Where to now, and new sticks to use.

Alright, so I'm off to a rocky start.  I've started writing this about five different times over the last few months.  Engineering school is very busy.  One thing to highlight is I am currently working on building a real time operating system for a laser tag system.  I have thought about making one on my own but the buy in cost for one of these systems is about $150 and I don't currently have that kind of money.  My goal is to build one for about 20-30 dollars.  So far it looks like I can build one for just under this amount but I'm still in design phase.

Here are some of my main components that I am currently using:

1 Arduino Uno: These can be found with a wide range of prices.  The best price for buying just one is around $5.  If you can find one for cheaper than you are getting a really good deal.  One of the things that I like about Arduino is that their software is free and there are plenty of people on the internet that have written code for Arduino.  Whenever I get stuck I usually google for the best answers to get past my problem.
1 IR LED: Infrared Light Emitting Diode.  This is the key component for the system.  Because I didn't want to use advanced signal processing (FIR and IIR filters if you want to learn something cool) I had to find a simpler method.  After talking to a few of my professors one of them suggested that I build my system just like a remote controller for TV (I'll explain my method of design in a later post).  Now I won't put a general price in this post because there are lots of IR LED's on the market and I don't know which one will be the best for my design.  Once I have a better idea on how these work I'll post links and specifications.
1 IR Receiver:  This is the target that everyone will be trying to hit.  These are very general as well but I'm pretty sure I'll need more than just one receiver for the final system.

So these are the basic elements for the entire design.  My next post (which will not be in 10 months) will have the basic design of how I got the LED and Receiver to work in a very simple system.

-Click