Hello all, I am brand new to the forum, and to Arduino. I have always wanted to get started, but now I have a project to kick me off into learning about using an Arduino. So, my project, as the title suggests, is a "nuke" for my laser tag group. I'm looking to build a brief case that will emit IR signals to tag out blasters. I would like for it to be battery powered, which should not be too much of an issue. My hope is to have the the negative and positive from the power source to each go to their own key-operated switch. From there I want to run the power to an Arduino. This Arduino will function as the count down timer, as well as the LED controller. I would like to have an LCD screen with buttons to adjust the time on the clock as well as the pulse rate of the LEDs, and of course, a button to start the count down. From there, once the time is up, it will trigger some TSAL 6100s on the outside of the case which will pulse 20 times before turning off. Does this sound doable? Will it be terribly difficult? Any suggestions? Thank you for your help in advance.
IR requires a optical line of sight, that means that there is the possibility of not all tags beeing "nuked". You might consider using RF for this function.
I have to use IR because that is what the taggers pick up. IR with a wavelength of 950 nm to be exact. Also, I'm not entirely sure what range to expect, but I'll take whatever the TSAL 6100s can give me, which seems to be quite a bit from what I've read. I think I have the LEDs figured out, or at least can do it, where I have more questions is with the Arduino. What one should I need? Are there any basic timer codes out there I could just borrow? I don't even know where to start with the board or anything involving the programming of it.
Any Arduino board will be adequate for your project. Uno is usually a good choice, since it is reasonably powerful and most libraries out there work with it.
Although I've never played it, Laser tag seems like a game one would play outside. Sunshine might be a problem for an unfocused IR. This is something you should definitely test before you buy a bunch of LEDs.
As for the timer, for your application, all you need is millis(). it is reasonably accurate for time frames you'll be dealing with (not that fractions of a second matter anyway in such a game), it's simple to implement, requires no additional hardware and you can do it without any library. To simplify the setting of the timer you can use a few jumpers and depending on which one (or more than one) you short, a different countdown starts.
The first thing you should get working is one or two TSAL on a MOSFET emitting the code that triggers the tags.
This should be fairly straightforward using IR libraries available. For that you'll need an IR receiver of correct modulation frequency to capture the signal one of the guns emits. Which exactly is that depends on the equipment you use. It's usually 30, 38, 40 or 56 kHz, but check it for your specific guns.
Once you capture the signal you just transfer it to your emitting code and test it outside on a sunny day to see the range.
This is a basic practical test that will tell you whether your concept is feasible at all.