Arm Mounted Light Cannon; Villains Beware

In a hack worthy of the flick Kick Ass, [Chein] built this arm-mounted light weapon. The lamp in the palm of your hand has a ring of LEDs for a nice glowing effect, but the real story is the xenon bulb at its center. The flash capacitor and charge circuit from a disposable camera are used to step up the battery voltage to 330V for an intense and slightly blinding discharge. The charging is started when you press a button on the back of the hand harness, with the flash coming when one of your fingers touches a conveniently positioned trigger. Check it out after the break.

This non-lethal weapon makes for a nice alternative to the dangers involve in playing with fire.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO2BNljqHt0]

34 thoughts on “Arm Mounted Light Cannon; Villains Beware

  1. unless one have something with the power density of a stark industries arc reactor.

    as for plasma bolts, the energy requirements would be secondary to figuring out how to keep the bolt stable all the way to the target.

  2. What if you took the route the Prop-Designers did from “Logan’s Run”. The pistols they used had a canister of compressed C02 that was hit with a bright light whenever the trigger was pulled. This created a greenish burst of gas expel from the gun barrel.

    What if you placed a small canister of compressed air onto the rig. Then a split second before the light went off, a valve opened up releasing a stream of air into a small resivor filled with Dry Ice. From there a pipe would extend below the wrist (insulated of course) that would shoot a stream of dense gas across the area. From there the light would flash illuminating the stream in the dark.

  3. I was just going to say exactly what junkhacker said. I developed something akin to this a few years ago. The fun part is cascading the flashes. I found it much more effective to use several separate flash bulbs with a randomized flash delay. The disorientation of receiving not only several flashes but several, sometimes 3 or 4 at once.

    Drugs/alcohol can nullify stun guns and mace but anyone who sees the flashes gets affected and there aren’t many blind successful muggers.

  4. Yes, I remember those things… A friend of mine taught me just how bright those Disposable Camera Flashes are, back in the late 90’s. He is a Photographer and worked in a Photo Lab at the time. Remember Film Cameras??? He use to save all the batteries and some of the flash mechanisms when he took them apart to get the film out to Develop it. Those little capacitors in those thing are very powerful! And when you set one off in your hand, you may just get a nice big JOLT to Boot!:O I wrapped mine with some tape since I kept shocking my self while trying to get my revenge on my Buddie for blinding me for 5 minutes every time he set that thing off in my face. One night three of us guys got into a contest to see who could blind the other with the little stealth flash devises. An then went on a drive too look at Christmas lights. Seemed logical to us at the time;) Luckily I wasn’t driving, cause I probably wold have run over something or someone with all those bright flashes going off in my face that night. One bad side effect I noticed… I became very nauseated after about 20 minutes of riding in a car and being repeatedly blinded by incessant flashing. The game was soon over form me… I still have mine, somewhere in a drawer and often thought… there must be some good use I could put this thing to. Hmmm, maybe a Security Flash Light… Good Work Chein!:) But, I’m not much into wearing allot of gear on my arm when I’m running around;)

    Don

  5. All this talk about disorienting muggers, didn’t anyone think what might happen if the mugger had this (or something similar), disorient and confuse the victim with less chance of them being able to ID you.

    (note: I am not nor have ever been a thief.

  6. Very interesting. I had at one time thought of something similiar, except I was thinking of using 5W white LEDs (or perhaps 3 3W LEDs in the colors red, green & blue). This seems like a better idea though.

    @adam felson
    Not really. I used to walk around alone late at night, and something like this (mounted on your jacket, and with 360 degree coverage) would allow you to walk around safely without carrying something your local law enforcement official probably woundn’t get to worked up about.

  7. @Brian haha idk… anything involving wires on/in a jacket probly would look like some kind of bomb to your average paranoid cop… if they’re not paranoid then good on them :)

  8. that small of a Xenon strobe is too dim. he needs to get a larger coil type that a studio strobe uses. you can literally feel the pulse of light and hear a very loud pop. Probably would only get 2 firings out of those AA batteries though…

  9. i remember the noise a camera makes when it’s charging the cap for flash.. and the noise iron man makes when he’s charging up his weapons..
    let’s make this bigger, powered by a backpack full of lithium ion cells, and with a bigger, badder charging circuit. cap bank instead of single cap.. big enough to hear it powering up. then u can build a plasma rifle to go with it.
    say you wanted to make a lightning gun, ground the target so the lightning hits them. you could follow the example of the taser, launching barbed cables into the target, then ZAP em. but the cables would have to be well insulated or it would ground out before reaching the target. or you could just go coilgun.
    but i want a plasma crossbow shotgun, AKA the plasma cutter in dead space. it’s pretty awesome, although i would settle for a moonraker. of course if we did hack together something dangerous like that it wouldnt make it’s way to hackaday because hackaday doesn’t usually involve anything too life threatening.

  10. if i were in the situation don’s friend was in, we would be seeing something awesome here. a very large array of camera flashbulbs. smaller arrays mounted to vehicles. somebody tailing you, especially at night? Blind em. back of your car packed tight with flash bulbs, DC in for all the charging circuits wired to same regulated power source. triggered in unision, or in groups incase you miss because they were blinking, you could fire half, or a quarter at a time. just wire all the triggers in bundles, to momentary switches on your dash. if you were in a car chase, disorient them, they can’t see anything but phantom stains of green/purple/blue whatever. then they either pull over or hit something. either way they’re off your tail. also great for stunning deer so you can sneak up and knife them. conserves ammo:D

  11. remember to close your eyes before the flash, else you’ll be temporarily blinded, too.

    for directionality, why not some of the LEDs that they use in CREE-type flashlights (which come with a warning to not look into the beam)?

  12. Not that I want to criticise or mock your work.BUT my camera does that it can even do a strobe light thing which really blinds you. Plus you get a nice photo for evidence to show the police.

  13. The only way this would work Is
    1. Make The flash duration longer.
    2. Make them shock resistant. I.E, Knockin foo’s out wit em. resistant.

    Be nice in rough neighborhoods.

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