Cheater Boards (How to Stop Them)

[Miscue]

Originally posted by RRfireblade


Obviously the Data/Acq would have it's own trigger sensor.

Are you trying to make this complicated?


Jay

Switch -> Data/Acq -> CPU... (or similar)

ok, how about this:

(Method of sending false inputs) -> Data/Acq -> CPU

How does the Data/Acq know that what it is counting is legit?

[RRfireblade]

Re: Re: Cheater Boards (How to Stop Them)

Originally posted by Sir_Brass



trust a guy who's taken a semester of microprocessors: unless you have the pro-grade software, and a chip programmer, it is NOT easy to reprogram a micro. Especially if you're using something like a 20-pin 8051. You have to use software which costs alot, is not found on the bootleg market, and is only used by professionals or educational institutions. Also, you have to have knowledge not only of how to program, but how to program that specific processor for that specific board. There's alot that goes into the programming that is dependant upon board design and construction.

If someone goes to the length to reprogram the chip, then it'll be obvious in their playing skills b/c they'll have spent so much time trying to reprogram the thing, that they will not have had time to practice.

It must be pretty easy,Miscue can do it.

(He has no sense humour today for some reason)

Jay.

[RRfireblade]

Originally posted by Miscue


Switch -> Data/Acq -> CPU... (or similar)

ok, how about this:

(Method of sending false inputs) -> Data/Acq -> CPU

How does the Data/Acq know that what it is counting is legit?

Accelerometer mounted directly to the trigger. Ha.

[Miscue]

Re: Re: Cheater Boards (How to Stop Them)

Originally posted by Sir_Brass



trust a guy who's taken a semester of microprocessors: unless you have the pro-grade software, and a chip programmer, it is NOT easy to reprogram a micro. Especially if you're using something like a 20-pin 8051. You have to use software which costs alot, is not found on the bootleg market, and is only used by professionals or educational institutions. Also, you have to have knowledge not only of how to program, but how to program that specific processor for that specific board. There's alot that goes into the programming that is dependant upon board design and construction.

If someone goes to the length to reprogram the chip, then it'll be obvious in their playing skills b/c they'll have spent so much time trying to reprogram the thing, that they will not have had time to practice.

You don't NEED to reprogram anything. You can have a chip that works perfectly legit. It receives one input, it shoots once. Send two inputs... two shots. Now, what caused those inputs? The CPU doesn't know.

[Sir_Brass]

easy fix (from an EE major's standpoint). Require all boards to have a microswitch monitor and cheater circuitry. This would be required of all tourney-legal boards. yeah, a cheater could disable it, but it will act as a deterent, and the code can be built into the chip itself to help prevent tampering. This counts inputs from the trigger's switch. Compare to the number of "shoot" signals sent to the solenoid. You monitor those end lines, the places where things cannot be masked because they are our direct input and output points (trigger switch and line to the solenoid). If the two inputs do NOT match up (one trigger pull produces more than one pulse on the output line) then the board shuts down and a factory code must be entered to reactivate the gun. Mr. Cheater will have been caught.


I can draw up a diagram of the hardware design and software code (will be in C for simplicity's sake). The monitor would be passive until multiple shots per trigger pull (and board NOT on select fire) are detected. The monitoring code being in the chip itself and also making it so that unless it is recieving info that the board will NOT fire, will deter most would-be cheaters.

[hitech]

Re: Re: Cheater Boards (How to Stop Them)

Originally posted by Sir_Brass
trust a guy who's taken a semester of microprocessors: unless you have the pro-grade software, and a chip programmer, it is NOT easy to reprogram a micro.

I could do it with only a few hundred dollars. I do write business application software for a living, but so do lots of people. It just isn't very hard.

[hitech]

Originally posted by Sir_Brass
Require all boards to have a microswitch monitor and cheater circuitry...I can draw up a diagram of the hardware design and software code (will be in C for simplicity's sake).

Sounds easy to get around to me. Maybe a simple diagram of what you are talking about would help.

[nuclear zombie]

Hey why don't we use satellites to track the trajectory of each paintball shot during the game.

I assume you are calling cheaterboards , the ones that allow you to modify the denounce/offset. Most of the time changed through the trigger, to allow the debounce to be adjusted after chrono. If I recall correctly NPPL refs are allowed at any time, even during gameplay to test a players gun for trigger bounce and pull them if neccessary.

Instead of dumping all of that money into chrono's ,pay to train refs and provide them with an income so they care about enforcing those rules. If you want to get spectators more into the game buy video cameras and tvs so that people can get better views of the field.

[hitech]

Re: Re: It's a matter of ease...

Originally posted by nuclear zombie
I assume you are calling cheaterboards , the ones that allow you to modify the denounce/offset.

That would be a cheater board. However, it’s not the only type of cheater board…

Originally posted by hitech
...I could EASILY make a cheater "board". Basically, it would be an additional board hidden in the marker that "enhanced" operation.

