Motion Activated Super-Squirter Stands Guard

October 18, 2017 by Steven Dufresne 14 Comments

Thieves beware. If you prowl around [Matthew Gaber]’s place, you get soaked by his motion activated super-squirter. Even if he’s not at home, he can aim and fire it remotely using an iPhone app. And for the record, a camera saves photos of your wetted-self to an SD card.

ESPino, ArduCAM UNO and voltage converter boards

The whole security system is handled by three subsystems for target acquisition, photo documentation, and communications. The first subsystem is centered around an ESPino which utilizes a PIR sensor to detect motion. It then turns on a windscreen washer pump and uses pan and tilt servos to squirt water in a pattern toward the victim.

The target acquisition hardware also sends a message to the second subsystem, an ArduCAM ESP8266 UNO board. It takes a burst of photos using an ArduCAM Mini Camera mounted beside the squirter outlet. The UNO can also serve up a webpage with a collection of the photos.

The final subsystem is an iPhone app which talks to both the ESPino and the UNO board. It can remotely control the squirter and provide a video feed of what the camera sees.

One detail of the build we really enjoyed is the vacuum relief valve he fabricated himself. It prevents siphoning through the pump when it’s not on. Don’t miss a demo of the squirter in action after the break.

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Bluetooth Water Cannon Junk Build Shoots Into Our Hearts

April 19, 2016 by Richard Baguley 9 Comments

We’ve seen a few remote controlled turret builds in the past, but this one from [Noel Geren] is pretty neat: it shoots water and uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for control. Check it out in action in the video below.

[Noel] used the guts of a Nerf Thunderstrike water gun for the firing mechanism, combined with a 3D-printed enclosure and a servo that rotates the turret top. The pump from the gun is connected to a simple relay that replaces the trigger. Both the relay and the servo are connected to an RFDuino with a servo shield, which is programmed to respond to simple commands to rotate and fire.

It’s a nice junk build, and [Noel] has released all of the files for download if you want to build your own. It would make a nice weekend build or a project to do with the kids.

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Nerf Turret Controlled By Slack

February 15, 2016 by Anool Mahidharia 11 Comments

What happens when you give a former Navy weapons engineer some development boards and ask him to build “something cool”? What happens when you give a kid finger paints? [Seb] obviously built an IoT Nerf Turret Gun controlled via a team communication app.

The weapon was a Nerf Stampede which was hacked so it could be fired electronically. The safety switch was bypassed and a relay provided the firing signal. The electronics stack consists of an Intel Galileo, a motor shield and a relay shield. The turret assembly was built using off the shelf structural parts from Actobotics. Stepper motors provide motion to the turret. The fun begins with how the software is implemented. An iBeacon network detects where people sit at in the office. So when you type in the name of your target in a messaging app, it knows where they’re sitting, aims at them, and pops a nerf dart at them.

The lessons learned are what makes such projects worth their while. For example, USB is a standard. And the standard says that USB cables be not more than 1.8 m long. [Seb] was reminded of this when his electronics worked on his workbench, but refused to work when placed in-situ and connected via a 3m long cable – the serial link just wouldn’t work.

Mounting the gun such that it was nicely balanced was another challenge. Eventually, he had to use a couple of AA cells taped to the front of the gun to get it right. This could be useful though, since he plans to replace the dead weights with a sighting camera. One last hack was to zip tie heat sinks to the motor drivers, and he had a good reason to do that. Read more about it in his blog. And check out the video as someone takes aim and shoots a target via SLACK, the team messaging application.

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Home Made Half Life 2 Turret Powered By Pi

January 1, 2016 by Richard Baguley 7 Comments

To help expand his inter-dimensional empire, [Solderchips] has decided to build his own Half Life 2 turret. This, he hopes, will automatically track and shoot anyone who hinders the work of Our Benefactors. He’s documenting the process, and has just published his first step: creating a 3D model of the turret and printing it out. The final project will use a Raspberry Pi and a webcam to track rebels and fire on them automatically, especially those with crowbars.

He’s made a promising start, using a papercraft model of the turret to build the 3D model, then modifying it to accommodate the brains (the Raspberry Pi) and the brawns, a couple of small servos that will move the top of the turret around. The next step will perhaps be to add a tilt switch so that the whole thing falls asleep if it falls over. The thing to learn from this project, is that at some point you just have to stop thinking about it and actually make something. This paper model is a big step toward success compared to carrying around the dream in your head.

We’ve seen a few Portal Turret builds and a very nice Wheatley build, but not a decent Half Life 2 turret build, so hopefully [Solderchips] will see this through to completion and release all of his files.

Raspberry Pi Sentry Turret Is The Enemy Of All Mankind

October 3, 2015 by Richard Baguley 20 Comments

War, huh, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, except as an excuse to build a Raspberry Pi powered sentry turret that will track and fire upon your enemies. That’s what [Matt Desmaris] decided to do, and he has released the full details of his build.

It lacks the polished elegance of most military hardware, but what do you expect of a quick and dirty hack? It’s not shiny or ominous, but it has that killer motion-tracking feature. [Matt] is using OpenCV to detect movement from a USB webcam, two servos to pan and tilt the camera and gun and a small relay to pull the trigger. Manual control over the Interwebs is also available.

We’ve seen lots of similar builds using weaponry such as rubber bands and Nerf guns, but this one is a great start if you are interested in seeing how you can tie together tools like OpenCV and servos to create a camera that actively tracks movement.

The Counter-Strike Airsoft Robot

August 24, 2014 by Matt Terndrup 10 Comments

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[Jon] and his brother converted an RC car into a robot that can fire airsoft pellets into the air. The little motorized vehicle was disassembled and a handheld was attached to the top. A pulling mechanism was put in place and a safety procedure was added to make sure no accidents occurred.

The chassis stand was created to hold the handle. The setup was then tested at this point, and a Raspberry Pi server was configured to have a camera that would act as the eyes for the robot. Once everything was in place, the wheels hit the ground and the vehicle was able to move around, positioning itself to aim the servos at a designated target. Footage was transmitted via the web showing what the robot was looking at.

A video of the remote-controlled counter-strike robot can be seen after the break. You could consider this your toy army. That makes this one your toy air force.

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Airsoft Turret Has Turn, Tilt, And Auto-feed To Keep Those BBs Flying

February 15, 2013 by Mike Szczys 39 Comments

airsoft-turret-with-laser-cut-parts

Yet another project that proves you need to acquire a laser cutter. This Airsoft turret rotates, tilts, and includes a hopper for ammo.

All of the pieces were cut from acrylic. The base includes a bracket which keeps the large rotating gear level by sandwiching it between the layers. That and the tilt mechanism are pretty straight forward. The module responsible for loading the BBs is pretty neat though. It uses a gear with round teeth the same diameter as the ammo. Once a BB is picked up it is forced upward into the tubing that feeds the gun. Get the full picture from the demo video after the break.

The one thing [The Liquider] is wondering about is how to provide feedback for the tilt and rotate functions. We can’t think of an easier way than to use simple rotary encoders. The Arduino Mega he wishes to use as a driver will have no problem interfacing with reflectance sensors and the acrylic makes it simple to mount this type of black and white encoder wheel.

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