Halo Project Update

So do to the weather and just being busy in general, I really haven't had a chance to work on my halo suit.  I did manage to get some progress on a few of my weapons. 

I'll start off with the most exciting of the weapons first my Halo 3 Battle Rifle.  Much thanks to my sister I have finally managed to get a Nerf Longshot, they stopped selling these a few years ago, and the only real way to get them is on eBay.  I plan on fully modding the blaster and going to use parts of the front gun to pull off the look of the battle rifle.

The next one is my assault rifle, this one is going to take alot if time to get just right.  I plan on using a Nerf Rayven for the base of the gun and going to make the front part of it with pepakura.  Also planning on integrating a full ammo counter and make a speaker for like clip reload noises etc.  The assault rifle will also have mag light mounted in the front just like it does in the game.  Not sure what all electronics will be added into this gun before it's all said and done, but it should be very impressive.

The last halo blaster i have planned is the Spiker.  This is a relatively easy to do.  The base is going to be a Nerf Maverick and the blades will be made with pepakura.  Most of this project will focus on the paint and cosmetics.  The performance of mavericks are very lacking compared to other Nerf mods, but it is one of the cooler looking blasters.  The maverick will have all the standard mods (including the Russian roulette mod), and maybe even a spring upgrade.

Well that's about it for this post, hopefully i can get around to doing an armor update later this week.

For those of you who are interested in playing Nerf please get contact with me again, I think I have enough people interested in playing to be able to get games going.  I am going to start collecting deposits to cover start up costs, this will also give me s good headcount.  You can either contact me here or through email at kidnicky@bellsouth.net or stalkervenom@gmail.com, or on Facebook.

Nerf Reactor H.A.M.P Conversion

So I have had pretty decent luck at goodwill and other thrift stores over the past few weeks. I have found a lot of pistols and smaller blasters, an almost brand new Alpha Trooper, and even a Bumblebee helmet. This brings me to this weeks project, Atom Blaster Reactor
.

I came across four of these over the past few weeks, and I really couldn't decide what I wanted to do with them. I could use them as an integration on a blaster, kind of like a noob tube, but after talking to some people I decided that wasn't very practical. The Atom Blaster Reactor doesn't get good enough ranges launching the Nerf Ballistic Balls to justify trying to find some or even carry them around. So what else could I do?
 

One word HAMP, well what is a hamp? A hamp is a high airflow manual plunger, its basically similar to a slam fire blaster except is has no trigger. Every time you pump the blaster it shoots a dart, or several darts depending on your set up. The great thing about hamps are they work well with both hopper and rscb clips. The rate of fire and distance you can achieve with a hamp is pretty incredible.

Parts:

• 1/2" Cpvc pipe
• 1/2" PVC pipe
• 1/2" PVC Wye (or parts to make a homemade wye)
• 1" Coupler
• 1" to 1/2" bushing
• Epoxy Putty
• Nerf Atom Blaster Reactor

First step is to pull the orange piece out of the barrel of the blaster, this can easily be yanked out with a pair of needle nose pliers.  We will not be using that orange piece or the spring that will fall out after you remove it.

After removing the orange piece and the spring, you can disassemble the back end of the blaster, this is where your plunger tube is located.  For my mod I ran a piece of Cpvc from the plunger tube to the front of the barrel.  (sorry for the lack of pictures explaining how I did this part)

To accomplish this you must drill a hole where the orange piece is on the back of the orange barrel, I used a 5/8 spade bit to make this hole big enough for 1/2" Cpvc.  To stabilize the front of the barrel I used the 1' coupler and 1" to 1/2" bushing and a piece of PVC pipe.  The PVC pipe also allows for your wye (that will be used on the hopper clip) to attach.  The coupler and the barrel (depending on what sch pvc you use) will need to have tape wrapped around them to hold them in place.

Once you get everything fitting in properly apply a decide amount of epoxy putty to hold it in place.  I put putty on both ends of the blaster where the Cpvc is to stabilize it.

At this point all you should have to do is make a barrel and decide how big of a clip you want to use.  Ive been using a foot long barrel (just because I had one already made), and a 9 dart clip.


