Stormtrooper Blaster Help\Advice

[TK3247]

Hi everyone!
I'm new to the site and am looking for advice\help with a project that I'm working on with a friend. The plan is to wire up sound, LEDs, laser pointer, and hopefully video into my scratch built Stormtrooper E-11 Blaster.

So far we are OK with the sound, LEDs, and laser pointer, but the video is a bit beyond my friend's expertise. We want to mount the camera in the front of the scope and have a 0.96" oLED screen at the back of the scope. We found this screen and camera, the screen will fit, but the camera's board is too big to fit, does anyone know of a smaller camera that isn't overly expensive?

My only other thought would be to seperate the lens and optical sensor from the board and mount the camera's board in the body and solder wires from the board to the optical sensor (which would mean surface mount soldering wires to the board, which I don't even want to attempt). If that is even possible?

http://www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=83



http://www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=75



Got most of the blaster drawn up in Inventor, just making sure everything will fit. But yeah any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.



Here are the dimensions of the scope.



Me at work on Halloween.

[TK3247]

The blaster below is one I made out of PVC, sheet metal, aluminum tube and bar. The new one will be made of steel, instead of PVC, to make it a little more durable.

[Bergo]

cool project, jealous of storm trooper costume!

I'd just pick up a new cheap CMOS camers from Ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Super-Mini-Color-CM ... 230e98d853

or:

http://cgi.ebay.com/new-Type-Color-CMOS ... 35af8a017a

[TK3247]

Thanks for the suggestions! Much cheaper and smaller than the camera we picked out. Is there an interface we can use to connect one of those analog cameras to that screen (which is digital input)? Does it need some sort of processor? I'm really not knowledgeable in this kind of stuff.

[Odemia]

Short answer: probably not going to work, even with a serial snapshot cam you would be writing some code to pull the image from the camera to memory/buffer and then to display it. And that is probably at about 1frame/sec. There is an A/D input but I don't see any functions for converting the analog signal to digital so I doubt it can do it fast enough. The display board has a processor on it that can be put into GFX or SGC modes. So it can either act as the controller (GFX) or be controlled by another controller (SGC). It has a TTL UART for serial communication and general purpose IO that can do 8 and 10 bit analog to digital (A/D) conversions.

Do you want a full speed camera or is the snapshot camera good enough?

If you want a full speed camera, you could look for an old camcorder, like at a pawn shop. If you removed the casing and tape deck keeping the screen, camera, board and battery you might be able to make it all fit.

[TK3247]

Ideally I was hoping for a full speed camera, but the one we picked out originally could only do a couple frames per second, so its not a big deal if it isn't full speed.

I had thought about using an old digital camera or video camera, the only thing is space in the scope is VERY limited. If I could fit the optical sensor inside the scope and run wires down to the body of the blaster were the rest of the camera could be housed that would be great, but the optical sensor will be mounted on a board that is too large to fit inside the scope. So unless someone is wicked awesome at soldering surface mount stuff I think it isn't going to work.

The other option is to mount the camera at the end of the barrel and just move the LEDs around so they can both fit. Then an old camera would probably work really well.

Thanks for the advice!

[Odemia]

Did I see you in costume on 8th street recently? If so the suit looks great even in real life.

[TK3247]

Hahaha yeah that was me at 8th St Books & Comics on Free Comic Book Day (May 7th).

Had a ton of fun, a bit chilly towards the end, but a great time overall! Did you go to the store? Or just drive by?

I'll be out at the Anime Blitz & Comic Spectacle this Saturday (June 4th) at Prairieland. Anyone else going? Would be neat to meet some of you in person. Turns out SolTurboLove started working at the same company I work for, which was pretty cool.

But yeah hopefully I can have the blaster finished by Saturday. I just got the rest of my parts from Sparkfun yesterday (didn't realize shipping would be 2-4 weeks, cutting it pretty close!). I'll post some updated pics once I get some more stuff assembled.

[TK3247]

This was my first time soldering a circuit board. I think overall I did a decent job. Just took my time and double\triple checked that what I was soldering was what was supposed to be soldering! lol

[TK3247]

The power level LEDs were almost too bright. The red and blue Luxeon LEDs for the barrel are extremely bright, very happy with them.