Hey guys,

My next project is to build my very own smartgun for paintball, crazy I need somthing to keep me going!

Now I have sorced an MG42 shroud from here http://www.cushmanpaintball.com/

and Matsuo and myself have been talking about all the extra smartgun parts.

As per every smartgun project on this forum the problems im having is with the steadicam arm, i cannot afford £1000+ to buy the real thing, and I have no experiance in milling my own! but I think i have an idea.

angle lamps....like http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/0028051/c_1/1%7Ccategory_root%7CHome%2Band%2Bfurniture%7C14417894/c_2/3%7C15701239%7CLighting%7C14418021/c_3/4%7Ccat_14418021%7CFloor%2Blamps%2Band%2Buplighters%7C14418026.htm

i know it hasnt got the right amount of arm hinges but if i used two side by side I beleave it would work.

feel free to now Shoot down my Idea.....

_________________
Chaplain Sgt Hohenkerk,
Executive officer - 69th Regt. 1st Batt. Homer’s Heroes

Does not help,
Does not clean,
Will have sex with anything!

You'd probably do better with tv wall brackets.

That lamp arm has sections over two feet long, but tv brackets would be much shorter, much like the arm you're after.

I'll post a link as reference in a mo.

Edit:

Something like this.

Here's a quick mock up to show what I mean:

_________________
Steve
Corporal in 69th Regt. 1st Batt. Homer’s Heroes.

"I'd like to die at the age of 80 in my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a girl's mouth around my c**k."

have you thought about this befor?


that looks like it would work really well....right.....re-planning idea....

_________________
Chaplain Sgt Hohenkerk,
Executive officer - 69th Regt. 1st Batt. Homer’s Heroes

Does not help,
Does not clean,
Will have sex with anything!

Yes, funnily enough.

You'd still need to find one that's large enough and fits/moves well enough, along with mounting the 'chest' bracket and to the gun itself.

Most allow a certain amount of tension adjustment too.

_________________
Steve
Corporal in 69th Regt. 1st Batt. Homer’s Heroes.

"I'd like to die at the age of 80 in my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a girl's mouth around my c**k."

hopfully my smartgun wont be too heavy as the most of it is a plastic shell, but its deffinalt a dam god starting point....

any one wanna come to the tv store with me....? could get some interesting looks!

_________________
Chaplain Sgt Hohenkerk,
Executive officer - 69th Regt. 1st Batt. Homer’s Heroes

Does not help,
Does not clean,
Will have sex with anything!

be prepared for alot of work.
I bought one of the Cushman MG42 kits, took one look at it and just threw it in the loft. its really not a good kit.
Im making a steadycam arm for my new resin SG, using a set of plans i found.

_________________
M/SGT Rich Hyatt-Dowling (Retd)

UKCM Black ops

Check this site out, a good starting point...http://www.homebuiltstabilizers.com/Exp ... /index.htm.

I was in the process of building one, but had to put it on the back burner due to lack of funds and time (my build: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7718). I have a crap load of reference photos, along with my own design based on the 3A goldspring arm. It can give you the basic idea behind the design and function of a steadicam arm, and use other less expensive materials to put together a functional alternative. There are quite a few Smart gunners here that know a lot about these puppies that can also help... ie: Jesse DeGraff, Sidewinder, saintadjg...etc.
PM me if you want photos.
Good luck!

_________________
Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave.

Just PM'd you

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Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave.

random question but i saw a guy selling parts for the SG headset a while ago (which looked amazing) but i was wondering if any one has tryed to link up a camra from the end of the gun to the eye peice?

its somthing im thinking of doing....

_________________
Chaplain Sgt Hohenkerk,
Executive officer - 69th Regt. 1st Batt. Homer’s Heroes

Does not help,
Does not clean,
Will have sex with anything!

I've done it on paper, yes.
Pretty easy. It's mostly just ripping out the components from an existing item and installing into the SG rig.

I'd planned to use a particular brand of RC car toy which has a camera on it. It's only a B&W one, but it's good enough. The headset that comes with it projects the image onto a mirror that sits in front of the user's eye.

My plan is to seat a mirror inside the SG eyepiece and have the image projected up the eyepiece stalk, onto the mirror.


HOWEVER - To make this work, you will need a mind that can cope with being messed with.

You will encounter....err.... what I will call 'parallax problems' (I'm sure Gareth will help me with the correct terms ).
The problem comes from the image in your left eye being a good 18-24" higher than the one being fed into your right. In fact, the right eye is essentially moving all over the place and is a real struggle to co-ordinate with your 'normal' vision.
I 'borrowed' one of the cars from a friend in the toy department and played SmartGun with it - I found it very easy to fall over!!


To help counter this, the plan is to use a small mirror that just shows the area of the image being projected. It's quite small/far away when it's projected up the eyepiece stalk.
Around that, I plan to put some very small holes through the eyepiece so I have at least some normal (albeit, limited) vision. Hopefully the projected image will just appear overlaid on top of my regular sight.