Summary:
I can't say much about this blaster in its stock form (I do not have any Nerf Ballistic Balls), but from what I hear it launches the balls about 15-25 feet.  Ballistic Balls are probably one of the more fun types of ammo, because you can bounce them off walls and stuff, and lets be honest whats better then hitting your friend in the head with a big green foam ball?  But for practical use, carrying around of bunch of Ballistic Balls takes up a lot of space (they are about golf ball size).


As for the performance of the blaster after modification, I must same I am pretty impressed.  I get anywhere from 50-75 feet ranges depending on how fast I pump it, and can shoot off the nine dart clip in less than two seconds.  This blaster would make a great rushing blaster, what it lacks in range it more than makes up for in rate of fire.

Looking for people to play Nerf

So I am currently looking for people who would be interested in playing competitive nerf in the spring around the Memphis/Cordova Area.  Why nerf you ask, well its cheaper and safer than paintball and airsoft, it can be played indoors, and is fun for all ages.

What you will need:

• Eye protection
• Nerf blaster
• Darts

Nerf N-Strike Deploy

The current game styles I have planned are: capture the flag, center flag, team deathmatch, free for all death match, and some kind of assault style game.  Most games will be played in either a 4v4 or 5v5 setup.  Also going to try to do some kind of point system, so we can try to keep teams as balanced as possible.

To help get interest I am going to offer the first seven people, who show interest in playing, I will mod a blaster ANY blaster for them at cost (even annoying blasters like the Deploy).  And you do not have to use this right away, you can save it for later.  Also I am currently working on getting some loaner blasters that people can rent, for those of you who don't know what they really want in a blaster, or just cant afford to get a new one.

If people are willing, I think it would also be cool for everyone to donate a few bucks every week to go into a prize pool.  A percentage of this pool would go to repairing the obstacles that are used to make the courses, and then the rest of it could go to some kind of prize.  The prize could either be a cash payout to the top three players, or could go towards buying a big lot of blasters off Ebay so everyone could possibly get something.  Will have to work the details for that out at a later time.

That is about all I have for now, if you have any questions you can contact me at kidnicky@bellsouth.net, stalkervenom@gmail.com, or on facebook.

Nerf Conversion - Xploderz Xground Pounder 2500 (Part 1)

The title says it all, for this project I will be taking an Xploderz blaster, and converting it to shoot foam darts.  I am going to do this in two parts, the first part will consist of a review of the stock blaster, and the second part will be all the modifications I did to it.  I would like to say that nothing in this modification will be anything new, many people have converted Xploderz blasters to shoot foam darts, but I personally have not seen this blaster converted (many people convert the Ranger ).  I am going to review this blaster in three parts,  first look (before firing), performance, and internals.

*Note: the only reason I bought this blaster was because it was on sale.  And yes I am a 6'2 little kid (with power tools).

First Look:

I found this blaster at Target in the clearance isle, which is probably the only reason I bought it.  I had been looking at the Xploderz line for quite a while, wondering what was really different between them and Nerf blasters.  Other then the fact they shoot these water BB's ( I will describe them a little later), they seem to use the same setup.  The first thing that really caught my eye were the ranges advertised on the box.  Most stock Nerf guns will only shoot about 30-35 feet, the lowest range that I saw on the Xploderz boxes was like 60 feet.  From modding Nerf guns for quite awhile now, I know that Nerf uses air restrictors to lower the ranges that the blasters can achieve, does this mean the Xploderz line 

does not?

After opening the gun up, the first thing I checked out is the plunger system.  The plunger has a ridiculous draw of almost 6 1/2 inches, that is over double what most Nerf guns have (2.5-3 inches) and on par with some of the homemade blasters people are making.  Also the spring appears to be very powerful, I am not sure an eight year old kid could fully prime this blaster over and over (eight and over is the age on the box). 

