Blaster interaction with a Lightsaber

[craig139]

Has anyone given thought to arrange for a saber to receive a shot from a lasertag compatible "blaster" and have it register as a blaster bolt block? Some IR receivers connected a control board that would then send a signal to a sound board where the aux switch has been set to play the blaster block sound. The cool bit would be for the saber to have emitter/receiver pairs so that the bolt could be "reflected" back to the original shooter or one of his compatriots.

[Forgetful Jedi Knight]

Although it sounds interesting, I doubt there would be enough of an interest to warrant development. Besides, I don't know that an IR receiver would work inside a hilt. Of course you can trigger a blaster block manually on a saber and use your favorite editing program to do the rest.

[Sevinzol]

Sounds like and interesting challenge. He are my thoughts:
1) you don't need a lasertag gun. you can simply use an IR LED and a photo sensor, like all remotes use.
2) having the sensor(s) on the saber positioned so that it catches the IR light might be a problem.
3) the circutry needed for this will take up a lot of room.

I would suggest if you want to try this, start with some simple IR leds and sensors on a board and see if you can ping pong the IR signals see what the limits are. [i know my TV only responds if I'm straight in fron of it]. Once you have something working, make a video and share it with us

I don't want to pour cold water on your idea but I agree with forgetful jedi. the fun of clashing sabers is much more apealing than blocking PEW PEW that you cant see. This is, after all, a glorified version of swordfighting (kendo, fencing, Eskrima, quarterstaff, etc.). A staged fight for an audience will have been choreographed in advance, just like in the movies. In a spontaneous fight it would be hard and probably silly looking to try to react like you blocked a blaster bolt - After the fact.

[RavenXp]

You could rig the receiving IR diode to be on four sides of the outside of the saber ( Would have to rig up a breadboard or custom PCB to decode the incoming signal to a usable one for the saber control board) similar to accent LEDs. As for the blaster, you could rig a visible laser diode to the sending IR diode to solve the invisible beam problem. Might be a cool science project.

[Sevinzol]

you could rig a visible laser diode to the sending IR diode to solve the invisible beam problem.

You don't see light beams unless there is dust/fog in the way and I don't think anyone would want to play around with coherant light (i.e. laser) that could fry their retina.

[RavenXp]

You don't see light beams unless there is dust/fog in the way and I don't think anyone would want to play around with coherant light (i.e. laser) that could fry their retina.

Depends on the power of the diode and the wavelength, 5mw green wavelength has a fairly visible beam.

And you could always have the person using the lightsaber wear eye protection. They make laser safety shades that look like regular sunglasses.

[JakeSoft]

Invisible beam issues aside, this seems doable. As others have suggested, you just need a photo-sensor on your saber to somehow feed your sound board and trigger a clash event. It makes sense that it would not block from every angle because the Jedi/Sith would have to be ready to block (hold up the sensor toward the attacker); the saber doesn't automatically block all on its own. The only thing that might be tricky is getting the pulse timing so it would register with the sound board. If it were me, I'd stick a microcontroller in the saber and wire the photo-sensor to an interrupt pin. But that's just me, I put microcontrollers in everything.

[Machinimax]

Could you build an IR receiver circuit to be a switch, then use it as your Aux button on a Plecter Board?

[RavenXp]

Probably would need an arduino board or similar, program it so when it detects the blaster 'hit' it'll output a 'close' to the circuit on the aux input on a plector board.

[JakeSoft]

Probably would need an arduino board or similar, program it so when it detects the blaster 'hit' it'll output a 'close' to the circuit on the aux input on a plector board.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. You could fit an Arduino Pro Mini or Nano in a saber and not take up too much room, but you'd really have to plan the hilt internals out and expect extra cram-fu.