Ohm on the range

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I've been asked to make a large lasertag sensor harness for a client. This comprises of six Tagbits lasertag sensors on a single lead.

I was asked for four of these, three worked perfectly but the last one had a short between the power lines (+5V from a 7805).
A visual examination did not reveal the fault, and as I didn't fancy disassembling each sensor one by one I wheeled out my Polar Instruments Toneohm 700.

This is no spring chicken being last manufactured in 1988. But it's a great piece of kit having a 200mOhm (milli Ohm) range, and audio feedback with a higher tone indicating less resistance.

My normal multimeter in continuity mode indicated a short no matter where in the cable the probes were placed. But the Toneohm didn't even register a connection between +5V and 0V on any sensor until I tested the sensor that actually had the fault. e.g. It is so sensitive it registered open circuit along a 60cm piece of wire which was shorted at one end.
In fact, it's so sensitive it could detect which side of the PCB the fault was on:
Between the +5V and 0V connections on this side of the PCB, the resistance is 93.9mOhm.

But on the other side of the PCB, the same connections show 49mOhm, indicating the fault is on this side of the board.

And lifting the PCB showed a single strand of cable between 0V and 5V. Problem solved.

In clear sight

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Steve at Operation Lasertag asked me if I could help with replacement sights for this:

It's a Hasbro laser tag unit that he rents out for use at customers own party venues. The problem is that the sights tend to get lost and spares are no longer manufactured.

He asked me if I could use my iron sight design as a replacement.

The gun has a picatinny style mount for the sight to sit on so I combined my iron sight with the clamps I designed for a picatinny mounted focus tube the other week:

It has two shaped brackets that are clamped with two bolts to hold the sight in place. Here it is fitted to the gun body:

The final units will be made in red and green PLA to identify each team.

Adventure Sports Claymore Mine

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Steve at OperationLasertag had another project for me last year. This time to create software for use on the Milestag Add-On board to allow it to be used as a claymore mine with Adventure Sports lasertag equipment.

Using a digital scope, I reverse engineered the AS IR protocol (which is unencrypted and based upon the open Milestag protocol with minor modifications), and developed my own software in C to send an AS Admin-Kill packet. This worked first time, and Steve packed the add-on module into a rather realistic looking claymore mine which can be activated by remote control:

Guns of many colours

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Over Christmas I managed to complete all the coloured parts for two sets of team lasertag guns for Steve at OperationLasertag.

Each team has either red or green flash diffuser/cooling fins:

I also printed 2 guns with coloured focus tubes to identify them as referee guns:

The coloured plastic is PLA from Faberdashery.

Lasertag bodies

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I've been manufacturing many lasertag bodies for Steve at Operation Lasertag. These differ from my standard kits in that they are designed to fit Steve's analogue lasertag boards, and they have coloured plastic parts to allow for easy team identification, as well as raised gun sights:

Rocket Launcher Complete

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I've finally completed the RepRap, Milestag rocket launcher build. I stuck a sight on top and took some pics. Going to pass it on to Steve now for painting and the installation of the Milestag electronics.