One battery world...

[Evil Bob]

For those who remember, I hinted at having made a working one battery setup for the HALO and Warp feed several months ago. After testing and refining it over the past three months, I'm finally posting pictures on what it looks like.

The HALO A had a voracious appetite for raw amperage, requiring a solid 900ma + to feed reliably at 16bps and the one battery world was beyond reach unless you wanted to venture into an external battery with a much higher current potential. Enter in the HALO B, which cut the amperage appetite down to a healthy 500ma, easily something the Emag battery could sustain. The Odyssey refined the HALO even further with the HALO TE which further reduced the amperage requirements, which translates into more shots per battery charge. With the HALO B I would get between 5,000 and 6,000 shots off of a single charge. I've only had my HALO TE upgrade for a week now and haven't gotten around to running the full crash test on it, but it will easily increase the shot total due to the lower torque the new software introduces.

Welcome to my One Battery World...

[Evil Bob]

Next...

[Evil Bob]

Now for the internals...

[Evil Bob]

Last pic...

[Evil Bob]

Now I know I'm not the first to do the single battery mod, RobAGD deserves the credit for that, it was his mod that got me thinking about how to do a module based system that would not require the marker or equipment to be permanently modified.

The beauty of this is you can run solo with the HALO or mount it on your Warp and power both. Also, there is ZERO modification done to either the Warp or the HALO, the entire mod is stored in the battery cover of the HALO, meaning that you can easily remove it with the single screw and go back to using heavy batteries again if you so choose.

-Evil Bob

[sniper1rfa]

is your warp intellifed?

[Halliday]

It looks great, but I don't get the "one battery world." Where's the one battery? Plugs into the "9v to HALO?" Runs off the E-Mag battery?

Still cool thou.......

[shartley]

Very nice. Clean work too. :)

[Evil Bob]

Everything is powered off of the Emag battery, I'm stuck at work right now (where the company owned digital camera is at) and I was unable to bring my marker in to take picts of the full setup (the office people freak out when I bring my marker in and wave it around)

The Warp is intelifed by the Emag, everything works happily together and I save quite a bit of weight by losing the 6 AA's and the pair of 9v's, not to mention the savings in not having to buy those anymore.

-Evil Bob

[Hexis]

Well, I guess the delay getting my Upgraded Halo B is handy in some ways. I was able to add a second battery cover on the order so I have something to play with.

Not being mych for electronics design myself, can you do me a favor and post a simple schematic for a Emag -> Halo only board? So I could run the Halo off the Emag Battery, but with no warp?

Also how did you feed the cable from the EMag battery?

[ChucktheMAGician]

Great work! How many times did you get burned soldering things that close together?! Why did you put a switch in, couldn't you just use the pin in the emag?

[cledford]

If I were you, I'd get a bunch of battery covers from the HALO guys and start selling those puppies!!!

I'd give you $25.

Heck, get them made in china and you'll make a mint.

Great Job!

-Calvin

[Evil Bob]

Hexis: http://www.robagd.com/revy-hack/ RobAGD has all the info you need on how to make the mod. The HALO requires NO MORE then 9v, you go any higher and you'll fry the board, so you'll need to find yourself a 9v regulator, which can be obtained over at www.mouser.com, they've got everything you'd ever want to use. I don't have the part number handy and I'm too blind to read it off of the reg itself, I'll post the part number I used when I get home and can read it off of the invoice.

Chuck: I don't carry the yellow pin with me the whole day I play, it usually spends the day in with the tools locked in the car. So I use the switch to conserve battery power while I'm sitting in the dead box, since I haven't yet got around to modding my warp with a switch, it's never really been an issue just leaving the Emag on since the battery is pretty burly to begin with.

Long fine needle nose pliers, my fingers are too fat to get in for the tight work and I'm a big wuss when it comes to pain :)

-Evil Bob

[cledford]

Can you post pics of the 18v in from the Emag?

How about a wiring diagram :)

-Calvin

[cledford]

Do you cut your HALO for running on the warp? I wouldn't think it would fit very tight if you didn't - but I think the hose would run through the battery compartment - so would it interfer with your mod?

-Calvin

[Evil Bob]

For power out from the Emag, I used RobAGD's instructions on his site http://www.robagd.com/revy-hack/ and put a standard DC power supply plug on the end of it. I went with the DC power sockets intead of stero plugs to prevent the battery from being shorted when ever the plug was either inserted or removed as the standard stereo jack touches both terminals as it is inserted/removed. This just prevents potential battery damage.

I'm trying to do the same mod on an Xmag but I'm finding it very hard to do with the lack of room in the wire channel on the Xmag frame due to the ACE wiring, I may end up milling that channel a tad deeper to accomodate the extra wiring which goes against the whole "no permanent mod required" concept I'm shooting for.

-Evil Bob

[WARPED1]

Single battery? I count 2, the 9v to HALO and the EMag battery. Am I missing something?

[Oddball]

Looks nice.
I did the Revy hack on my E-mag to Revy and love it. Only carry 9v batteries with me to lend out to ppl who don't have spares. One of the major reasons that I don't use a Halo is because I didn't want to mess around with batteries again. I may have to pick up a Halo now for when I get an X-mag.