 

The blaster it self came with a "Mega Clip" which holds 250 of these water BB's.  The water BB's remind me of fish eggs, they have about a 1/4 inch diameter and explode on impact.  The blaster also came with a Ammo Depot, this is what you use to carry your extra rounds, and make your ammo.  The ammo comes in these small packages of 500, and are about 1/16 of an inch big.  You then put them in the Ammo Depot, and fill it up with water, and give them about 4 hours to full absorb all the water.  The clip of the blaster then attaches to the Ammo Depot for reloading.  This is the first kind of annoying thing about this line, is that you really cannot just pick up and go.  It takes 4 hours for the ammo to grow, so you have to have the ammo already made to use it.  These blasters really feel more like a safer version of paintball gun, a more advanced water gun you could say. 

Performance:

The first thing I wanted to see is how accurate the ranges are on the gun, and I must say I am very impressed.  The box undersold how far the gun can actually shoot, fully primed flat shots were hitting 100-115 feet, angled shots were adding another 20 or so feet to that.  One major downfall that I noticed (and I kinda assumed this when looking the blaster over), is that at the end of the barrel there is like a spring loaded door of sorts.  This is to keep the water BB's from rolling out of the blaster, but this also causes them to occasionally explode as they exit.  About half of my initial shots ended up busting as they hit the end of the barrel.

Other then the high failure rate of the ammo itself I have a few more gripes with the product.  Most of which could be easily improved.  The first major problem I have is there is no trigger, you have to pull the plunger rod back and hold it to keep it primed.  As I mentioned before it has a pretty strong spring, and holding it fully primed for long periods of time is quite annoying.  Also the stock slips quite a lot, under the high amount of pressure you are using to prime the blaster.  Adding a trigger is going to be a must for modding this gun. As far as aiming, if you ignore the fact it is hard to shoulder the blaster, the massive clip is right in the way of trying to do any kind of sighting up using the sights on the blaster.  Upon loading the blaster and removing the clip, I found that the blaster is pretty accurate with the sights.

For safety concerns, my dad shot me (he had too much fun).  At like 50 or so feet away, the water BB hit me and bounced, it stung a little.  At point blank range, it stung a little more, but even at point blank range it only stung for a sec or too.  On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give it maybe a two, you know you have gotten hit, but its not hard enough to leave a mark.  I notice the water BB's do not really explode unless they hit a very hard surface, even shooting like the windshield of the expedition, I was getting some bounces.

Internals:

As I pretty much figured out before opening the blaster, there is a ton of dead space (about 20 inches or so).  You should be able to see from the pictures whats going on here.  I compared the spring, plunger tube, and plunger head to that of a Nerf Nite Finder. 

As you can see there is huge difference.  Comparing the two:

Nerf Nite Finder

• Draw of about 2 inches
• Plunger tube length 4 inches
• Plunger head diameter about 1 inches
• Spring length 3.5 inches

Xploderz Xground Pounder

• Draw of about 6.5 inches
• Plunger tube length 8 inches
• Plunger head 1.5 inches
• Spring length 8 inches

Summary:

Overall this is a pretty impressive blaster, ranges off 100+ feet are very impressive.  I am still not sure if I would considered this a water gun or what.  I do know I would rather use a Super Soaker then one of these in a water gun war.  The lack of trigger is really the down fall of these blasters.  I am not completely sure a eight year old could even fully prime this blaster,  and at a length of over 30 inches (with the stock), it would be pretty bulky for them to carry around.  At a $50.00 price tag (after tax), I would probably never have bought this blaster, and seeing that Target had 4-5 of them on the clearance isle, I am not the only one who feels this way.  Hopefully I can get this blaster fully modded, and performing where I want it in the next few days.

Happy New Year - Halo Chest Piece

First off I would like to wish everyone a happy new year.  I have been sick over the past few days, so I have not been working on my blog or any of my projects.  Hopefully I will start feeling better soon and get back to work. 

Halo 3 Assault Rifle

Good news, today I was able to pick up the base gun for my assault rifle project.  I would like to thank my buddy Wes for helping me get it!  I plan to start working on this project this week.  Not sure when I expect to finish this one, I have to order quite a bit of electronics off the internet to get it done.  Like I said last week, this gun hopefully have everything that it does in game, including: flashlight, heads-up display, working ammo counter, and all the cosmetics to make it look perfect.

My Halo armor is coming along quite well, I got a dremel for Christmas so I can sand off all the fiberglass bubbles.  The helmet is almost ready for bondo, just have to touch up a few things.  I currently have 5/15 pieces constructed and waiting to be fiber glassed.  

