New Ideas Wanted

[RoamingStorm]

wouldnt acceleration kind of ruin the idea of a ball leaving the chamber to barrel? having two in the barrel would measure the balls average velocity, bit not account for its current velocity, for example

if its going 20 fps when it hits the first eye, and then 300 fps when it hits the second it will register it at 160 fps wont it?

[ScatterPlot]

If the ball is still accellerating then yes it will give you the wrong velocity, but not quite for the reason you mentioned. Each of the eyes don't measure the velocity past the eye, just the time when it hits. But yes you are right.

[athomas]

Any eye system measuring velocity while the ball is still in the barrel would have to be calibrated against a known velocity measuring device. It doesn't matter what the actual reading of the barrel device is, as long as the calculation that is done with the reading produces the correct result.

[Skittle]

Mabye you could use the eyes that are already in the chamber as sensors. Set the sensors to read based on the air coming back through the barrel, that way you dont have to put anything in a barrel or make some big new thing, you can add on to an old system. Mabye even have it show on your grip right after BPS.

[DoomWithAnXmag]

Chrono

I did not get a chance to read every post here so sorry if someone said this already.
How about instead of eyes in the barrel or two sets of eyes you just lengthen the front of the gun a bit so you have say two more inches before where the barrel screws in. You could compensate by just using a two inch shorter barrel. In the end of this length you have a second set of break beam eyes. The eyes sense the ball when its leading edge breaks the beam till the trailing edge leaves the beam. This would send a nice square wave sign to the board. The board could be programmed to take the diameter of the ball (you would enter this info pre game by scrolling through a menu on the board aka .699 through .680 or whatever series of .001 increments you would need. Paint size would be checked by you with a typical paint sizer. Yes I know they aren't perfectly round but I am thinking maybe the diff in diameters between balls would not make a huge diff in the chrono readings. Someone here may have the math ability to calculate what the error would be between say a .689 and .687. Anyway using this input the board would take the ball size and the measured length of time it interrupted the beam and calculate the speed. The big issue I see with this is there could be a big diff in speed between that spot and the end of the barrel. If so then the same system could be built into a barrel with little effort. Barrels would have eyes made into the end say an inch from the tip and the wires or film could be passed through a channel milled into the cross section of the barrel. You could even build the contacts into the rear of the barrel so when its screwed into the gun it connects with the contacts in the gun. The board once it calculates the speed could then change the dwell on a valve controlling input flow.
Hmm... even better! The break beam eye could be built into a barrel tip with a lith ion batt like in a watch. Very limited electronics would be required to measure the ball and send a signal wirelessly to the board. Like a car alarm remote. This way you could change barrels, there would be no wires etc. I bet you could pack the whole deal into a tip an inch long and a quarter to 3/8 thicker then the barrel its self. It would look much like a suppressor.


An Idea on hoppers. If you removed the motor batt assy on a halo and moved the neck forward a bit you could free up 3 inches or so in the rear. There you could put a pretty large flat spring reel. The spring reel would drive the hopper when you wind it up. To keep it under tension a very small motor run off a ting batt driving a gear reduction could be attached to a switch and when the spring was getting slack you flip the switch Or it turns on its self and rewinds the spring. Would be much like an electric car where the motor runs the car but can be assisted by a small gas engine. The hopper would be 90% mechanical with only a small lith ion batt to run the rewind motor when needed. I figure one wind would be good for a game of 5 pods. without rewinding.
Hopper Idea 2: Replace the motor with an air driven motor. This would be attached to a manifold (basically a macro line fitting with a tiny nipple say the size for the line on cocker pneumatics built into it backed with a tiny simple spring poppet regulator). I am guessing it would take little pressure to run the hopper and NO BATTERIES! Possibly even have a small reg in the hopper so you could adjust the drive power by manipulating air pressure.

[awilli234life]

/\ dude the hopper idea sounds fun

[FinchMan]

using a spring to store energy in a hopper seems kind of cool, but i don't know how much weight you would save if you want a spring big enough to store enough energy for 5 pods & a hopper.

what would be really neat, is an air powered motor that cranks on the halo rip drive for every shot you take. you could slap it on the outside of your halo, and it would replace all of the electronics. Making it run on most guns would be the hard part....

[m-a-r-k-7]

Hopper Idea 2: Replace the motor with an air driven motor. This would be attached to a manifold (basically a macro line fitting with a tiny nipple say the size for the line on cocker pneumatics built into it backed with a tiny simple spring poppet regulator). I am guessing it would take little pressure to run the hopper and NO BATTERIES! Possibly even have a small reg in the hopper so you could adjust the drive power by manipulating air pressure.

Isn't there already a happer like this (or similar). the "Turbo Loader" I think. I'm not sure if it works how you described, but I know it worked on pneumatics.

[skriptal]

Isn't there already a happer like this (or similar). the "Turbo Loader" I think. I'm not sure if it works how you described, but I know it worked on pneumatics.

http://www.turbopaintball.com/turbostart.html

The only problem is this does not make the balls feed consistently, if you had a rotating design that would probably be more effective and work. pushing the balls up seems like an in effective way to feed.

[awilli234life]

No he's talking about using existing parts from a halo so leave the drive cone in place and add a large spring and a trip sensor, imagine if you will a trip loader that is pnumeaticly wound. but like everything else you have to do a few cranks before the game. it would have the same effect as a Qloader and no pod switching needed

[~W.!.C.K.E.D~]

to keep clean

to keep it clean from paint crap, just put a flush layer of glass/clear plastic in front of the eyes. so when you squeegee it, it will work again.