Hack a Day » shmooball

Building the Shmooball cannon

Caleb Kraft — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:01:40 +0000

We’ve been eagerly anticipating this, [Larry] has published the entire build of the Shmooball gun for 2009. This design is more compact and elegant than the one for 2008 and has a slightly more Ghost Buster’s aesthetic about it. The pictures are great and there’s lots of good tips along the way. We can’t wait to see what they make next year. How about a gattling version?

Posted in classic hacks, misc hacks

The 2009 ShmooBall gun

Eliot — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:15:45 +0000

The registration desk hasn’t opened yet at ShmooCon 2009, but we’re already running into old friends. We found [Larry Pesce] and [Paul Asadoorian] from the PaulDotCom Security Weekly podcast showing off their latest ShmooBall gun. ShmooBalls have been a staple of ShmooCon from the very beginning. They’re soft foam balls distributed to each of the attendees who can then use them to pelt the speakers when they disagree. It’s a semi-anonymous way of expressing your dismay physically. [Larry] has been building bigger and better ways to shoot the ShmooBalls for the last couple years. You may remember seeing the 2008 model. This year the goal was to make the gun part much lighter. The CO2 supply is mounted remotely with a solenoid valve and coiled air line. The pistol grip has a light up arming switch and trigger. The gun is fairly easy to transport: the air line has a quick disconnect and the power is connected using ethernet jacks.

Posted in cons, security hacks

The 2008 Shmooball Gun

Will O'Brien — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:41:00 +0000

I caught up with [Larry] from pauldotcom.com and got a quick walk-through of his Shmooball gun. After several less successful attempts, this one worked pretty damn well and featured a distinctive sound that caused a notable glimmer of fear in the eyes of the speakers. *cough*[renderman]*cough*. Read on for the secrets of the Shmooball gun.

The gun is pneumatic, so pressure was supplied from a 7-800psi CO2 paintball gun through this quick disconnect. [Larry] needed an adapter to connect to the 1/4″ regulator input. He made the small chamber, with each connection, and found that it acted as a helpful expansion chamber for the gas supply.

The lower pressure storage chamber is fed about 100psi from the regulator. To release the pressure to the firing chamber, he used this electric water sprinkler solenoid. These take around 12VDC and slightly slow the pressure expansion into the firing chamber

The trigger was built using a simple safety mechanism – two momentary push buttons have to be depressed to fire the sprinkler solenoid.

The get a good seal on the Shmooball, he cut down a beer cozy to act as reusable wadding.

The wadding fits quite well around the 2.75″ Shmooball. The twine keeps the wadding from going the way of the Shmooball.

A velcro mounted laser pointer provides quick aim for chasing tricky speakers.

Thanks to [Larry] for giving us the tour!