[nuclear zombie]

but even with an additional enhanced board , what is stopping the ref from grabbing the gun from the player mid-game and shooting a couple of times to test it for cheating. I know many refs won't do this unless they are very suspicious of a person cheating as it could disturb the game.

[Miscue]

Originally posted by Sir_Brass
easy fix (from an EE major's standpoint). Require all boards to have a microswitch monitor and cheater circuitry. This would be required of all tourney-legal boards. yeah, a cheater could disable it, but it will act as a deterent, and the code can be built into the chip itself to help prevent tampering. This counts inputs from the trigger's switch. Compare to the number of "shoot" signals sent to the solenoid. You monitor those end lines, the places where things cannot be masked because they are our direct input and output points (trigger switch and line to the solenoid). If the two inputs do NOT match up (one trigger pull produces more than one pulse on the output line) then the board shuts down and a factory code must be entered to reactivate the gun. Mr. Cheater will have been caught.


I can draw up a diagram of the hardware design and software code (will be in C for simplicity's sake). The monitor would be passive until multiple shots per trigger pull (and board NOT on select fire) are detected. The monitoring code being in the chip itself and also making it so that unless it is recieving info that the board will NOT fire, will deter most would-be cheaters.

If you supposedly have this standardized pop-in chip, it is completely pointless to compare the trigger inputs to the solenoid outputs... you already know that the code is fair and will only shoot once/trigger pull.

And... this standardized chip idea is impractical in the first place and won't ever happen. It is an expensive, time consuming approach that can be circumvented.

Code monitoring is completely pointless, because the CPU is fair to begin with. It's like a person who can only tell truths, keeps a log book of how many lies he says... pointless.

The problem is not the CPU, but what happens outside of the CPU that it cannot control. The CPU has no awareness of its outside environment beyond it's I/O lines and such.

If you have an inline oscillator between switch and CPU, a "special" switch, have another hidden microcontroller that taps into the fair CPU's input line, a method to put noise into the input line, or whatever creative thing that can be come up with... the fair CPU will be oblivious to this. Your input counts will match your outputs, and the monitoring routines will be be happily clueless.

You can circumvent this fair chip in such a way, that it would require disassembly of the gun... board needing to be dismounted... lines traced... etc. The person inspecting the gun will have no idea what to look for, and won't have the time to anyway... and this person may need to be very good with electronics, typical ref won't have a clue.

[Miscue]

Re: Re: Re: Cheater Boards (How to Stop Them)

Originally posted by RRfireblade


It must be pretty easy,Miscue can do it.

(He has no sense humour today for some reason)

Jay.

Always do! I am in the middle of working on something, and wasn't paying complete attention to what was written.

How hard is it... it is easy for the small population that is capable of doing it - it is merely an issue of how much time is involved. For the rest, difficult to impossible.

[argnot]

Wow. This is a great post but you missed it....... everyone is going on about limiting this and that and making this legal illegal and saftey. My thoughts on this are that you are never going to be able to standardize the industry. You could put an all out ban pn electro guns but the what is the difference between a chip mod and a trigger job....... You can make a trigger pull go from 1/4' to 1/32. You play with the enough and you will have the edge. Alot of tournament players use electro guns for thier antichop properties. I have a buddy the can rip 13bps on his cocker with a slider. Not fanning it but shooting it almost like a normal gun. Sure he chops every once in a blue moon but I am sure he would not mind having a little unblinking eye watching out for him. I know I would. So why not combine the antichop abilities of electro guns and a standard trigger pull that we can all except. I don't really see how that would be unfair or hard to do. I am not saying for all guns to be the same but for the tournament to say your tigger pull must be x. I think that limiting paint on the field is a great idea. I dont know to what but I think it should be looked into.

[raehl]

I've got it! I know how to stop cheater boards!

Disconnect the battery.


:)

- Chris

[Sir_Brass]

actually, upon thinking about this, it wouldn't require another chip, only two more input lines into the main chip itself, that way bypassing it is not too easy.

What you do is have code that is passive, and is encoded into an external interrupt that's activated whenever the trigger is pulled. When the switch is activated the trigger detect line goes high, and the passive code notes this. It also notes how many pulses the solenoid recieves. If the number of pulses sent to the solenoid are > 1 during that one trigger pull, then the code goes from passive (does nothing but monitor) and sets a bit high that will shut off the firing capability (firing sequence is surrounded by a statement which checks for this bit to be low). A hardware reset will be required to change this bit to low, and for the gun to be able to shoot again. Also, till this bit is reset (by way of a hardware switch inside the gripframe. you'd have to take off the grips to get to it), the LCD will be displaying only "cheater board watchdog activated." that way the guy can't just say to the ref, "sorry, ref, it just started doing this. I wasn't doing anything" and get away scott free, except a trip to the deadbox b/c he was bunkered.

Since this is embedded into the code of the main chip itself, you can't just swap out a chip.

better yet, do this in something like a PSoC chip, so that software or KNOWLEDGE of how to use the software or even program the chip is limited. B/c Cypress likes to have their micros coded in VHDL, and not many people these days are coming out of college knowing VHDL, let alone mr. John Paintball CHeater.