UPDATE (8/12): If you have other crazy project ideas, comment on our newest blog post with your ideas!
UPDATE: Here is the code to complete the demo yourself.
UPDATE (14:49): Here is the system overview, parts list, and explanation of the math behind this.
Posts
Awesome! Where is the LV code to get this done? :)
ReplyDeleteCode has been posted to
ReplyDeletehttp://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-6106
...I was worried that this might not end well... but frankly, that's full of win!
ReplyDeleteYou can't just say try this at home.. but not with Real Guns.. that takes all the fun out of it..
ReplyDeletewoah, overact much? downright obnoxious...
ReplyDeleteVery cool guys! Looks like a lot of fun, and without needing hi-tech pointing/shooting devices!
ReplyDeleteShovels, we need more shovels, the zombies are coming!
Going to peruse the code too, thanks for this!
Very neat demo with good explanation and (most importantly) handled responsibly.
ReplyDeleteHmm, would be fun to play FPS like this, but how is the wall going to withstand my AK47 and bazooka? :D
ReplyDeleteOkay, so where can I get a BFG?
ReplyDeleteIf they were playing halo they should turn the guns on themselves.
ReplyDeletecan someone say terrorist training?
ReplyDeleteVery cool indeed!
ReplyDeleteWhat is the sampling rate for the sensors?
ReplyDeleteMmmm Ruger supressed .22 pistol
ReplyDeleteThe ranges I shoot at definitely won't allow this. This is the excuse I've been waiting for to build a proper backstop on my property!
ReplyDeleteWife: "Why are you loading up the rifle?"
Me: "Gonna go play some Half-Life, honey!"
can someone say counter-terrorist training?
ReplyDeleteHey Anon,
ReplyDeleteThe sampling rate is 102.4 kHz.
What type of accelerometer did you guys use?
ReplyDeleteMade of win and dipped in awesome sauce.
ReplyDeleteYou can do it at home, just use a squirt gun, nerf gun, spitballs, paper throwing stars. The possibilities are endless!!
Your backstop appeared to be shorter and narrower than the piece of dry wall you were shooting into. It looked like at least half of the rounds that were shot probably didn't impact in your backstop. Your backstop setup definitely wouldn't have met NRA range design guidelines.
ReplyDeleteI have a private range & training facility 1 hr from Austin that has a much safer backstop that you could use. Have you tested it with larger calibers? This would be useful for doing realistic training similar to a FATS machine, if it worked with standard defensive calibers.
Hi Karl,
ReplyDeleteWe built the drywall in an 8x8 foot section. The berm behind it was at least 8 feet tall and far more than 8 feet wide and was backed by another berm that was far more than 8 feet tall. Additionally, we did not fire into the top 1/3 of the drywall just to be sure.
Steve is a licensed firearms instructor, so it was safety first with him! Must have been a camera trick. Thanks for checking it out!
Shit, I'd start showing up to Dorkbot again if you guys would demo.
ReplyDeleteBest DIY project I've seen in years.
ReplyDeleteIt says you used a USB-4432 board, one version of which is $2,000 and the other is $5,000. Which one do you need? And is there an even cheaper way of doing this?
I would be curious to test this sensiitivity of the accelerometers with Airsoft guns. Level of safety improves greatly and doesn't damage the backdrop. Though I would doubt the accelerometer can pick up a 50mm ball bearing traveling 300 fps.
ReplyDeleteKudos. Now if you could only make this possible with lasers instead of guns and artificial recoil. Laser tag online baby. And how do you move forward, etc and turn the view? You should put this on a ball tredmil and see what you can do.
ReplyDelete> I would be curious to test this sensiitivity of the
ReplyDelete> accelerometers with Airsoft guns. Level of safety
> improves greatly and doesn't damage the backdrop.
> Though I would doubt the accelerometer can pick up a
> 50mm ball bearing traveling 300 fps.
The level of safety only improves greatly if you are standing behind the drywall. There is just no way a bullet is going to ricochet off drywall... or a dirt mound backstop.
Perhaps the only real gun you have access to is a desert eagle and you mean the risk of breaking your wrist?
Ya'll should be playing the Reflex series of games off www.missionred.com
ReplyDeleteTo answer the last round of questions
ReplyDelete- 4432 is only 2000, the 5000 dollar version includes software you don't need (though it is pretty cool).
- Airsoft guns definitely work, in building it we used rubber bands.
- It is definitely possible to do it cheaper - we chose the 4432 because it has built in accelerometer excitation and good accelerometer acquistion.
Have you thought of turning this into a product? The shooting sports is having trouble attracting kids from the video game generation, something along these lines could go along way to getting more people involved in the sport.
ReplyDeletemix this with the wii balance board and you might have a real life fps.
ReplyDelete*** BOOM HEADSHOT!! ***
ReplyDeleteOK, this definitely qualifies as a VERY COOL HACK. You clearly put some time into this. Nice work! +1 for making this into a product, say, with one of those air guns that shoots the plastic BB's, which would be reusable and cause no damage. This would be great for introducing people to the shooting sports in a safe and inexpensive manner.
As for the FPS_Doug quote, seriously, have you sent this news to the Pure Pwnage guys? I'm sure they'd get a major kick out of this hack. Heck, they might even feature it in their show.
--TP
OMG! army ... needs.... this....
ReplyDeletereally wish you had used crowbars instead of shovels.
ReplyDeleteJust for clarification on the math, this uses trilateration not triangulation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateration
ReplyDeleteIs there a CHEAP replacment for the USB-4432 device?
ReplyDeleteis accelerometer compatible with arduino board ?
