Automated Shooting Range

targets

[Steve] was discussing airsoft with a friend when he came up with this idea. His friend was lamenting the lack of “action” style targets for their airsoft hobby. [Steve] took this as an opportunity to make his own automated target system. The targets themselves are made from Construx, a paper target and a piece of cloth to stop the airsoft pellets. Controlled by an Arduino and an ioBridge module, it has a web interface so he can switch programs from up range. You can see a video example of him shooting some targets after the break. Next,he should make it twitter where each target was hit.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL8V2lk75G4]

28 thoughts on “Automated Shooting Range

  1. “down range”?
    Most targets _are_ changed “down range”,
    changing a target from “up range” (where the
    shooter is) is a nice convenience.

    (insert here Mel Gibson singing
    “dah, dadadah, da dada, da dadat da, dah dada dah”
    as targer moves up range in Lethal Weapon (I) )

  2. yeah, a hit/miss counter would be great.
    then you make the code increase the rate according to your accuracy. So 100% hit rate would keep you on some expert curve but a lower rate would lower the challenge curve.
    Also the targets need to be farther apart!

    or just make it into a drinking game and skip the code.

  3. Or have two paper targets on each target. It spins one way for a ‘bad guy’ target, the other and you get a ‘good guy’..try to not hit the good guys. A hit detector shouldn’t be too hard, but a miss detector wouldn’t be quite so easy. Maybe use a PC and a microphone to detect the sound of the shot? A shot sound + hit = score++, sound + no hit for x period of time = miss++

  4. Caleb is trying to get me all riled up about twitter. :) heheh, I see right through you, buddy.

    good job on the target system. looks like a ton of work….a mini-engineering project.

    my complaint is with the iobridge stuff…not open source; requires iobridge servers to work; etc. Of course there isn’t much of an alternative without some serious programming (unless you want to have a computer hooked up via rs 485/serial)

  5. a piezo on each target plus piezo on cardboard backdrop would detect hits and misses (hits would register both sensors). Twitter it to a scoreboard
    ‘downrange’ Dead simple.

  6. Yeah, they are indeed Construx. I had some ideas on “hit detection” but after all I can see the holes in the target face for scoring. Still, its really good feedback and ideas. I really like the one with the speaker detection and also the good/bad guy one.

  7. tat doesnt seem so healthy for the wall behind the targets! actually .. why didnt you made the BB stopper stationary and just flip the target? that would make it possible to flip them faster too since you have lesser mass :-)
    cool project neverless :-)

  8. The cut up shirt for the trap worked pretty well in fact. Nothing go through (unless I missed and did hit the wall, of course). The mass of the target face is very light, and very neutral, so I not even up against the torque limitations of those little servos yet. The code is posted on my site, so dropping some of the delays would speed the targets up even more. Good idea though, and thanks for the feedback.

  9. Thats pretty cool that you can get the targets to move freely. I downloaded some Olly Lang tutorials from one of his paintballing websites on improving his accuracy and they are all pretty boring if you don’t have another player to peform them with.. Hours of fun to be had with that system..

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