Halo Chest Piece - Pepakura File

The chest piece came together faster then I expected, I think it took me a total of 3 hours to completely cut it out and put it together.  All together it was about 34 sheets of paper to complete it.  It fits on pretty tight, I might end up having to cut it either in two pieces to be able to get in on when everything is all said and done, I will just have to wait and find out.  But anyways here are a few pictures of it, and one with me wearing the helmet and the chest piece.

Front View

Right Side Angled

Left Side Angled

Back Side

Me with Helmet and Chest Piece on

Projects Update

Well I would like to start off giving you guys a quick status update of my planned out projects.  This does not include any kind of order or anything.

Halo Armor Suit - I have got 5/15 pieces constructed so far.  Due to the weather (I can not fiberglass if its below 45 degrees outside), this project might go on a bit of a hold.  I do not want to build up a bunch of paper armor pieces that I can not reinforce.  If I can find a place I can store all the pieces I will continue to construct them, but the project as a whole will most likely not be finished until spring.

 

Needle Rifle -  I am really excited to be finally starting this project.  The base of gun is going to be a homemade nerf gun.  This will be the first spring powered homemade nerf gun I will have made ( I tried a while ago and failed, did not make the plunger head seal well ).  I will actually be following a guide this time so hopefully everything will work when its done.  The shell of the gun will be made the same way I have been making my armor suit, but because I can not find a pepakura file of the needle rifle, I will have to make this from scratch.  I have not worked out all the fine details of this project, but I am hoping I can add some nice LED lighting on this project.

Halo Assault Rifle -  I came up with this project in the past two days.  I don't know how much I really want to give out about this project.  I will how ever say that the base of this gun will be a modded Nerf gun ( I do not currently have the gun for this project yet ).  I will be replacing most of the internals on this gun to increase the performance, and also adding a flash light, and display to simulate the gun in the game.

 

Halo Spiker - Most of this project will be just seeing how much cosmetic parts I can add to a Nerf Maverick, and it still function properly.  I have two modded Mavericks that I picked up at either goodwill or for a very low price.  Not sure what all I will actually be able to add, have to see as I go, but the I will be making the blades, trying to wrap the handle in leather, and hopefully a few more cosmetic mods.

That is about it for the updates, I will be posting the write up for the chest piece in the next few days.  If you guys have any other ideas for working replicas from video games or another projects you think I can create, I would love to hear about them.  Always looking for new ideas for projects!

ETEC Final - Sentry Gun

Gun and RFID Box (fully assembled)

Well my friend Bobby and I  managed to finish our final project with no time left.  After spending Wednesday and Thursday fixing one problem after another we finally got it done.  Due to technical limitations it did not perform exactly the way we wanted but it did preform its job. 

For our project we made a sentry gun security system.  It was controlled by a basic stamp micro controller.  We also used two standard servos, a PING ultrasonic sensor, and a RFID reader.

The first problem we ran into was when the code on the basic stamp got to the line where it would try to read a RFID tag, it would hang up until you swiped a tag.  We solved this problem by using two basic stamps to control our project instead of one.  The board with the RFID reader fed two inputs to the other board that would give the out come of a tag being swiped.

RFID Tafs

Once we got that figured out we were able to control our gun the way we wanted.  We wanted it setup so that an authorized tag would temporarily disable the gun allowing you to walk by without getting shot, and after swiping a bad tag it would shoot the gun to keep anyone from trying to tamper or get access by swiping a bunch of tags.

If no tags are swiped then the gun waits until the PING ultra sonic sensor finds a object within range.  We wanted to set this range to five feet but found that at five feet the gun was getting interference, so we had to set it the range to about three and a half feet.  Once the ping found an object it would run through checking code.  The checking code would first check to make sure the object was still there, if so it would shoot, if not it would rotate counter clockwise a few degrees.  It would continue that check until it either shot six times (the amount of darts in the clip) or rotated CCW four times.

To rotate and shoot the gun we used standard servos.  We had one standard servo connected to a piston that would push our darts into a flywheel.  The other servo was mounted into the base of the gun to allow it to move the top portion of the gun.