One question about the Halo TE, it is a different hopper from the Halo B or is it an upgraded board over the one in the B or both? I haven't seen one in yet (besides on the net) but I thought they where a cheaper verion of the Halo to compete price wise with the Rev.

[AlabamaMan]

Warped1 the only battery being used is the E-mag battery. That it the power input in the front of the battery cover. Then there are two outputs. One internal output for the Halo, and one external output for the warp. He is just passing the voltage through two regulators, one to knock it down to 12v for the warp, and then another to knock it down to 9v for the halo.

[WARPED1]

The 9v clip attatches to the old AA cradle then?

[Evil Bob]

Warped1: The 9v lead on the top of the mod plugs directly onto the 9v lead inside the HALO, this mod is basicly replacing the AA battery pack.

cledford: $25... heh, it was $20 alone for parts, not including the 4 hours of labour to put it together. I'd like to batch out a simple PC board and wave solder everything to save a ton of time, but that increases the cost futher.

The complete package includes:

1 x wire lead to the Emag battery compartment with both positive and negative terminals
1 x wire lead to warp feed
1 x battery cover for warp feed (already slotted so you don't have to hack your existing one up)
1 x halo battery cover mod.

Ideally I'd like to sell the whole concept to someone with the capability to mass produce, and the time and inclination to do it. As of right now, it's just me doing it in my spare time, which I don't have alot of when I'm home :( Maybe I can talk Shartley into venturing into the Electronics market...

No, I have not cut my HALO, there is no need to do so if you mount the warp bracket right.

-Evil Bob

[Hexis]

The 9V clip inside attaches to the battery input on the HALO. The DC connectors are on there to connect to the EMag battery (input) and out to the Warp (output).

[Riotz]

That's pretty nice. Makes me want to get a Halo now.

[Evil Bob]

Oddball: The HALO TE upgrade is new software on the board. The result is lower current used in spinning, it doesn't pulse like the B does, it's a nice steady spin, very gentle on fragile paint like Hellfire.

For those who don't see the big picture, I will post more pictures when I get home to show you what the whole thing looks like all put together.

-Evil Bob

[vf-xx]

Nice, I just want to know where you got your power connectors. I've done rob's hack to my revvy and warp, but it's not nearly as pretty.

My next project is to power both the revvy and warp off of one set of 9v for those people with warped RT's.

[Marchborne]

Truly, Bob, you are evil to show us this fine work, and deny it to the general public. Any (reasonable) way to convince you to rig up a mod like this for me? Things get uglier, the closer I get to a soldering iron.

Seriously, nice work.

[Evil Bob]

Marchborne: The minimum price I'd need to set to do this would be $75 a pop. It is very time consuming. I am looking into the cost involved in mass producing them locally on a professional level to see if it is even worth the consideration. Not like there would be heavy demand here, we may sell 20-30 here on AO, that's not really enough to justify tooling up a shop to knock them out.

vf-xx: Radio shack.

-Evil Bob

[Oddball]

Thanks for the info, got confused between the TE software and the TSA loader.

[Mossman]

Wow, great work man. Very clean. Don't know what you could have done better :) I might have to get a halo on my warp now, since the weight issue is moot thanks to this.

I'd love to try and do this myself. I definately couldnt, it'd be sloppy and horrible, but I'd enjoy trying :)

I'm gonna go look over your board pic again and see where I think i'll have the issues when I definately try this soon :)

[BTAutoMag]

thats some tight work. great job

[WarBUCKs]

Nice work. When are you going to incorporate and sell me one! Maybe you hint to Odyssey (Halo creators) on what you have done!

[rdb123]

My only concern would be if the plug/switch area got shot...would the amount of paint from a single ball be enough to mess it up?

[Evil Bob]

I'm looking into weather proof connectors for just that reason alone. What you're looking at in the pics is what I whipped up at home with over the counter parts from Radio Shack :) If I were to have this built professionally, I'd go the extra mile and make sure it'll withstand the rigours of hardcore paintball before it hit the market. I use it currently on my warp and have never been hit in that area, but it is a worthwhile concern.

I'm not worried about the strength of the materials at all, Odyssey uses some quality plastic and there is quite a bit of it there, so you're not going to have any impact related issues with the mountings, it's mostly the moisture and goo that needs to be addressed.

-Evil Bob

[RSM]

Originally posted by Evil Bob
Marchborne: The minimum price I'd need to set to do this would be $75 a pop. It is very time consuming. I am looking into the cost involved in mass producing them locally on a professional level to see if it is even worth the consideration. Not like there would be heavy demand here, we may sell 20-30 here on AO, that's not really enough to justify tooling up a shop to knock them out.

vf-xx: Radio shack.

-Evil Bob

im interested in having you do this mod for me if possible evil bob.
email me if interested.
jason

[thecavemankevin]

keep in mind this thread is almost a year old so you might want to pm him also.

also, do a search for the x modual in this forum, AGD europe sells them and they come with a circuit board so you can run everything off one emag battery

[personman]

Thread ressurection!

On a more interesting note, the last post was on my birthday :cool:

[cledford]

Evil Bob has been real cool about sharing info - you can find what you need in this thread:

http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=101616&highlight=halo

Scroll to the last post on page one - everything you need is there.

FWIW, I've got the project on my list of things to do. The only hold up was that I couldn't find the capacitors at Radio Shack and need to order some from the web.

-Calvin