This short video is from the final testing and photo shoot for the Star Laser Force pack. I used a flashlight to "shoot" the pack and score points.
Interestingly, you can't just shine bright light on the sensors to set it off; it has to be a pulse. With my hand on the switch the "pulses" were about 200mS. If you step through the video you'll see there is an additional delay of about 200mS before the first visible response. This filtering of ambient light sources was all done with discrete components and a couple of 74LS132 Schmitt trigger ICs.
Regrettably none of my videos have sound, so I've lost my chance to record the "boom" or hit sound. It's nothing, really, just a discrete noise generator circuit that was meant to sound like a gunshot. If I had to build a replacement "boom" sound board tomorrow I'd probably use a 76477 sound chip. The results would sound about the same.
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You could increment the score counter with less than a full pulse at least at one point. I remember playing at the center and watching all of our score counters increment at a slow rate while we stood in the well-lit staging area. Memory lies, but I am pretty sure it stuck out because the numbers were not incrementing at the same rate that one would expect for a hit by the guns.
ReplyDeleteI _think_ that this may have had some origin in play around the "unshielded reactor" in the center of the arena that would emit flashes of light at random and raise your score.
Very interesting. Perhaps there is some possibility of interference from fluorescent lighting.
DeleteI believe the bulbs were xenon flash bulbs, essentially a camera flash complete with recharging capacitor onboard for each next shot. Bulbs stuck out from gun tip a bit, and would broadcast wide, so a PVC reducer was used over the end of barrel to focus the shooting. These parts were painted black, and fell off pretty frequently. But if you entered a room mid game with several members of the other team unaware, a player “in-the-know” could remove this tip and hit all opposing players with one discharge.
DeleteStar patrol MIGHT have had a flash mounted on a small box, let’s call it a flash grenade. If say a team of skilled teens were ganged up on some smaller kids, a passing Star Patrol ref could “equalize” a bit, usually without anyone realizing how they got hit.
Teen: “hey man, our suits keep going off and we don’t see anyone around that could be shooting”.
Star Patrol: “Yall need to spread out…one of those kids is a sniper, hidden somewhere way over there”
Yes, you can see the inside of the gun in the April 2017 post from my visit to the basement archives of the Laser Tag Museum.
Deletehttps://starlaserforce.blogspot.com/2017/04/star-laser-forces-light-gun.html
Sounds like Star Patrol had a lot of fun. Hit me up at the contact email (sidebar) if you want to chat about it sometime.
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