Laser Gun Mods for LaserShot

 I just got a chance to test out a new laserShot system recently but was disappointed to find my laser guns mostly don't work with it. 

On power up I can hear clicking and in the software you can hit "switch IR filter" so it has a filter that blocks all but NIR light.  This explains why only some of my 780nm guns work with it.   I had a LaserLyte LT-TTL  I had ripped out the laser from and swapped it with a 780 a while ago and this one worked best.   all my other laser guns just went on when i pulled the trigger hitting the button behind the trigger and they stayed on however long the trigger was pulled.  So, since i cannot target  20-80ms that precisely... time to engineer it!. 

First attempt was to make a simple cap discharge circuit.   Putting a large'ish cap (400-600uF) in series with a discharge resistor across the cap of about 50-100 ohm  you get an RC time constant of about 50mS  (500uF * 100ohm).   this also  for a 3 V (2x1.5V)  supply gives just enough current to turn the laser on.  However I got better reliability when I switched to 3x  1.5 = 4.5V by series'ing 3 AG13 batteries.  Which happens to be what LaserLyte uses.  Duh.    The laser will stay on after the initial pulse but its so weak the camera ignores it due to the low current   4.5V/100ohm=4.5mA continuous and peak... something more.  It works but not great.   I put a 100ohm Potentiometer across the resistor and can tune it a bit but its a balance of lower Resistance increases "off" continuous intensity after the pulse while also decreasing reseat time to discharge the cap for the next shot.  Have it too high and the cap wont charge enough for a rapid double tap pulse.   Its not great but it works.  You just have to tweak the software a bit for detection threshold. 

So I then wanted a better engineer solution.  I looked up a few debounce, and push-button to controlled pulse circuits and settled on a low power BJT circuit that can be dropped in series if needed but performs better if its a little more integrated into the components.   See diagram below.  You definitely want 4.5V powering this or the drop over the BJT can be problematic.  But this circuit is nice because it lets you fine tune pulse width and gives a fairly constant intensity on high pulse before the cap saturates and the BJT switches back to high impedance.  Its a good thing these cheap VP9 spring airsofts only cost about 20 dollars =).

--Upper left:  The basic circuit from which the others are derived based on restrictions or desired performance.   
--Bottom left,  Using a single MOMON pushbutton (trigger) activates the laser for the time constant of the RC pair.  It only powers on when the button is hit and powers off as soon as the button is released or after the RC times out on the BJT.    
--Bottom Middle,  Depending on the existing wiring and supply it may not be reasonable to source the diode over the BJT so instead we sink it.  Again behavior is as above but it doesnt shut off completely due to leakage through a resistor but leakage is low enough the camera doesnt pick it up for shot detection.  This one will kill batteries a little faster over time if you dont give it a power switch on the supply, especially tinny lithiums.

--Bottom Right,  Playing with a design for a pulse circuit that even if the button is released before the 50ms or whatever is up, it will stay active until the first cap discharges sufficiently.  I need to play with this design a bit more to see if it works well enough or is stupid. 

The bottom left and middle designs both work well enough for laser shot, you just need a bit of tuning depending on your laser and detection setup.  

After playing  a bit longer Ill provide a review of laserShot vs  Smokeless Vs Point blank simulator.  Hint.  more camera drama.  

