The little copper patches are the 'switches' from the stickers. They are capacitance sensor based, which is neat and disappointing at the same time, because it make putting a real switch there complicated. Anyway, on one side there are a boat load of screws that need to be removed and the orange end-cap on the barrel needs to be taken off (comes off easy). After that, you see something like this:
Picture is a bit blurry, but you get the idea.
The 'brains' are interesting. Everything is clearly labeled in english for what it does. Things like CAP_SENSOR, LIFE, RELOAD or IR_RX so drastic mods would be pretty easy. The mount points for the attachments seem to be in parallel so they're likely only restricted by the plastic mount shape rather than the actual location. It would be interesting to see what would happen if you grafted a 3rd mount point on. Could you activate the tracker at the same time as the scope and launcher attachments?
Looking at the IR blaster (the opaque lens) and receiver (the black circle with the silver X on it)
The IR transmitter with the cone and lens removed.
I'm not doing much today, just changing some LED colors. the life bars are 3 red LEDs. Going to make them 3 different colors (well, specifically changing two reds out)
unscrewed them and soldered in a green and blue that I took out of some of my kids toys (sssshhh, don't tell! They were broken anyway). I would have rather done green -> yellow -> red but none of the toys had any yellow LEDs. I guess I could have gone white and then put a yellow film, but I'm just screwing around so what the heck.
First off, this Point-and-shoot camera stinks. Second, here's the two new LEDs in place. They're rounded on the top and the originals were flat, so I get a different light distribution in my new LEDs that isn't ideal. But it does work:
So now when I get hit, I lose blue -> green -> Red health bars. Some future mods I think I might do:
- Move the on-off switch to where the head phone jack is. The headphone jack location would allow me to turn it on and off one handed while gripping the gun.
- Try to get a mechanical switch to work with any of the buttons. In particular, weapon select would be neat to make into some kind of rotary or dial type button. A toggle switch for single fire/semi-auto fire, etc.
- Graft on some 'extra bits' to give the gun more profile relief. I can't for the life of me figure out why they made all these guns so flat. I have some plastic tubing and other ornaments I could put on the sides with some LEDs to spruce up the side profile.
- Paint job. I've been stalking the Nerf Modding forums looking for tips and pointers for how to paint plastic guns. So far I have a few ideas. I'll probably just go with basic silver and red to match the grip plastics
Next I take apart my scope and rapid fire attachments.
My guess is they are flat so kids don't get shot by the cops when they point them and start firing...
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to see some more stuff taken apart. I ordered 4 of the 023 rifles for Christmas and was thinking the same kind of thing you are. Record/playback the codes.
As for modding the "switches", I don't think you'll have much luck there. Even if you can get a regular switch to wire in, they are push button type switches, so a rotary (for example) would need to hook up to a timer that will press the button X amount of times to give you whatever mode you want.
The first test I plan on doing is accuracy. If I line up a bunch of targets and shoot at the middle one, how many accept the hit, and does it get worse the farther you go back. Look forward to seeing more hacks.. Good job!
I am wondering if you've done anything to tweak the accuracy of the IR blaster. The accuracy seems pretty variable between the guns I have. Of course, I've only played with them indoors and may just be getting a lot of reflection. I'm about to open one up that had some king of smudge or scratch on the inside of the clear plastic lens and see if I can fix it. Anyway, I'm just curious if anyone has tried to make them more accurate.
ReplyDeleteHi, in order to make this accessible for people looking for repair instructions for their Light Strikes, i just hijack this old blog entry, I hope nobody does mind.
ReplyDeleteI fried one of my Light strikes, probably because I short circuited the gun with an attachment (looks very much like a piece of copper wire got in the way, because I got careless when modding), but I am not sure about the real reason.
Anyway, the gun refused to work: when switching on, the voice informed me that the "batteries are low", instantly followed by "batteries depleted" (I don't know about the actual English wording, as I have the German version of the guns – good voice actor, but unfortunately the same for all guns – but you get the picture, I believe).
So the gun switched off after a few seconds (I tried all kinds of batteries, up to 7.8 Volts, no change).
I opened the gun and checked all resistors on the mainboard (starting with those of lower value): almost instant success! No. R41 (2.2 Ohms, "2R2" is the marking on the resistor) obviously was the evildoer - its resistance was a hundred times higher than it should be.
This resistor is one of the group of five resistors which are in the flash glare you see in Rich's photo of the mainboard. Its position is marked with R41.
If you encounter the same problem with your gun and are not able to return it, you might try to check this resistor. Chances are good that you'll have the same issue, though I can't give you any warranties - mind: you must have some serious skills in soldering.
I replaced it (with an equivalent of classic wire resistors) and so far the gun works as fine as before (sure, time will tell if this resistor really was the only issue, but I am quite confident here - 20 Minutes of checking with different accessories showed no problems).
I would not have bothered to even try this repair was it not for the overall great quality of the guns (sturdy plastic, long battery life, sufficient accuracy and range, and perfectly working "capacity sensor switches" (though their placement is somewhat questionable).
I cross my fingers that the line is revived and expanded somehow in the future.
Addendum: A week later I acquired another gun (cheaply) showing the same issue (in the hope that I could repair it). Again, I found one resistor (coded 180) which was blown. Unfortunately replacing did not solve the issue this time. So such an issue may go deeper ...
DeleteThanks for the comments Michael! I was away for the month of July and couldn't respond when you posted. Good info on the capacitor and resistors.
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