Introduction: Arduino Lasertag Project

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Hello there! Today I'll be explaining how I made a Arduino lasertag gun for a project at the HKU School of Arts at Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Step 1: Get Yourself an Arduino and Some Infrared Leds and Sensors (plus Some More Stuff).

Step 1.

I started this project by buying some Infrared LED's and and Infrared Sensor that function at 33khz (you can use 38khz aswell). Most lasertag guns use infrared to send data, as it is much more reliable to send data with. With infrared you won't have any interference from other lightsources such as the sun.

For this project I used:

  • a Piezo buzzer.
  • a simple button component..
  • a 128x64 adafruit lcd screen.
  • a red led light for visual feedback.
  • a laser diode module (laserpointer).
  • a infrared led (33khz).
  • a infrared receiver (33khz).
  • some transistors and gauge wires.
  • a soldering iron and some lead.
  • sticky tape.
  • a glue gun.
  • a Arduino Uno and a Usb B cable.

I used the Adafruit SSD1306 monochrome 128x64 OLED Display for showing stats on the gun.

The first thing I did was to make a basic setup for my lightgun (see pictures).

Step 2: Use This Code for the Gun.

NOTE

This code requires the Arduino library for SSD1306 monochrome 128x64 and 128x32 OLEDs as this was the screen I used for the gun.

https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_SSD1306

Attachments

Step 3: Take That Dusty Old Nerf Gun Out of Your Drawer (or Buy One).

After I got my software and hardware to work I used old Nerf gun I had lying around to function as the housing of the Arduino and it's hardware.

Step 4: Modify the Nerf Gun.

After I dusted of the gun, I took it apart and had a look inside. I planned out where the different parts of the gun would come and where I would place the Arduino Uno.

I took out all the lose parts and the old firing mechanism and painted the gun. After this I made some modifications on the inside so I could fit the arduino inside the old magazine chamber of the gun.

Step 5: Solder Your Components and Glue Them Into the Gun.

After I modified and painted the gun it was time for me to solder all my components to seperate breadboards. Shortly after that, I glued them into the gun and I was ready to go test it!

Step 6: Tadaa!

Eventually the lasertag gun turned out like this. You can shoot, receive and decode IR messages with the code. Whilst everything is connected in a neatly modified nerf gun. Just connect the powerbank to the arduino and you are ready to go :)