing as the barrel gets dirty e.t.c
 
I can?t think of a low cost solution to vary pressure via a digital interface. There are industrial devices that cost mebabucks. One could contrive something but it would at least require a digital pressure gauge, and a means to control a pressure regulator.

I think Smilin's idea has merit. Use a sighting laser that you can adapt from a laser pointer, about $10.00. Attach the laser to the gun and vary its vertical angle via rotary or linear motor with a potentiometer for feedback. The data for the proper angle would have to be empirically obtained. Program the controller with an array or lookup table based on empirical data to achieve firing solution. Research WW2 ordinance elevation tables. PS, the first computer ever built (Eniac) was contracted to Penn State by the US Government to develop firing tables. Thousands of women were using mechanical calculators to get data for every type of ordinance for every possible distance, wind velocity and direction.
 
I thought if a lazer is strong enough to see for lighting up a target it can do damage to the eyes of your opponent and was not good for paintball. Also, CO2 pressure changes too much with temperature and would not be a good gas for this. Use air or nitro to get a steady pressure and change the elevation of the barrle.
 
I thought if a lazer is strong enough to see for lighting up a target it can do damage to the eyes of your opponent and was not good for paintball.
Click to expand...

And a paintball is good for the eyes?
 
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