Mazzer Brake for my VP9 GBB

 A lazzer muzzle brake.  Either 3d printed or machined, this one is 3d printed with a cavity in the front to accept a NIR 940nm laser with adjustment screws,  a central chamber that takes two button batteries and the pressure switch to activate the laser.   I was rather proud of this design as its so simple.  It uses a couple magnets to hold the batteries in contact with each other and to hold the +/- leads onto the batteries as well as hold the MON SMT button onto the battery stack.  the button is aligned with the central axis of the "brake" so that a delrin rod with rubber o-ring on the end that stops it from falling all the way down the barrel is held about 2mm off of the button.  no springs are used.  Instead a reverse polarity magnet is imbedded into the end of the delrin rod and sunk in 1/2mm such that it pushes away from the magnet stack on the batteries providing a restoring force to reset the rod.   A bit of liquid electrical tape dampens the impact between the rod and button.   finally the brake is printed undersized to be tapped for whatever the airsoft uses, but also has holes for two screws to firmly clamp it in place once its all set up and aligned so the shock from the rod impacting the button doesnt slowly move the brake out of alignment.   Overall works pretty well, and total cost in parts is about 10 dollars.  Now ANY airsoft or even bb gun that produces a pressure in the barrel can be converted into a laser gun just by slapping this on the end.   I still recommend shoving foam into the mags to block the followers down and ensure no bb's are in the area. 

But... changing the battery is tricky so. 

I designed and 3d printed a fake weapon light  battery holder with a 5 v setup board and pulse length limiter.  Bonus, make a few more and use them as battery holders and signal conditioners for lasers on the rest of my airsoft.  CR123's last a lot longer and enable a bit of wasted power for pulse conditioning. 

Camera MOD for Smokeless range more like PBS's

 So I tried smokeless range and PBS.  I picked these two out of a bunch of others for a few reasons.   Lasershot was pricey as heck and you had to buy their laptop.. ouch.  Not that into it yet.    some other aps looked a bit clunky.   Imarksman looked promising but recent years showed severely downgraded product videos making me wonder if they got sued or what.  (25 games turned to 12 down to 5)  are they about to disappear?  A few others were unremarkable.   So I started with PBS and bought their camera after trying it out with my web cam.  their cam was better but looking into it, its just a fast HD camera with a NIR pass filter or vis cut.  Any red filter will do most of this.  But I do like their zoom and aperture though its still a  bit pricey when you can buy the parts off of ebay.   I then wanted to do smokeless and tried their trial period using the PBS camera.  I liked the fact they had a trial and I was sold on how clean their software ran on my OK game computer compared to PBS which was  a bit stuttery.  However Smokeless wont sell their software without their camera claiming some BS about its proprietary and custom and blah blah.  Yea  anyone with  a technical background who cracks open their camera will see there is little special about it.   I was annoyed at having to buy an inferior product (camera) to access the software (and I'm still using the PBS camera as its just better) so I decided to at least upgrade their mediocre fixed distance camera to something that sucks less.    Now if I travel with it say to a friends house and want to setup there ill probably take the smokeless so i don't risk loosing/damaging the better camera. 

They took a basic HD webcam. 

Put a fixed lens on it with a Red filter to block out a lot of the visible. 

Marked up the price a bit for their effort and sold it.  Then they sold another having a short and long throw camera.   It was such BS.  PBS doesn't require you buy their camera but theirs is superior if for nothing else as it has zoom and aperture to adjust to brightness.   So i wanted to at least upgrade the camera from smokeless to something almost on par with what you get from PBS.    First carefully cut the epoxy off of the back of the lens that comes with smokeless camera.   then buy a 2.8-12mm or so variable focus(vari-focus/ focal) lens,  M12 thread (or get an adapter for CS mount to M12),   or even one with a manual or auto iris with NO IR filter,   and glue the filter onto that lens assembly with,... you guessed it, a wee dab of liquid electrical tape (  it slices, it dices it glues everything in a reversible way and it eats light, great for filter placement).  

Now for 12-30 dollars you have a camera that is short or long throw and sucks  a little less!  but really if you want both smokeless and PBS you need to buy smokeless's camera first since they wont sell software without their overpriced camera.   Just dont buy two of them,  spend 12-30 and updgrade the camera to be on par with the PBS camera.  

When reassembling the camera use just a general native camera software built into windows to view the output as you adjust the proper seating depth into the M12 socket.   Then set your set screw and close the body up.  

