Tux-Tag
Open Source/Design Laser Tag System
What's NEW:
10-08-01
|
Added this site proper after a year's
delay. Work's begun on actually drawing up the design documents for
the hardware that's being used to design the system. These files
should be showing up soon on the download section shortly.
No guarantees as to a timeline though, I'm not all the way back up
to speed here.
|
Link to SourceForge project
page
What IS Tux-Tag?
It is intended to be an open-source, open-design, scalable solution
for building laser tag systems, such as Q-Zar or DarkLight, etc. (Currently
it's getting started so there's not a lot to it; it is, however, a working
project so it will evolve over time. In fact, it was kind-of dead
until just recently because of personal concerns such that the project never
got past the basic stages for the contest that spurred the idea in the first
place. I'm getting back into it because I've a little more time and
I'd hate to think ELJ and Tri-M gave me this neato stuff for nothing...)
Rationale:
In about 1984, the game called Photon was invented by an entrepreneur
by the name of George Carter. This started an entire industry around
making "laser tag" games. Unfortunately, these systems are very expensive
and generally tend to be non-modular, meaning that the game is fixed to
what the original designers had intended and if the company that made the
system goes under, so does your investment in what is a rather expensive
system for entertainment. (A prime example is the demise of the Photon
arenas around the country- maintaining the system was next to impossible
when the Photon Marketing Corporation shuttered it's doors... There's
only one arena left totally intact- here's their website: http://www.xplasersport.com/index_40.html
) Tux-tag's goal is to provide the piece parts for a company
interested in making a laser tag arena the ability to assemble their packs
and game controlling computer from mostly commodity embedded system parts
and using open source software to empower them to be able to make whatever
game they want to without being at the mercy of the vendor that made the
system.
Current Design Specifications:
Vest Packs and Arena "Robots" :
MZ-104(Pack/Simple Arena) : Mach-Z embedded
x86 compatible CPU, 32Mb of RAM, 8Mb of flash.
CardPC (Arena ): Embedded 233MMX PC, 64Mb of RAM, 32Mb
of flash.
Game control computer:
Pentium III 600, 64-256Mb of RAM, 10+ Gb HD, running a
distribution using kernel version 2.2.X or later.
"Laser" gun design:
The system is currently a 40 kHz AM modulated IR carrier
hooked to an RS-232 interface. Current thinking is that the IR link
is fully embodied as a ganged array of emitters placed at strategic points
on the vest and gun and a single receiver placed in the body of the gun
behind a columating lens. The reason behind this rationale is that
it would be cheaper to wire up IR LED's to a single modulation source and
have a single receiever LED than it would be to do it the other way around
as it would really require a detector circuit for each and every sensor on
the pack to do it right. The body of the gun is currently Schedule
40 PVC piping with some sheet-metal to make it look and handle like a gun.
The columator design was taken from Dave Bodger's "DIY Construction
Guide & FAQ ".
Central Computer Link:
Currently, I'm using an 802.11 based system for communication
to and from the central game controller. In practicality, any network
architechture with a TCP/IP stack and decent bandwidth as needed for the
game will work. If you have something like a 128kbps RF modem and
want to run something like AX-25 over them as a networking scheme, it
should work.