TargetTalk

Does anyone have instructions for building a simple 3 second/7 second red/green light system for home use (not to be used outside) - nothing fancy. Thanks

Funny you should ask ...

I just finished one for our club ... It works pretty well. For about $200 you can put this together, cheaper if you do a manual controller:

Processor Controller:

Lights:

Manual Controller:

Drawings: http://www.vc4hss.com/22_Pistol/images/ ... roller.pdf

Parallax Website to download the development software package (free):
http://www.parallax.com/tabid/789/Default.aspx

I used a Parallax BS-1 Project board as I had a few left over from a Skeet range controller I did a few years ago. Easy to program. If you do not have a serial port on your computer to program this, you'll probably have to pick up a USB-Serial adapter and straight cable.

If you feel that this is a bit out of your league, ask around your club ... any highschooler who has a done a robot project can do this.

You'll also note I left out the ON/OFF switch ... I thought I had one sitting around, and it's not really necessary.

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Some directions:
The green & red outlests obviously go to the lights downrange ... use a couple of 75' extension cords.

The Yellow LED comes on when plugged in.
The RESET button will take the system back to the RESET mode from any time in the sequence.

Pushing the STAGE button from reset mode begins the sequence.
The Green LED above the STAGE button comes on for 1 min (LOAD period)

Then the Blue ATTENTION LED comes on. I've put a pause here as the RO must announce "ATTENTION" and again press the STAGE button.

At this point the RED LAMP(s) come ON (the red outlet is "hot") & the Yellow "Fire" LED comes on indicating you are in a firing sequence.
This stays for 7 sec.

Then the RED goes cold & GREEN comes on for 3 sec.

This repeats for the 5 cycles and then the YELLOW "Fire" LED goes out, but the RED stays on until you hit either the RESET or STAGE button to take the controller back to the RESET mode.

This is small enough that I can have a shooter take it home and practice with just the controller as it has a RED/GREEN LED on it and you can use it without external lamps.

When I get it back (one of the kids has it to practice) I'll post a video of the operation of it .... it's really pretty simple

Nice set-up. I did have a question though- isn't the green light supposed to be on the bottom and the red on top? (I could be wrong - I'm just a poor old rapid fire shooter, and just basing it on the RF setup.)

Thanks,
Ted

tedbell wrote:isn't the green light supposed to be on the bottom and the red on top?

Yup ... I went back and looked at the 2004 Pan Am Games video I was directed to and the green are indeed on the bottom....
(can't find it in the rules ... ISSF can tell you when you can wear pants, but not how the range is set up)

That's what you get when a newbie starts into something.
I won't even try to tell you some of the stuff we tried first.
Thanks to folks like you, we're getting it sorted out!

Easy quick fix... just need to swap the cords in the controller & the bulbs downrange

Thanks.

jhmartin wrote:... ISSF can tell you when you can wear pants, but not how the range is set up...

It was there in 2001 rules (6.3.23.4 25 m Electronic Scoring Target The 25 m Electronic Scoring Target is similar to the 50 m electronic scoring target (see 6.3.23.2) except that a red light is mounted just above the target frame and a green light is mounted just below the target frame. The red light indicates “DO NOT FIRE” and represents the edged conventional targets. The green light indicates “FIRE” and represents the faced conventional targets).
Guess they reckon that everyone knows by now.

LED2 = red
LED1 = green

After applying voltage - the circuit enters an endless loop.... red 7s ...green 3s... red 7s... green 3s.. and so on..

Тred = 0.7 х (R3 + R4) x C2
Тgreen = 0.7 х R4 x C2

Control check:

Тred = 0.7 х (122000 + 93000) x 0.000047 = 7.07s
Тgreen = 0.7 х 93000 х 0.000047 = 3.05s

What about one that can do 8, 6 and 4s?

j-team wrote:What about one that can do 8, 6 and 4s?

If you were willing to give up two of the LEDs on the BS-1 controller you could substitute them for input switches instead ... then you could have the 3,4,6,&8 "modes".

You would have to also be careful in the programming ... the BS1 only has 256 bytes of memory ... the additional code may not fit.

The next level of Parallax processors (BS-2) are about $25 more, but have 2K of programmable memory and double the I/O. (I think those kits are on sale now for $30).

Or with the 555 circuit, you could add in switches to swap in different R-C values.

Ok, so here is the story. I ordered a Parallax Basic Stamp Kit. It has not arrived yet but when it does I will need to learn about programming and electronics at the same time. I will keep you posted on my progress.