ThePixel Frickelprojekte

Okay here it is, one of the S2 mini, I ordered a batch of ten already. Yes I am positive about getting this done ;-) If not, it is possible to make a lot of other neat things with these little fellas. However I figured that I need a smaller soldering iron for this one, already ordered too. Meanwhile I did some research about the HC-12 radio modules. They have a quite long range but unfortunately it is not allowed to run them at max power here in germany . However Wolfgang Ewald wrote a pretty detailed description in his blog "Wolles Elektronikkiste" on how to get these things in a legal mode while still achieving distances over 100m so I won´t get deeper into detail since I am not an electronics specialist.  At the final version I´ll just note down what I made and what components I connected how and why. For detailed specifications check Wolles blog, though it is in german ;-)

Still waiting for a couple of things but some reed contacts arrived and already passed my first test, require a really tiny magnet to trigger, the resistor is a 10K in case you want to know:      int led = BUILTIN_LED;      int buttonio = D5; int btn = 0;    void setup() {   pinMode(led, OUTPUT);      pinMode(buttonio, INPUT); } void loop() {   btn = digitalRead(buttonio);      if (btn == HIGH) {         digitalWrite(led, HIGH);                  }      else {         digitalWrite(led, LOW);      } }

 I just figured out that these small switches are no good idea for the trigger. They don´t feel nice with their "click" and they will wear out pretty fast I guess. I´ll use reed switches instead. Another thing worth to be mentioned is that the powerbank powersupply will require some "keep alive" circuit, because they switch off when the current drawn is too low.  So either circuit or battery instead.

 Meanwhile I got already some of the parts...     The solenoid is pretty small so the recoil will probably feel a bit too weak but we will see. The IR diode came without any specs, I need to contact the chinese vendor about this or just get something else. Due to lack of some other parts I started with some other testing, mechanic of the trigger *check*.  The spring is a 7x12,5mm from a spring collection but I assume it is also possible to get them without buying tons of other ;-) I´ll add links to the parts at a more final stage. I also tested the FRAM with a tiny script, it works pretty well though I haven´t yet checked the hotplug capability. There comes a testscript with the lib from adafruit, however I reduced it to the really important stuff for the test: #include "Adafruit_FRAM_I2C.h" Adafruit_FRAM_I2C fram     = Adafruit_FRAM_I2C(); void setup(void) {   Serial.begin(9600);     if (fram.begin()) {       ...

Well, I am not sure if I´ll keep that name for it but anyway: (For the german audience, this is going to be in english now, sorry but I hope I get to some input/ideas from other people and english just increases the range a lot.) About 25 years ago I was playing a lasertag indoor game in Rotterdam. In my eyes it was pretty lame because you were not allowed to dodge, run or hide. This year, a quarter century later being on vacation I had the chance to play another one but this time outdoor. That was quite fun and I instantly thought, I need to get such things to play at home. We already got these multiweapon featured noisy lasertag guns but they are no real fun, easy to cheat, stupid weapon behaviour, don´t see who you tagged or who tagged you, pretty short range and almost unplayable at daylight. To sum it up: no fun. I was looking around the net for professional equipment. Yes it is available and not even too costy if you want to start a business with that. But no, I don´t want to. So...