Yet more projects?

A lot of my projects are things for me to mess with, and many that are high speed logic need a few more intermediate projects thrown in before they should be attempted. So, I ran across a very cool project page.

http://www.lasertagparts.com/mtdesign.htm

I'm thinking of breadboarding their basic circuits for a little fun, then going for a high tech Zigbee upgrade. Every player would have a gun, a backpack, a helmet/hat, and a few other sensors. Many sensors would just be a Zigbee unit, LED's, an IR sensor, and a PIC for logic control. The gun would be similar to the designs above. The backpack would be used for radios and some high tech gadgets. The helmet may have a comm headset, but would otherwise be there for protection/team identification.

I'm considering giving it a larger LCD (2x16?) and using capacitive switches for user interface, keeping the box sealed and possibly a bit more watertight.

For another trick, a serial bidirectional optocoupled box would be used for a magazine. A simple pulse request for one round of ammo would be flashed to the box, it would respond with a pulse if it has one. I'd either put a battery inside with a switch to restart it, or use a very low speed loop wireless system to reset (like 125KHz). There would be microswitches to turn on/off the interface. If field reloads are possible, timing lockouts and a reload field back at base would be used. This would keep people from sitting in the reload area with infinite ammo. The interface itself would be small and universal, the changes in the box would be different for different weapons.

Hmmm... more later....