Wiring seems easy enough, although that I was going to get help with from one of several electronics friends I know.

And there was me planning to use a video camera! You couldn't post a link to the toy could you?

_________________
Chaplain Sgt Hohenkerk,
Executive officer - 69th Regt. 1st Batt. Homer’s Heroes

Does not help,
Does not clean,
Will have sex with anything!

Hey Woody,
The problem you are talking about (unsure of the correct technical term) is the same problem that Apache Gunship pilots have learning to cope "In Helmet Heads Up Display Monocle" and can be made even worse if your left eye is your master eye. This was illustrated in the Nicholas Cage film Wings of the Apache when, to "correct" his "problem" he is made to drive a jeep viewing the world through an improvised periscope held onto his head IIRC by a pair of underpants!

Below is a description culled from the Net of Master/Dominant Eye and how to determine which you have.

As a thought this maybe a slightly more sophisticated solution than small holes drilled in the back of the eyepiece. If you were project the image from the camera onto a small piece of clear glass set at 45 degrees like a periscope and then to have a replacement eyepiece shell vacuum formed out of "smoked" clear plastic so that at a glance it looks solid in theory it should work like a Heads Up Display and you should be able to focus through the camera image on the glass to see the real world with Binocular vision and then back to the camera image.

Can't swear this will work and I've almost fried my brain trying to work out whether the image you see will be a mirror image of the real world or not!

_________________
Cheers

Winch

"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow I shall fear no evil for thou art with me. And together we'll kick ANY bugs ASS!"
You know who you are!

Winch - Yeah, I knew all that.
It's not an eye dominance problem so much as the images not matching in the first place - I *believe* Apache systems at least combine the images to make a sensical picture, which is why the cameras are next to eachother at the front. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of a Nicholas Cage movie, though.

This is more about a 'forced perspective' - Making sense of an image from two very distant positions.

Good idea with the eyepiece, although I've just spent out on a fancy one from Mars!!



Errrr.... seemingly not.
I just trawled through about 50 pages of my previous posts and cannot recall where on Earth I posted it. Search was no help, either.
I do recall that I have posted the info twice on here..... somewhere.....


Edit: Scrub that - My Google-Fu is superior to the ALiens Legacy search function!!!
http://jakehildebrandt.com/2007/09/30/25-head-mounted-display/

They're about £80 and can be had from several places. I think even Argos have/had them...

Yeah I guessed you probably would but maybe others wouldn't, as for the eye dominance I was just saying that it can make things worse if you are a left eye master and using a right eye optical system.

I am curious why you want to put a camera on the Smartgun though? Surely the camera on the Smartgun rig is in the headset and according to the Tech Manual all that's mounted on the Smartgun itself is an Infra Red Tracker not a camera?

_________________
Cheers

Winch

"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow I shall fear no evil for thou art with me. And together we'll kick ANY bugs ASS!"
You know who you are!

The headset camera only transmits to the APC. It'd just be silly having it go directly to the eye of the person whose head it's on!!

The Tech Manual is not considered canon for some people, so YMMV.
Pulsies at least have sight rails and I like to think that we just don't get a look at whatever iron sights they might have.

But it makes sense to have a camera on the SG, with a feed into the eyepiece. There are no sights on an SG and you don't hold it up like a rifle, so you need to know where to aim.

So whether the eyepiece shows an infrared, image intensified or standard image, Having a 'camera-thing' on the front as a sighting device makes sense.

Perhaps it's a combination unit that has several modes...
But, for the sake of our bank balances, the best and easiest 'working model' is to just do a normal camera.


Cheif - On the subject of cameras - It may actually be easier/better to use a normal camera, rather than the RC car idea. At least then you'd have adjustable focus, zoom and maybe a few other useful functions... as well as Colour Vision!!


M56 SmartGun - Now in TECHNICOLOR!!!

The Tech Manual suggests that the Smart Gun auto-targets very strongly. Therefore it would make a lot of sense for the headset camera image to be fed into the eyepiece (IR or visible) with a HUD showing what it's targeting.

The actual target selection might be done by a camera or other sensor on the gun but it would have to do so much image/pattern recognition to make a sensible choice of target that it would be trivial* to highlight the target in the headset camera image even if it's offset from the gun's view.

Having the gun-mounted "camera" image fed into one eye would totally ruin depth perception and would probably tend to make the wearer motion-sick.

TBH, the wider distance between one eye and the headset camera would also take some getting used to when it come to depth perception. However, if the gun sensor/computer was strong, it might be able to process the image to compensate somewhat, by 3D mapping the scene and skewing elements in some way?

Or, for that matter: maybe the eyepiece shows only a computer-generated 3D view of the scene (offset to correct parallax completely) that highlights targets, obstacles, your squad and enemies - maybe even through walls depending what sensors are on the rig?

* - trivial with future hypothetical embedded computers ...

