OSDYLS - Open Source DIY Lasertag System

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 I was looking further and found some chinese system, doesn´t look bad but I don´t like the sounds and the game modes.

Digging even deeper I recognized a lot of DIY attempts but none of these made it to a final stage. That is sad because some of the projects put a lot of energy in it. To name a few Duino-Tag, LZRTag, Skirmos, Pewduino/Infinitag. If you look for those you will notice that all of them got stuck in their development.

However, those projects already made a lot of important research so you can learn from their concepts. 

Maybe I´ll never complete my approach as well but I will start with some simple things in mind:

 

- good range (hopefully at least 50m)

- stock components (except for the tagger body)

- as cheap as possible but with components that work

The basic structure, the communication may not work too good with wifi unless the server provides a strong signal so I´ll most likely go for 433Mhz radio, this needs testing as well with the IR diodes and lenses. The processor will probably be an ESP32 such as the S2 mini, the D1 mini would probably be quick enough but it just ain´t providing enough GPIOs. GPS would be a fun feature offering more game options but it isn´t anything I have on the priority list.

If you turn off your tagger you will quit the game, re-entering impossible. This is probably the easiest way to prevent cheating on your "health" status. Ammo is permanently written to the FRAM and can only be recharged when the game is over or maybe at special recharging stations later. The ammo clips can be swapped in game, I hope this will work hot-plugging the memory, so you can collect ammo clips or carry another one. Anyway, there should also be game modes with infinite ammo, but that is just a software issue at the end.

 

The body of the tagger will be 3D printable, I will provide a basic tagger with the necessary room to fit the components. Here an early shot of the 3D model, well to be honest that is just one half of the tagger ;-) Of course I hope there will be many mods once this one is at a releasable level so I will also provide step files among the stl for easier editing/modification.

Thats it so far, feedback/suggestions welcome. 

 

Ah yes one last word: I am a pacifistic guy, some people don´t understand why I think it is fun to shoot eachother then. Simple, the world got no problem with sportive competition, you are not shooting anybody you are tagging another person. Remember, tossing a ball at someone in a teamsport at school is nothing else but the basics of hunting.

And of course if you don´t like the tagger to look like a deadly weapon you can easily change that because it all will be open source.