Lazzer Rifle Conversions'ish

 So around the same time I was starting to obsess with making laser pistols for smokeless and PBS laser simulators I tried using my laser bolt.  However, it had one severe problem.  The height over bore was absurd for a screen 10 feet away.  It made switching between pistol with minimal HOB  and rifle rather difficult.   But I also didn't want to spend nearly the effort or cost on anything like the laser bolt and i didn't want to permanently convert the rather expensive KWA GBB tavor into laser only.  So... For a 30 dollar picatinny laser sight...plus a few minor parts any good hobbyist has on hand... problem solved

First I picked this laser sight because it was cheap, adjustable, and has a cute magnetic coupled charger cable so I don't have to worry about batteries.   Next,  glue the switches behind the trigger in such a way that the only activate after the trigger drops the hammer so your not even disabling this as an airsoft.  However this means you have to set and follow hard and fast rules such as absolutely no BB's in the training area.  All mags are checked and double checked and you still never point these at anyone unless fully masked for an airsoft match.   Best of all this not only doesn't disable the rifles, but the height over bore is next to nothing and easily removed or transferred to another rifle.  It was an elegant solution.   Further,  green gas can be used to simulate recoil and mag changes can be performed as this does nothing to interfere with operation.  Just beware the risk of projectiles and wear safety goggles if you use gassed mags. I recommend shoving a cotton swab or bit of foam into the mag bb chute to prevent the bolt stop from engaging on an empty mag. the foam should be cut thick enough that it holds the follower down plenty far so the foam isnt shoved up and the bolt doesnt attempt to chamber the foam which could cause issues and still give you a projectile.  Make the foam long like at least 1.5cm so that if it does manage to slip up and try to get chambered its so long it jams everything up preventing the GBB from firing a foam projectile.   But this is what small little barrel bags are for, just in case.  You can also machine or 3d print a cylinder with a threaded hole in one end only so that even if it tries to fire the muzzle block catches anything. 

You may notice the transparent spring 1911, this was the first pistol conversion mentioned in the last post.  Oh yea,  and I couldn't help myself but to paint the rifles.  Nothing fancy, just a simple masked kryptek. 

Lazzer Pistol conversions

So.. for the past few years I haven't done much painting (other than helping my kids paint exotic cakes).  But I've kept busy turning minor hobbies into major efforts.  I tried a couple laser pistols to have for in-house practice that doesn't require safety goggles and concern for airsoft pellets damaging things.  I tried the Laserlyte LT-TTL and the SIRT PP.  

A bit of review. Granted my airsoft VP9 is obnoxious how it cryo's and locks up if you fire it too fast but it has a pretty good trigger.   Turns out laser guns.. may not have very good triggers despite costing as much if not twice as much as an Umarex GBB pistol.  That was disappointing. 

SIRT PP.  while this has an adjustable trigger it appears cranking it all the way down i can only get it down to 6lbs, and its a wee bit squishy.  Seriously an airsoft trigger is better than this expensive laser gun?  oh well.  I painted it orange and sanded down the sides of the grip because.. some moron decided that sharp plastic edges saying SIRT is a good idea.  Unless your wearing gloves, take the grip to a belt sander, then wrap it with tape to make something a bit more comfortable.  Overall for a "benchmark laser gun"  I'm a little disappointed.  

Laserlyte  LT-TTL.   This seemed to be one of the more common laser guns behind the SIRT and the profile of this was as close to the VP9 as I could find based on web images.   Once I got it I was happy to see I can simply bandsaw the backstrap off and epoxy a spare backstrap from a VP9 since all my GBB's came with extra (slightly bigger) backstraps.  I set the Laserlyte over the VP9 and marked then cut.  with a bit of belt sanding of the grip sides now it matches the VP9 almost perfectly.  Wonderful!... except the trigger SUUUUUCKS.   Its soo long and so squishy.   SO I take it apart to investigate.   