I would think L/CPL Guy "Goober" Alcala's "combat report" on page 16 which concludes "No grouping, nothing; in each case all the shells had entered thru the same hole. That freaked some of the guys out. After that they kept the tracking switched off . . . they wanted to hose that thang, man!" sounds pretty conclusive on the subject of auto-targeting! Unless you dispute the Manuals canon status!

Hosing that thang certainly sounds Vasquez and Drakes style to me!

_________________
Cheers

Winch

"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow I shall fear no evil for thou art with me. And together we'll kick ANY bugs ASS!"
You know who you are!

Except that in the film (which is most certainly canon) Drake's and Vas's headset cameras, which is a very similar/the same models as everyone else's, are shown to be normal cameras transmitting to the APC (Drake, check your camera). That's my reasoning beind it.

Now, it may be some futuristic camera that can handle several different functions all through that one lens, but I don't have the tech knowledge to debate that either way


One thing I have found is that Cameron's idea of military tech seems to be slightly better than that of ours in 1986. It's simple, but big and clunky so it's reliable and hard to damage.
So with a big weapon like the SG, a (and perhaps the only) practical way to sight it is with the peripheral sight and a camera down the barrel.
Exactly what image is displayed, who (aside from Cameron) knows. Maybe they have an infra-red mode.

Now, I am certain that there was a hole in the eyepiece that Drake wore - I think it's on Harry's website?
That would give some degree of 2-eye vision and I've tried it with a mock-up already.

What I'm finding with some very, very basic experiments is that my brain 'overlays' the fed camera image on top of my dominant eye vision. I got the idea off these sunglasses at a future tech exhibition years ago (like the Ideal Home Ex, but not - Dunno, I was quite young at the time) that had a mini TV screen in the lower edge of the lens. It did the same overlay trick. It's kinda hard for me to explain.
However, I've only had success standing still - I can't move around and keep visual track of both images yet!

It'll all make more sense once I've refined my set-up, I promise!!

In a world with hypersleep, human-level intelligent androids and FTL (or near-FTL) star-ships (not to mention Powerloaders that can maintain dynamic stability while holding tons at a 6ft arm's length ... ), I don't think I'm over-speculating - in this world, a "Smart" Gun is simple.

The required image recognition for auto-targeting is at least plausible with today's tech, alas maybe not on a wearable computer.

You don't have the right to put shackles on my sci-fi!

"Simplicity is Efficiency's best friend"
Terry Brown.

Firstly, what *is* auto-targeting?
Can understand something like the TADS - Target Acquisition & Designation Sights on an Apache being used for an SG, but for true auto-targeting the SG would need to be able to move itself to point at the target and I didn't see evidence of that, or the mechanisms to do it in the film.

But why would it auto-target?
The sentry guns already do that, as well as auto-firing depending on how you programme them, so why not make the SGs fully mobile? Strapped to a human, they are bulky and unwieldy. But if they are auto-targeting, why bother even have a human controlling the thing?
Humans are expensive, high-maintenance and fallible.

The fact that both SG and Sentries are built on MG42s had not escaped my consideration in this though, so maybe there *is* a relation...


I personally prefer the idea of something simple that you can give to cheap thugs like Drake and Vas!!

Why have human soldiers at all when you have androids? And have done for 60+ years? (And therefore would have become more affordable)

Why automate ANYTHING when a human can do it less reliably and less precisely but with more intuition?

All together now - "Because it's just a movie?"

I tried to make a more sensible and interesting reply to those questions.... but I kept going round and round in circles, counter-cross-contradicting myself and then my head blew up!!

I'm now confused - Is the SG auto-targeting, or just a highly portable TADS sort of thing? I know Drake fires at Newt without using the eyepiece and Vas doesn't have hers in use when first entering the complex... But they both use them under the AP.

The arm of the Smartgun is powered (servos in the joints etc.), serving as driven support for the weapon and allowing it to lock on to targets independent of user input. Targets are detected and marked by the on-gun sensor and displayed on the eyepiece screen, this screen image is adjusted by the gun system's computer to account for the difference in eye line between the gun's sensor and the operator's eye.
The gun acquires a target (or targets) in its field of view and self steers toward the closest (dependent on user setting) one, the operator can then fire on that target or choose to guid the weapon to the target of his choosing.
The camera on the headset is not part of the M56's system.

SAS

_________________
Alan T. Alien
1st Lt Smith, SA "Sidewinder"
A13/TQ1.4.19720EX CMA
Founder of UKCM 13th Regt. 1st Batt. Freebooters
Founder of Special Armaments Section (Heavy Weapons)
"People don't understand. people like me"

I will speculate about a movie privately in future then ... this obviously isn't the place for it.

I swear I read in the tech manual that the ammo itself was programmed to hit a target......no tech manual to hand right now.....but I would put my corn bread on it....

_________________
Chaplain Sgt Hohenkerk,
Executive officer - 69th Regt. 1st Batt. Homer’s Heroes

Does not help,
Does not clean,
Will have sex with anything!