ReplyDeletewould like to know if it is possible to do the same thing in a cheaper way … !
maybe plugin' a wiimote accelerometer to a arduino based board
ReplyDeleteonly things to do is data acquisition and software
@ Eran Gal-Or The important features in your daq device are that it simultaneously smaples all channels so the signals from each accel can be directly compared and the higher the sampling rate the better resolution you will get.
ReplyDeleteWe are looking into doing this a USB-6009 (from our last project) and $2 radio shack microphones (which could also sample the impact signal).
Of course if you beat us to the punch with a cheaper alternative certainly let us and everyone else know!
That was way awesome.
ReplyDeleteThere was a similiar system out a dozen years ago that used some badly acted video scenarios instead of games.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the system used self-sealing foam mats for a video screen. The bullets left very small holes that looked amazingly like a #2 pencil had been poked into it. From 7 feet, the punctures were invisable and the screen could take thousands of rounds before needing to be replaced.
If I remember correctly, the range that used the above system was located somewhere near College Station.
Just pure awesomeness. I laughed so hard when you guys took shovels to them, especially the last shoven-to-head hit, classic.
ReplyDeleteVery cool stuff.. Though it is worth mentioning that, at least in it's current form, this is far outside the reach of most hobbyists. The DAQ alone costs thousands, not to mention the thousands more for a copy of LabView.
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to come up with a USPSA practice setup that uses airsoft for some time. I think I got some ideas from you guys -- I'll post if we ever get it working (and affordable)! Thanks!
Nice post, can you give more information about this again ?, Can we Be friend ? :)
ReplyDeleteSoftware Source
What accelerometers were used (parts list is too general, I want to know actual parts so I can look at its data sheet).
ReplyDeleteJust found this and am both amused and impressed. In your post on 8/9 you mentioned looking into doing this with a USB-6009... any luck with that? I just happen to have one sitting here and would love to give this a try.
ReplyDeleteFirst, gratz for the project!
ReplyDeleteWithout the NI USB-4432 you just lose precision or it's impracticable?
Seems to me that reading the voltage spike from a piezo film vibration sensor would be a workable (and cheap) alternative to the accelerometer approach, by which I mean I've got them rigged up to my USB-6009 and it reads the impacts just fine. Any hints on tweaking your VIs for this? Unfortunately I know next to nothing about Labview, so haven't had much luck with it.
ReplyDelete@Henrique
ReplyDeleteWe needed to use a USB 4432 because it gives us simultaneous sampling. That is, each channel has its own ADC and the signal is not multiplexed. Because these signals happen over such a short time span, if we were multiplexing the signal, we would miss the impacts. We had to use simultaneous sampling for this reason.
So, the code should be almost identical for using a USB-6009. The only thing that needs to change is the device name if I remember correctly. The DAQmx driver is used by both the 4432 and the 6009 so all of the acquisition code should remain unchanged.
ReplyDeleteI am a bit concerned about the resolution you will have. The max sampling rate of the 6009 is 40kHz aggregate, so on 3 channels you will be sampling at 16.666 kHz (if my mental math is right). I would have to look up the speed of sound in drywall again but I believe we had thought the resolution in feet was too low for it to be workable.
Not trying to discourage you, just let you know some of the hurdles we ran into and why we went with the 4432.
This is all kinds of cool. Someone please come up with a cheaper solution. The zombie invasion is coming and we're all gonna need to do some practicing. ;-)
ReplyDeleteVery Cool! I was really hoping to see your solution to the three-pickup version. Something other than "by solving this system..." Where's the real 2D solution?
ReplyDeleteI love this idea, and I have come up with what could be a very cheap solution to the accelerometers. I don't have ample time to work on this, and would appreciate some feedback and help.
ReplyDeleteI found that it is possible to sync a wii remote (wiimote) to a pc via bluetooth, and access all of the accelerometer data (as well as other data from the remote) inside of LabView.
This gives you the capability of setting up this same device with just a few wiimotes (and LabView for now).
The problem I see with this is that the feedback requires an extremely precise timing for the triangulation. Does anyone have any input on how precise the feedback could be using a wiimote? Would the feedback be fast and accurate enough for triangulation?
I look forward to building one myself!
Thanks,
-Nitai
Woo nowadays kids build shit to go out shootin at the night or what. From my part I rather stay at playing hl2 from home online while blowing a joint and drinking myself down.
ReplyDeleteIm not impressed from this project...
Make free energy or solve the bp oil shit
Well done, guys and dolls. The presentation was a joy to watch. Look forward to your next presentation. Good luck.
ReplyDeletewow
ReplyDeletereal shovel ... to the face!!! lol
I have made some work on it subject.
ReplyDelete1. It has nothing to do with tiangulation or trinagulation and so on - it is called
"Delay estimation by FFT".
I linked ADXL345+ARDUINO and calculated
"Delay estimation by FFT". it turned out to be very pretty cheap and easy.
Now i am at the point of By "solving this system of nonlinear equations for x and y, to determine the location of the impact" but
it is looks like given method is lame too so I will have to kame up smth more sensible ;-)
I think the next level would be to do this in the round. The projector would have to rotate to wherever your head or eyes were pointed but rotate the scene so that you could turn around and scan 360 degrees. It would look almost exactly like you were using a headlamp (albeit with a square beam) in total darkness. that with as another submitter suggested, some sort of floor device that could sense moving and it would be so immersive.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what kind of accelerometer I should use? ADXL345 would be good choice? if yes, is it true that I should add high pass filter to the ADXL345 IC in order to obtain impact data??
ReplyDeleteand I think, just with four ADXL 345s and cheap MCU module (such as ARM 7 OR CORTEX-M3),which is less than 1500 dollars, and using USB 2.0 high speed communication to PC, I could make the real gun game system like that~ right???