Welcome + Rev2 Thoughts
Bradley Nelson
Welcome to the ZephyrEye development forum. If you're interested in
helping, maybe helping in the future, or just knowing where the
project is going make sure to sign up!
Here's what's on our plates as of now: The current Revision 1 hardware
needs some improvements. Yes, it works, but very marginally and it
definitely won't work if rattled around too much. So I think I'd like
to start things fresh, starting with a new revision of hardware.
Please post your ideas here. Check http://bradsprojects.wordpress.com
for comparison, I'll soon copy the list here as well.
Brad
Swamprat
interested market. We would be interested in several built units if
you go that far with it.
Bradley Nelson
It appears you hail from the outdoor laser tag crowd - any specific feature requests that would make this work well for laser tag play? E.g., input from the laser tag units to the ZephyrEye or anything like that? I've never played laser tag so I'm not familiar, but I've heard a lot of people mention this would be an interesting addition to it.
boarder2k7
use tact buttons also. While capacitive buttons are nice because we
could have a waterproof case, we paintballers often wear gloves, and
that won't work with the capacitive buttons.
Perhaps support could be added to plug in a daughter board with tact
buttons on it?
As you had on the site for the rev-1, I noticed a shot counter. The
best way to implement this in my mind is to have a "starting quantity"
for the number of shots in the hopper. Then add an "update quantity"
linked to a switch. When the lid of the hopper is opened and closed,
it will add that amount to the total count remaining, (standard pods
are ~140 or ~160 rounds so you could size it to your pods). I would
recommend triggering the counter with a microphone inside the hopper,
but I would also like to see an aux input for it for those of us who
like to hard-wire things for accuracy's sake.
Also cool would be a one-player invisible, others visible "predator"
mode. Something like the predator could see others at all times, but
could only be seen when the others are within a set distance, 10m or
so would probably be good.
Those things, and as phip posted on your site, it would also be
awesome to economize as much as possible for this, because adding a
$200 radar to my $150 hopper would be painful! Although it looks like
it would also be worth it...
That's all I can think of for now, but I'll post back if I think of
something else. Great work going on here man!
-Eric
P.S. -- Are you publishing this under the GPL so others can
springboard from it, or developing it all yourself?
On Feb 17, 10:57 pm, Bradley Nelson <b.jamin.nel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks! I've been corresponding with a kit manufacturer to carry this
> project, it looks promising that if we get the hardware defined well that
> ZephyrEye kits will be readily available. Of course, the software still has
> to be hashed out from there, but some basic functionality (like player
> locations) should be able to be worked out pretty quickly.
>
> It appears you hail from the outdoor laser tag crowd - any specific feature
> requests that would make this work well for laser tag play? E.g., input from
> the laser tag units to the ZephyrEye or anything like that? I've never
> played laser tag so I'm not familiar, but I've heard a lot of people mention
> this would be an interesting addition to it.
>
Bradley Nelson
One thing that I thought of is that there needs to be an ability to
use tact buttons also.
Already there! I decided to go with a capacitive touch chip, the QT1081, that has an output per button. If you want, you can use a different daughter board than the capacitive touch button board. You could even take some of the buttons (say, the zoom buttons), and put them out on the barrel if you wanted.
I use football receiver gloves when I play - with thin gloves like that, cap touch should work fine. Ski gloves, not so well. I've seen players cut off the trigger finger of their gloves, also.
There are some real issues with tact switches though:
- Switches won't likely be able to survive direct hits
- The force from a direct hit would be transferred to the circuit board it is on, causing chips to pop off, etc.
- The switches are not as easy to seal, and there is more machining to do.
- The box, if machined a lot, becomes more difficult to epoxy pot. Epoxy potting would hopefully render a ZephyrEye almost indestructible.
As you had on the site for the rev-1, I noticed a shot counter. The
best way to implement this in my mind is to have a "starting quantity"
for the number of shots in the hopper. Then add an "update quantity"
linked to a switch. When the lid of the hopper is opened and closed,
it will add that amount to the total count remaining, (standard pods
are ~140 or ~160 rounds so you could size it to your pods). I would
recommend triggering the counter with a microphone inside the hopper,
but I would also like to see an aux input for it for those of us who
like to hard-wire things for accuracy's sake.
