Decoding the Light Strike ITS

Ok, spent 10 minutes after lunch looking into the ITS signals.

You'll have to read the previous post about bits, to know what I'm rambling about, but in essence the significant bits were the even bits between 40 and 62. Not all are used, but I haven't tried all the guns and option combinations yet. So the ITS (Intelligent Targeting System) has 3 modes. Sentry mode - you have to hit the target 5 times, each time you hit it, you light up a bar with your team color. Fifth hit turns it into a sentry for your color. It blasts out random shots until it's captured by another team. Bomb Mode - similar, you get 5 hits to activate the bomb, 6th hit to set it off, which spins the device and it emits shots in every direction and makes an explosion sound. Medic Mode - 5 shots to capture again, but now when you shot it a subsequent time, it puts health bars back on your gun.

So if you activate the sentry, the bits that go high (in addition to the team bits) are: 40, 42, 44, 46 and 56 which in my 'bit math' comes out to a strength of 3848, the strongest shot yet. So far, nothing too unusual.

If you activate the Bomb, however, things get interesting. The bits that go high for blue are: 28, 40, 42, 44, 54, 56. Bit 28 is the new rascal. If you do it as Red, bits 28, 30, 40, 42, 44, 54, 56 go high (in addition to the team bits) - both 28 and 30. Yellow is just 30. Green is just 28 again. I was hoping that green would be both 28 and 30 low. That would make bit s28 and 30 a team marking, but it isn't. So why are blue and green the same, while yellow and red are different? A mystery for another day I guess.

Next up, Medic mode… this would be a fun one to clone into a smart remote or other IR blaster device. You could leave a 'stim-pack' like in the video games around the playing field. Medic mode is the most different code thus far. It broadcasts bits 8 and 40 for every team, and then you get a simple 3-bit mapping for the team color with bits 58, 60 and 62. So 58, 60 and 62 are blue, 58 is red, 58 and 62 are yellow and 50 and 60 are green. This is the first use of a bit below 10 and uses a different set of bits to mark color. What would be interesting is if you could send a 40 and 42 along with the rest to see if you get more health back per shot.

If I'm reading things right, it would seem that 2048 is the number to take a health bar on or off. So now I just need to finish writing my code to recognize these different flag values and then start painting the screen the correct color for the flag.