Hi heghduq,

Shouldn't your name be written HeghDuQ?

A lot of people making DIY tag guns seem to stick to rifles as they
give you a lot more room to play with. One common trick is to use a
rifle with a grenade lancher and put IR emmitters into a grenade
launcher (instead of the rifle barrel) as it gives more room for a
big lens.

Getting things to fit into a handgun, or in your case, a hand phaser
is really going to cut down on your space (*especially* if you are
trying to retain the original sound board).

You might be able to gain a bit of extra space by switching to a high
power battery and using resistor to stop the current burning out the
circuit (a small camera battery might be able to fit in a part of the
phaser that is currently empty). This could allow you to put one of
the circuits in the handle where the batteries go now (you might need
to glue the battery compartment shut if you do this - use a hot glue
gun as you can pick it off later if you change your mind).

Getting the tag circuit and the phaser sound circuit to work in
paralel or in series might cause problems so you might want to try
using a different battery for each circuit and fitting a relay to
trigger the second circuit. It is probably best to keep the original
circut board where it is as I think it is attached to the switches. I
think you could probably connect the wires that currently go to the
phaser light to a relay switch and connect that to a separate tag
circuit housed in the battery compartment. The wires from the tag
circuit could then go back up to your IR emmitting diode.

Andy is right in his comments about bare emmitters, but you might get
a slight performance enhancement by mounting your LED inside a chrome
bezel like this one:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/free_uk_delivery/LED_Chrome_Bezel_2073/LED_Chr
ome_Bezel_2073.htm

(If that link is broken onto two lines you will have to reassemble it
to get the right page.)

A chrome bezel would reflect a bit more IR in a forward direction and
cut down slighly on the sideways spread. It isn't as good as a lens,
but is better than using nothing. The entire assembly might still fit
inside the hole where the original light was, although you might need
to do a bit of careful carving with a dremel or similar tool to get
it to point in the right direction. Don't forget that as you are not
using the bezel for its orignial purpose you can ditch the retaining
nut if it is in the way. There are probably a few bezel types in your
local electronics shop and some might be slighly smaller than others,
but be careful to get one that fits with your IR LED.

By the way, if you need to glue the bezel or the emmitter to the body
*try* to glue it to the same side that the electronic circuits are on
(so that you don't need to put in longer wires than you need to).
Remember that you are probably going to have to take this thing apart
to change the batteries.

If you mount the entire thing inside the phaser it shouldn't be too
visible from the outside, but a bit of perspex (which could perhaps
be slighly red) should cover it up (and make your weapon more
waterproof) if you are concerned.

Be warey of mounting the emmitter on the outside of the phaser as the
spread will be so big that it hits people on your own team. Also be
cautious of powering up the tag circuit too much as the IR might leak
through the sides of the phaser body. (I actually know a guy that
made a "bazooka" gun circuit so powerful that it shot out of the back
of his drain-pipe and hit people behind him!). If you get that
problem with your phaser you can try gluing something like aluminium
foil to the insides of the gun, but be careful to not create a short
circuit if you do that (you might get away with just doing this to
the front section around the LED).

Good luck with your project.

Hi Andy,

Nice to see you are still around. Was it you doing the open source
tag project? How is that going? I lost your website URL. If you are
doing any new tag stuff (and haven't already added your site to my
links pages) let me know where to find it.

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Webmaster
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://virtualeclipse.aboho.com/
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/

--- "Andy" wrote:
>
> The lens doesn't need to be so big. In fact, if you wanted a very
short range tagger, you could skip the lens entirely.
>
> The space you have is almost impossible to make a lens assembly
fit - 3/16 is smaller than most 5 mm IR emitters. If you are willing
the use a bare emitter, you could get a range of 20-30 feet, but
anything more than that will require extensive changes to your phaser.
>
> -Andy in Indy
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: heghduq
> Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2006 11:15 PM
> Subject: [Virtual Eclipse] DIY laser tag
>
>
> Greetings and salutations. I happened upon your group after a
long
> surfing session looking for help on a project but have a small
dilema
> and a possible challenge for any electronics techs out there. I
have a
> Star Trek Next generation type II hand Phaser. I wish to add a
IRLED
> WoW Laser Tag compatable electronics package to the existing
sound
> board with out compromising the external appearrence of my hand
Phaser.
> From ehat I have seen in the DIY sections of several Laser tag
sites
> the minimum required length of the IRLED emitter is 4.5 inches
with a 2
> inch Diameter magnifying lens. My dilema comes in lack of space
and
> shape. I have at best 2 inches in length for the IRLED emitter
tube.
> the other issue is the shape of the lens. It can only be 9/16th
of an
> inch long and 3/16th wide. this would make it rectangular in
shape and
> quite small. would it be possible to do this?