breakbeam eyes

[hybridpodtech]

how do break beam eyes work when the bolt passes through the beam? i was thinking about this during American history class and never came to a conclusion.

[Codekevin0403]

ok never thought about that but wouldn't the ball have already fired by the time the bolt passed the beam?

[deputydan]

Actually, the bolt gets into the beam of the eye before air is released on the ball. I guess it all depends on what marker your talking about, but here is an animation I found awhile back of a timmy...
http://img117.echo.cx/my.php?image=intimidator7ur.swf

[athomas]

how do break beam eyes work when the bolt passes through the beam? i was thinking about this during American history class and never came to a conclusion.

The beam being broken before a firing sequence has started will allow the gun to enter the firing sequence. Once the firing sequence has started, who cares. The eyes can also be used to determine if the bolt has returned to its start position before it allows another firing sequence for further protection.

[Joni]

I beleive that the was board has a mode where it looks at the bolt to be able to shoot as fast as possible as soon as the bolt has returned.

[ottomobile]

athomas is right. Its all about the software. Before a ball is fed the beam completes the circuit setting the logic high( or low depending on the philosophy) setting a bit to 1. As long as that bit is 1 the firing cycle will not engage. So the bolt can't pass the break beam until something else breaks it. Once the beam is broken by a paintball or whatever the bit goes to 0 and the software will complete one pass of the firing cycle and wait for the bit to go back to 1, empty breech. Then the process repeates. Its pretty simple. and in reality happens many times a second.

[Ydna]

Most of the more advanced board firmaware now includes methods to determine the speed of the bolt as well. Commonly, it's no logner "blocked" and "unblocked", but it's a lot of varibales in between as well.
This is done by comparing the speed of the voltage difference when the bolt hits forward in conjunction with the time that the small ridge between the front of the bolt and the surface of the paintball is detected. People may underestimate how sensitive eyes can be (especially reflective eyes). Such programming is more difficult to do with beam-break eyes, but on the other hand it doesn't vary too much (like it woudl with a reflective eye placement, angle, power, etc etc).

More info: http://www.zdspb.com/tech/misc/ace.html

[11_Mile_TMaster]

Generally speaking implementing break beam eyes in code is very simple. Some general way it would work

check if trigger is pulled
if trigger is pulled, then check if beam is broken
if beam is broken, engage solenoid for x milliseconds
go back to start.


i.e. It will not even care what the status of the beam is until the trigger is pulled...and once the solenoid is engaged it doesn't care. In the example above the software won't even look at the beam status once the solenoid is engaged.