Sounds like a great algorithm. There's an expansion port in the schematics for Rev 2, so either the microphone or a signal input (from the trigger) could be used for the ammo decrement signal.
Also cool would be a one-player invisible, others visible "predator"
mode. Something like the predator could see others at all times, but
could only be seen when the others are within a set distance, 10m or
so would probably be good.
Those things, and as phip posted on your site, it would also be
awesome to economize as much as possible for this, because adding a
$200 radar to my $150 hopper would be painful! Although it looks like
it would also be worth it...
Rev2 comes in just under $200, minus antennas. GPS costs $25 less, but had to add $20 for digital compass and a $15 increase in XBee cost. Going for the 900MHz XBee, which has much longer range, making it great for woodsball. There are some variable costs here, though - you could go for a cheaper XBee, wire antennas, etc.
That's all I can think of for now, but I'll post back if I think of
something else. Great work going on here man!
Thanks!
-Eric
P.S. -- Are you publishing this under the GPL so others can
springboard from it, or developing it all yourself?
It's currently BSD licensed, I'm considering switching over to Creative Commons Share-Alike license. They are more or less the same - do whatever you want with the source. My hope is people stick with the main branch of development, I can't see any reason not to.
Eric Meeson
One question about capacitive sensed stuff though. I know that at least with phones and laptop track pads, water screws around royally with the capacitive sensors. If my finger is wet and I track across my laptop, the cursor jumps randomly to anywhere within that stripe of water since it is mildly conductive. Would there be a problem with accidental activation in wet environments?
I see what you're getting at with switches being broken by impacts, one thing to consider though, is that most hoppers and guns use buttons soldered directly to the board, and use a membrane cover that will absorb the impulse of a stray hit.
The cost structure makes sense from what you said. One thing that I think would be important is having the compass be orientable since I think that they have to be on plane to work? This would allow for different mountings of the Zeypher system as long as the compass was placed relatively in the horizontal plane. Also, would this be adaptable to an OLED display? I think it would provide better brightness while keeping power consumption down.
Another thing that I thought of that would be an AWESOME player mode....
To make it more interesting, there should be a velocity sensitive player mode. This would work like in Halo, where if a user was moving below a certain speed, their position would not be announced. This would allow a player to move at a very low speed across the field without being detected, adding the additional strategy aspect of trading speed for visibility. This of course should be a settable speed on a universal basis. (I wrote this and then realized that the modes are all user programmable, but, since I am terrible at coding as of yet (something I'm working on!) I figured I'd throw it out there) Another thought for someone is programming in boundaries in such a way that when you approach the boundary, the screen could turn yellow, then red and flash to let you know you were going out of bounds.
Also cool would be a vehicle mode? Which I suppose would be essentially a third team. Does this have support for three or more teams?
Something else to consider would be the ability to flash a software, or add a jumper or something that could lock the Zeypher to a specific location. This could either be done with a "must be in range of master unit at all times" or with a geographic limit. This feature would allow fields to use a Zeypher system, and not have people walk off with the ZeypherEye and use it somewhere else, because it would be locked to being in range/at that location.
--
Eric
Bradley Nelson
On Feb 26, 3:22 pm, Eric Meeson <boarder...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On the capacitive sense, that sounds good. I know that when I play woods, I
> occasionally wear mechanixwear gloves that have rubber tipped fingers, and
> since I use them for other things, I would rather not cut the fingers off!
> One question about capacitive sensed stuff though. I know that at least
> with phones and laptop track pads, water screws around royally with the
> capacitive sensors. If my finger is wet and I track across my laptop, the
> cursor jumps randomly to anywhere within that stripe of water since it is
> mildly conductive. Would there be a problem with accidental activation in
> wet environments?
The capacitive touch buttons automatically recalibrate themselves.
You're right, there will be some effect but it should be temporary and
mild. After a few seconds, the chip notices a stagnant capacitance
and recalibrates itself to lower its sensitivity. After this happens,
you can have a fair amount of water spray over the buttons and not
have issues other than if wearing thick gloves, the distance required
to detect touch from the panel to your finger may be shortened. But
then again, your gloves will probably be wet too and cause trigger a
button touch just fine ;) You won't have the same issues you would
with a capacitive touchpad or screen because these are capacitive
buttons - they report single capacitance detections over dedicated
copper planes, not X, Y coordinates, therefore the software has much
more capability to discern faulty touches and stagnant sources of
capacitance. Look up Atmel QTouch app notes for more info.