The mechanism is fairly interesting and easy to modify.  a couple pieces of 1mm thick polystyrene sheeting cut, sanded, and polished with sand paper 300 through 2000 grit and the take-up/squish is reduced to almost nothing and the trigger is nice and crisp on the break at about 4lbs.   The break if anything is a little abrupt so this is great practice to swap between it and the SIRT because if your trigger pull isn't perfect you'll see it as you switch between the two laser guns as your shots pull this way or that.     

Since i wanted the LaserLyte to mimic my VP9 GBB it also needed a red dot.  so, like the VP9 I put it on a mill, cut a slot for a cheap red dot, in this case a little flip up, and we have a nice laser sim gun with a fairly crisp trigger.  

One problem.. I can see the laser.  It is actually good to see the laser when your starting to get a good idea of where your laser is hitting, but if you try to use it with any laser sim software like Point blank simulator,  Smokeless, or the various phone based aps I found I prefer to not see the laser so i have to trust my sight picture.   Therefore i wanted to retrofit the laser guns to use NIR  940nm lasers.  But... I put a fair bit of work into them and they work so well, it seemed a shame to risk damaging them.  Thus I decided to convert two very cheap spring powered airsoft pistols to NIR laser pistols, and bonus, they have ejectable mags for slightly better simulation.  

First I took a "nice for a spring gun" 1911.  I bought a 3 dollar amazon 940nm 5mw laser diode and shoved it up the brass barrel liner then glued it in place with liquid electrical tape.   Pressed some small coin batteries into a slot leftover once i ripped out the compression cylinder, and wired up a very cheap SMT switch onto the back of the trigger such that it presses against an inserted mag to activate the laser.  It works pretty well, though trigger pull is only about 1lb  2oz.  Still Now i can get my kids to play laser guns with me and they stop whining about the 4-6lb trigger pull when we are doing sessions requiring over 50 shots.  If you look closely in the plastic frame you can see the SMT MON button epoxied to the back of the trigger.  

Then since this experiment worked i tried it again on a spring VP9 umarex pistol.    See, hoarding is its own reward and always pays off.   I epoxied a slightly larger MON SMT button this time with a spring crammed between the button to add a bit of trigger weight, then epoxied the button cap on so the spring doesn't just pop it off.   3d printed a battery holder to fit into the body where i ripped out the compression cylinder this baby, and again shoved a 940nm laser into the barrel liner and liquid electrical taped it in place.   a bit of shimming was needed to aim the laser in both as these are super crappy lasers but they both work beautifully.   Since it worked I then bought a cheap chineesium reflex sight milled a slot onto the top of the frame and epoxied the baseplate of the reflex onto the frame.  I now have a near perfect analog of my Umarex GBBP.   I also decided at this point to paint them all orange so i can easily identify sim guns that are completely incapable of firing a bb so i don't risk putting anyone's eye out.  I also used blue painters tape to help make them stand out so i never doubt that what is sitting around is ONLY  a  laser gun and not a potentially dangerous airsoft.  

Later Ill give more adventures in setting up my in-house laser simulators that helped me stay sane during quarantine these past few years.    When playing these laser sim games you'd be surprised how exhasted your whiny finger will get about a 4-6 lb trigger.   Its nice to take a break and shift to a 1-2lb trigger and be able to practice reloads and malfunction drills without having paid 4-600usd for a yet more expensive laser gun that still probably has an irritatingly squishy trigger.   These are also good for teaching your kids gun safety without having to risk a real weapon or even an airsoft.  General house rule, you don't point anything remotely resembling a weapon at anyone who isn't participating in a manner in which they expressly agreed to participate.   Thus even when we are just shooting computer targets we always exercise muzzle discipline. 

Stay safe and always treat an airsoft like it WILL put someone's eye out.  

Also just because you can barely see 940nm doesnt mean you should shine the laser in your eye to see if its working, use a phone with IR sensitivity.