Building A Smart Airsoft Gun With Open Source Hardware

[matt8588] designed a smartgun rig for his Airsoft shotgun (YouTube, embedded below). He has a Rasperry Pi 3 mounted inside a PEQ box connected to an infrared camera with an IR tac light helping with illumination. A series of buttons control a crosshair pattern superimposed on the camera image, which is displayed on a tablet. You can also reposition the crosshairs to shoot further away. One of the buttons triggers a signal on the transmitter, for setting off Airsoft claymores during battle. A second Pi, a Zero, connects to an BerryIMU sensor that controls a “traffic light” arrangement of 12mm LEDs that warn him when he’s moving the gun too much to be accurate.

If you want to check out [Matt’s] progress, he’s posted videos of him showing off the gun’s accuracy, including one after the break in which he shoots accurately from a standing position while looking down at the tablet. You can find code for both Pi’s on his GitHub repository.

We suppose it goes without saying that Hackaday has a plethora of Airsoft projects. We especially love the Airsoft sentry gun, the rover-mounted Airsoft gun, and the drone-mounted POV Airsoft turret we published.

10 thoughts on “Building A Smart Airsoft Gun With Open Source Hardware

      1. Pretty much applies to anything portable:

        Batteries used.
        Battery life.
        Additional weight added to original product.
        Total weight now.

        An Auto-range finder would be a nice addition for a sniper version.

        Maybe a rounds-left counter?

        1. I use one of several usb battery packs i have. I have a small anker battery pack that powers it for 4-5 hours. The power consumption is 6.5Wh when in use. The original product weighed almost 4 pounds but with a catch, it has a metal weight inside that I removed which was 1lb. I then added 5 pounds to it giving it a total weight of 8 pounds.
          I would love to add a range finder to automatically adjust the crosshairs. I am working on an auto zeroing function with the camera and a bore sight laser, because getting the crosshairs to be accurate for multiple ranges takes a while and is a pita.

    1. I took a $25 airsoft shotgun and increased its effective range by 33%. If the barrel is level the gun has an effective range of 90ft, I programmed the crosshairs to shoot accurately up to 120ft, at those ranges the barrel is slightly elevated to compensate for the bb drop. It also has night vision thanks to the ir camera and the ir taclight, the range of the night vision is about 40ft. It’s intended purpose is for CQB at night

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