SpudFiles

That's the ticket shining eyes in IR would probably provide great contrast for the camera to track, BOOM HEADSHOT!

jackssmirkingrevenge wrote:You can get IR sensitive webcams on ebay for peanuts, with enough IR to flood the room you could have an intruder walk around in the dark while a single red laser follows him around, and all that can be heard above the whirr of the servos is a childish AI voice going "I can see you!"

That would really creep me out.

"I see dead people...well in a minute anyways..."

This would be great stuff for a contest...if enough are willing to enter..

Contest or not, I'm making one I'll take some time this weekend to draw up a shopping list and get ordering

jackssmirkingrevenge wrote:You can get IR sensitive webcams on ebay for peanuts, with enough IR to flood the room you could have an intruder walk around in the dark while a single red laser follows him around, and all that can be heard above the whirr of the servos is a childish AI voice going "I can see you!"

Sounds cool.

Any old web cam (or any digital camera for that matter) is actually pretty sensitive to IR, certainly more sensitive than your eyes. Most digital cameras will show the blinking of the IR LED on a TV remote control. If you want to boost IR sensitivty you can often take apart the camera and remove the IR filter. I've done it with a cheapo web cam.

Below is a shot of my desktop with an app running that I wrote a few years back. The crappy image in the upper left is from my $20 web cam and the window is the web served version of the cameras output. The bottom right is a perl app that is getting the image from the server, finding the red dot (from a small laser pointer) that is on the computer screen and highlighting that red dot with the red cross hairs. The app has various info like where the dot is in the image etc. (The computer shown is not the one I use, it's across the room from mine. The image was taken at night and the dim room light + crappy web cam = really crappy image.)

Not quite auto-targeting software but miles ahead of anything I would have come up with, nice

Something probably easier to come up with in terms of a spudding-robotics project would be an indirect fire launcher of known performance, in a pan/tilt cradle and interface where one would punch in GPS coordinates for launcher and target, as well as weather data, and it would automatically calculate a firing solution move the launcher to a given angle of elevation and direction.

That's one for the country folk though, in my urban setting a sentry gun is a more plausible

edit: I've ordered the software and controller and I'm looking to gather the rest of the hardware in the meantime, namely the pan and tilt components.

Small commercial units likethis one are basically servos connected to eachother, which would not support the weight of a paintball or adult airsoft launcher. what I had in mind however was a small HPA BBMG, the firing setup would basically be barrel, BB chamber and trigger so possibly scaling up the unit with heavy duty servos would work.

Just a heads up, it's happening

jackssmirkingrevenge wrote:Just a heads up, it's happening

Happening is always good. May need another armored camera housing.

USGF

I know it's a little early to be thinking about aesthetics but it would be cool to make a sterile futuristic casing like the Portal turrets:

@JSR
this means extra weight - that's something you should avoid

have you already ordered all the parts you need ?

POLAND_SPUD wrote:this means extra weight - that's something you should avoid

Well, depends, if you vacu-form a plastic shell (like R/C car bodies) the weight will be negligible.

have you already ordered all the parts you need?

Yep, sorted.

3 x 6kgf.cm servos

1 x 8 mp IR webcam

1 x USB-RS232 cable

just have to order the servo battery back and associated wiring.

edit: shopping spree over, it's up to the postman now

The webcam is temporary, as I needed one anyway, I'll probably get a better one down the line.

POLAND_SPUD wrote:this means extra weight - that's something you should avoid

Such practicality issues are trifling compared to the amount of awesome that would be.

if you vacu-form a plastic shell (like R/C car bodies) the weight will be negligible.

How do you do such things ? it seems this could be useful for spudguns, sort of like that 9mm pitbull semiauto posted here, you know the one that looks like the steyr AUG

now about the gun you want ot mount there... I believe it would be better to have one running on low pressures... your hpa setup might be ok for testing your prototypes but it would probably be a better idea to have something that can provide sustained fire



I've been trying to find a PCB board that would allow my to control 2 step motors or even just DC motors but all of them are terribly expensive

If its going to be a fairly permanent placement (i.e.- always around your residence), you could just attach it to an air compressor and tank with a feed tube from a large hopper. 20,000 BBs and someone will be waiting a LONG time to move before it runs out of ammo.

POLAND_SPUD wrote:

if you vacu-form a plastic shell (like R/C car bodies) the weight will be negligible.

How do you do such things ? it seems this could be useful for spudguns, sort of like that 9mm pitbull semiauto posted here, you know the one that looks like the steyr AUG

Here Is an instructable that shows how to make a small one that works fairly well. I made a larger scale one than the former in the link, and it's very handy for making parts for a lot of my electronic projects.