The short of it with the capacitance button issue is, we won't know
for sure until they are field tested, but they are about the same cost
as tact switches and make the ZephyrEye much easier to build. Tact
switches would be about $2.50, cap touch is $2.97.
> I see what you're getting at with switches being broken by impacts, one
> thing to consider though, is that most hoppers and guns use buttons soldered
> directly to the board, and use a membrane cover that will absorb the impulse
> of a stray hit.
Good idea with the membrane covering the buttons - If someone wants to
contribute a board like that, I think that would be cool. It seems
there would need to be a support structure for the membrane that also
surrounds the switches. For starters at least, though, I think I'm
going to put my efforts into a capacitive touch interface.
> The cost structure makes sense from what you said. One thing that I think
> would be important is having the compass be orientable since I think that
> they have to be on plane to work? This would allow for different mountings
> of the Zeypher system as long as the compass was placed relatively in the
> horizontal plane. Also, would this be adaptable to an OLED display? I
> think it would provide better brightness while keeping power consumption
> down.
It's a three dimensional magnetometer :D Your wish is my command.
As far as the OLED display goes, I've seriously considered them and it
pains me to not have one. If you can find one for under $20, I'll add
it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, the lowest I've found for one with
a decent interface is about $36, which pushes the cost over the $200
limit. As much as I would like it, I think cost is unfortunately king
on this one. Put it on the list for Rev3, hopefully one becomes
available by then.
> Another thing that I thought of that would be an AWESOME player mode....
>
> To make it more interesting, there should be a velocity sensitive player
> mode. This would work like in Halo, where if a user was moving below a
> certain speed, their position would not be announced. This would allow a
> player to move at a very low speed across the field without being detected,
> adding the additional strategy aspect of trading speed for visibility. This
> of course should be a settable speed on a universal basis. (I wrote this
> and then realized that the modes are all user programmable, but, since I am
> terrible at coding as of yet (something I'm working on!) I figured I'd throw
> it out there) Another thought for someone is programming in boundaries in
> such a way that when you approach the boundary, the screen could turn
> yellow, then red and flash to let you know you were going out of bounds.
>
> Also cool would be a vehicle mode? Which I suppose would be essentially a
> third team. Does this have support for three or more teams?
I like the velocity idea, I hadn't thought of that one before. I also
like the BattleFront radar, which Rev1 is based on more than anything
else, where it shows the traveling direction and location of players
but only if they are firing or have fired in the last 5-10 seconds and
then disappear again.
So yeah, all these player modes and field boundaries are all creatable
in software and manageable in user settings. Same for team counts.
The more programmers that pitch in, the sooner features like this can
be added in.
I'm going to start a new thread for gameplay feature ideas. I think
there are a lot of them, and I'd like to have a single point of
reference (or as few as possible, at least) when I start programming
things up. Make sure and mention these ideas into that new post,
which I'll add in a few minutes (once Canada gets done playing/
creaming Slovakia ;)
> Something else to consider would be the ability to flash a software, or add
> a jumper or something that could lock the Zeypher to a specific location.
> This could either be done with a "must be in range of master unit at all
> times" or with a geographic limit. This feature would allow fields to use a
> Zeypher system, and not have people walk off with the ZeypherEye and use it
> somewhere else, because it would be locked to being in range/at that
> location.
> --
> Eric
That would be very cool, and very much a desirable option, but being
open source it would be easy for someone to disable such "lojack"
technology. The only unmodifiable and unique code would be the
microcontroller serial number, which is embedded in its silicon and
unmodifiable. Maybe a serial number reporting system would help
discourage theft, as unlike a Playstation or XBox, for a ZephyrEye you
have to play with others. If the serial number list is distributed
with new firmware updates, these "stolen" units could be fairly easily
discovered by other players and routed out. Still, probably not a
surefire solution if someone is determined to create a black market
for these ;)