Laser shooting gallery made from scrap

posted Jan 3rd 2012 12:01pm by Brian Benchoff
filed under: laser hacks

When he’s not being completely awesome hosting a radio show on electronic music, [Gaston Klares] is busy in his workshop coming up with some awesome stuff. One of his most recent builds is a laser gun shooting gallery that brings a classic carnival game to his back yard. (Google translate link)

The laser gun itself is made up of 95% recycled components. The purpose of the laser gun is pretty simple – just make a sound effect and fire a laser downrange when the trigger is pulled. The shooting gallery is where all the fun happens. Five dog food cans are lined up at the far end of the range. There’s a small hole in each can and a phototransistor inside each can that activates the ‘fall over’ mechanism. When all the cans are knocked down, a windshield wiper motor puts all the cans upright again.

Thanks to [Kris] for sending this one in. Check out the shooting gallery in action after the break.

Comments [13]

tagged: laser gun, shooting gallery

13 Responses to Laser shooting gallery made from scrap

Brett W. (FightCube.com) says:

January 3, 2012 at 12:54 pm

Very unique and cool! To improve playability, I would suggest pulling the trigger to turn on the laser, increasing the detection area, and maybe adding some gun audio sounds. A counter that starts after the first can goes down and ends after the last can would be cool too ;-) Shortest time mode, or even TIMED mode with increasing levels of difficulty.

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mess_maker says:

January 3, 2012 at 1:40 pm

forget the laser gun, I want that lighter… its accuracy is amazing! :P

Any changes that I would make would probably be to the accuracy. The beam is hitting the can, though it isn’t marked as a hit until the very center is hit. This could be achieved in a few ways. Maybe clever use of fiber optics, or a diffusion of some kind that would spread the beam. As I have not used lasers in any of my projects I would have to do a little research.

My son would love to play with a toy like this, I imagine.

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mess_maker says:

January 3, 2012 at 1:44 pm

Another change I might make ( noting that I mentioned my son in my earlier post ) would be to only allow the gun to shoot while pointed at the targets. Basically, some sort of visual flag that the gun would look/check for before allowing the laser to be released.

I know that is essentially nerfing the project, but it saves the cats ( unless they are laying on the target ) and hopefully my sons eyes.

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War_Spigot says:

January 3, 2012 at 1:41 pm

I wouldn’t mind having one of those. The beam seems to last a little long to me, though. Make it adjustable maybe? Either way, the fading effect looks cool. Plus, it looks like something from Fallout

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Haku says:

January 3, 2012 at 1:53 pm

Very nice, I like it!

Does anyone have any experience of using / choosing solenoids? I’ve tried some google searches etc. but the range & types available is so large I don’t know where to start.

I have a Playstation/Saturn light gun I completely re-wired with a Picaxe microcontroller & IR LED which sends a 38khz pulse wheever the trigger is pulled, so it can activate standard IR remote control receivers.
It works great at triggering a sensor across a room but I’ve yet to expand on it and build the gallery part, I want to be able to ‘shoot’ tin cans and have them physically get knocked down as if hit by a real bullet but don’t know what solenoids to use for the job.

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draeath says:

January 3, 2012 at 3:40 pm

The eyepeice should be adjusted so you don’t put it against your eye. That right there will build a nasty bad habit. Not to mention the risk of accidentally stabbing your eye if something hits you or such.

Kudos on the Fallout look :)

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Sirrus Rider says:

January 3, 2012 at 5:07 pm

Looks like something created by Dr. Who. Nice!

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Hirudinea says:

January 3, 2012 at 10:42 pm

I would think the best way to improve the accuracy would be to replace the laser, with a beam crosssection of about 5 mm with a powerful flashlight with a crosssection of about an inch, much easer to make light hit the sensor.

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sawo says:

January 4, 2012 at 7:42 am

You should have a look at his other stuff. Very unique and arty.

http://web.me.com/fernandeklares/gastweb/Projects.html

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Alex says:

January 4, 2012 at 9:59 am

Wow, no kidding. I always get caught up in the various details of a project… Looks like this guy doesn’t have such problems, and it’s definitely to his benefit.

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Tom the Brat says:

January 4, 2012 at 7:56 am

Na, if the Doctor had made it, it would be more wibbleywobbley.

When I was little, there was a project in one of the pop science or mechanics magazines Dad always got with a flashlight bulb, lens and capacitor with a photocell in the target. Always wanted to make it.

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henry22 says:

January 4, 2012 at 7:59 am

needs duck gun.

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chris ponciano says:

January 10, 2012 at 10:28 am

Funny we just did something like this for a cross class project @ SJSU between my glass blowing/casting class and the digital media class. we took some glass ducks, rigged them up to a couple moving shelves i made with acrylic, wired them up to a couple arduinos to handle the simple task of lighting up the duck when shot by a laser gun i made, not as mechanically fancy as this guys falling cans, but we only had a couple weeks to do this among other projects.

Heres a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_teEMUIt3U

and a Link to the project page:
http://dma.sjsu.edu/art103/duckhunt/index.html

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