NES Light Gun Gets A Burning Laser Upgrade

The Nintendo Light Gun makes a perfect burning laser. Of course it’s been gutted to make this happen. Nonetheless, the retro look can’t be beat, and the gun form factor is just what you need in a laser weapon.

This will literally burn your eye out of your head, so [Justin] and his buddies over a North Street Labs are all wearing protective goggles designed for this laser’s wavelength. But they also built a safety into the zapper itself. At the beginning of the video clip (embedded after the break) you will see there’s a key lock mounted in the butt. This lock completes the circuit between the battery and driver board. The 2W output is achieved by a 445nm M140 diode. A lot went into the heat sink and mounting cylinder to make sure the diode doesn’t just burn up after a few seconds of use.

34 thoughts on “NES Light Gun Gets A Burning Laser Upgrade

    1. I could easily see a pulsed laser array (picture 10+ high wattage lasers) being scattered by dozens of prisms and mirrors. Package it up in a box with a semi-sphere on top. I call it a light grenade. Reusable too.

      Gods hope nobody makes one of these.

      1. But an idea that can be modified for safe entertainment use. Build it powerful(perhaps a strobe light?) enough to make several beams viable in a room of dry ice fog use color filters in some fashion the change the color. Both drunks& stoners would be entertained.

    1. LOL-And a star Trek replica would be more fitting housing, rather than something that resembles a Browning, or Ruger .22 semi-auto. Although this probably used something that was laying around getting little use.

  1. I’ve often thought it would be cool to hack one of these around the trigger, receiver and barrel of a Charter Arms Explorer II .22LR pistol.

    The original was the ArmaLite (same company that originally made the M-16) AR-7 rifle. After passing through several companies, Henry Repeating Arms Co. makes the AR-7.

    A unique feature of these rifles is all the components pack into the buttstock and that package floats. Another unique feature is the barrel is made of ABS plastic molded over a rifled steel liner. (Some older ones had a steel lined aluminum barrel.)

  2. “Light grenade”… AAAUGGGH.

    BTW watch out, apparently *b*y is keeping lists of everyone ordering A120, A140, >50mW BRD diodes and infrared ones in the event there is ever a major incident involving them.

      1. eh. I am a little worried about someone ruining it for the rest of us. Eventually someone will be permanently blinded by someone else, it only takes one irresponsible/malicious jerk. I feel like it’s only a matter of time before mainstream news blows the lid off dangerous things being available just like they do with every other commonly available dangerous thing.. and yeah the thought that you could be walking along and silently blinded by something like this is quite terrifying. But nothing new, just easier to come by.

      2. While I agree of the possibility of this happening through reactionary politics, I completely disagree with benny’s assertion that “this should be banned.” We already have laws on the books for people who inflict harm on others, are negligent with dangerous equipment, or directly put people at risk with reckless behavior. Irresponsible people should be punished for doing these things. Banning the item entirely punishes those who do not pose a risk to others. As a corrollary, I find those who propose the ban to be morally abhorrent.

        1. But but but PREMPT CRIME!
          Surely, by preventing the capability, we can stop rapists from making women pregnant! Oh, and stop women from being bad moms. Not to mention slow the spread of STD’s. Just a little appointment with a Alterster or Castra-Co medical specialist and everyone will be much safer! Get your sons and daughters signed up today. We even supply compliance supplies to get them here with no fuss! :facepalm:

          Yeah seriously though, same type that want to make it so that even the potential to commit a crime (read: freedom) should be illegal. Those people seem to forget that the capability to do good or at the least non-harmful actions is the baby going out with the bathwater. Not saying innocent because well in the case of my example above… Haha, even virgins aren’t 100% innocent. And what sane person would go in to get ‘fixed’ just for some stranger’s convenience?

  3. Someone totally needs to make a “portal gun” using the A140 and some sort of rotary converter to generate the correct image on a wall etc.

    Especially effective if it also compensates for pan/tilt so if you move the gun the image stays steady.

  4. erm, why the hell wire chunky ass speaker cable to the trigger switche then use a small bit of 22AWG to the end to solder it too your driver board?

    they run out of 22awg or something?

    1. reasoning for different wires is because one is more flexible than the other. For fear of breaking the legs off the diode in the event we moved it a tiny bit we used a thinner wire. We later did some maths and saw the thinner wire was just fine at these currents, we will never use 10 gauge speaker wire again.

    2. More importantly, the wire had to fit under the trigger mechanism. Lower profile wire was needed there as a result, and that was when we did the math calculations to figure out power loss from different wire sizes. It was insignificant.

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