Dart

The darts are launched using a flywheel, which is two wheels spinning in opposite directions.  We used two dc motors and connect wheels to them.  The motors are powered by their own nine volt battery.  Since the stamp can not handle the amount of current the motors need, we had to use a driver chip.  The driver chip is basically a darlington pair, this allows us to use the stamp to turn on and off the motors and still allow them to use a separate power source.  Once basic stamp tells the gun to shoot there is a sight pause so the motors can get to speed, and then the piston servo pushes a dart into the flywheel.

The clip of the gun gave us a lot of issues, the first being how the darts are weighted.  We wanted to use a gravity feed system, where the darts by their own weight would fall perfectly into place, but since the darts are heavier in the front then the back it would cause them to nosedive in the clip and cause a jam.  The easiest solution to this problem was to use batteries as weight to push the darts down.  We also had to add a piece of wood inside the clip to make sure the darts could not move around. 

Gun Box (inside)

Overall I am very pleased with our project, but there are a few things I think that could of made it better.  First off we were very limited to what electronic devices we had, that we only had about five weeks to finish the project really limited what we could do.  I think if I were to continue this project I would use an IR sensor instead of the ultrasonic.  The ultrasonic is nice, but for this application there are just way to many things that can go wrong.  I would probably also use an RF transmitter and receiver instead of the long strands of wire we used to connect the two boards.  Even though with RF it is easier to get around it, I think the overall appearance would be nicer.  I would also increase the clip capacity so that it can hold  more then six darts.  

I think that about sums up the entire project if you have any questions, concerns, or comments I would love to hear them!

A few more pictures:

RFID Box (inside)

RFID Box (outside)

Gun with cover off

Gun and RFID Box assmebled

Gun Box (side view)

Halo Armor Suit

     Hey guys, so I have began to work on my halo armor suit, but I can not currently find the usb cable for my phone so I can not upload any pictures yet.  Since I am not able to load any pictures I figured it would be a good time to give a quick overview of how the project will be created and why I decided to start this project.

     So the idea behind this project really started from my enjoyment of modding nerf guns.  The huge problem with the current line of nerf guns is that most of them are all reverse plunger, which cause some issues when you put powerful springs in them.  So the easiest work around is to make your own nerf gun.  This is done mostly with the use of pvc and cpvc pipe, but I wanted to create something unique.  Most homemade nerf guns end up looking something like what you see on the left.

     But as you can see, most of these guns look pretty boring.  So I figured the easiest way to kind of spice them up is to build some kind of shell to go around the gun it self.  But what kind of shell should I use?  I don't want anything that looks too much like a real gun, so I was thinking why not create my favorite gun from Halo Reach.  So I decided I wanted to try to create the Needle Rifle.  The Needle Rifle is a pretty massive size gun, which would allow me to hide all the internals of the nerf gun.

      So after spending a few minutes searching the internet to see if anyone actually had created a Needle Rifle before (no need to recreate the wheel), I came across this website http://405th.com/.  The 405th is a forum where people post designs and finished projects of not only items from Halo, but other games as well.  They create most of these objects using Pepakura, which is a method of folding paper to create items.  Most people have made a box like this sometime in their life-time.  Well that is basically how they create this complex armor pieces and weapons. Here is an example of the pepakura file for the Halo chest piece:

 

     So as you can see its a pretty time consuming project, after you cut all the pieces out you gotta glue and fold them to make the paper model.  Once that process is done, you take put a few coats of fiberglass resin on the outside of the armor, and on the inside you put fiberglass resin and fiberglass sheets.  The fiberglass gives it a lot of strength and allows you to add bondo and sand the pieces to make them look smooth.  After the fiberglass and bondo is done you can add paint and any other finishing touches you want, like LED lights etc.  The color scheme I have planned for this suit is going to resemble my Halo character.  Even though not all the armor, if any, will actually match my character.  I decided against going with the common Master Chief colors, because I am not Master Chief.  Well that is about it for this post, I will hopefully find my usb cable this weekend, if not I will find some other way to upload pics.  If you have any questions feel free to ask =).