Experimental Sensing

Event cameras, ToF, UWB, screen-embedded patterns and other aiming ideas not yet built or not yet common, each rated and bench-tested.

Firearms

Experimental Sensing · Deep Dive

Experimental Sensing

Ideas nobody has put in a light gun yet.

Event cameras, ToF, UWB, screen-embedded patterns and other aiming ideas not yet built or not yet common, each rated and bench-tested.

Photo: An OptiTrack motion-capture camera with its ring of infrared LEDs lit round the lens — the light-at-the-camera, passive-target arrangement this dive considers by yoggy0 (Yokohama, Japan) · CC BY 2.0

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    Volumes

    1. Vol 1 Ideas at the Edge — What Counts as Evidence, and How Each Idea Is Judged The sensing ideas the other Sensing and Aiming dives handed on, plus the ones research turned up: what each could buy a Pico gun with a PixArt PAJ7025R3 camera, what has actually been published or sold, and the yardstick every later volume uses
    2. Vol 2 Frame Subtraction and the Synchronised Bar — Using the Features PixArt Built In The PAJ7025 has a frame-subtraction register and LED pins rated for 130 to 170 mA that no light-gun firmware touches. What the datasheets actually say, what pulsing and subtraction could buy an R3 gun, three ways to tell a bar when the camera is looking, and the bench tests that settle it
    3. Vol 3 Retroreflectors and a Light on the Gun — Passive Targets at the Screen Turn the bar round: put the infrared source beside the camera and four corner-cube reflectors on the bezel. Who has done it, how much light comes back, why the LEDs must sit within a few millimetres of the lens, the glint a glossy screen returns, and the industrial trick that removes it
    4. Vol 4 Coded Frames on a Modern Display — The Zapper Generalised, and Its Ceiling Flash a short sequence of Gray-code patterns and a photodiode can tell where on any screen it is pointing. The projector researchers who did it in 2004, why a gun at two metres is a harder problem than a sensor on the screen, how phase-shifted patterns get past the optics, and what each shot would cost in frames and flicker
    5. Vol 5 A General Camera in the Gun — Infrared Blobs and a Border on a Microcontroller An OV2640 on an ESP32-S3 has already been made to find infrared points at 136 frames a second. What that would mean as a second source of camera, what a rolling shutter costs a moving gun, the Himax sensors made for the Pico, and whether the same hardware could track a Sinden-style border inside the gun
    6. Vol 6 Hybrids and Two Cameras — The Wide Lens and the Bright One, Infrared and Border The PAJ7025R3 sees the whole bar from 0.64 m but collects a thirty-ninth of the R2's light; the R2 needs 2.81 m. A gun with both, what the handover costs, and the harder case of a gun that tracks infrared points and a drawn border
    7. Vol 7 Further Out — Event Cameras, Time of Flight, Hidden Markers and the Phone The ideas research turned up beyond the siblings' hand-offs: what each is, what has been published or sold, what it could and could not do for a Pico gun with a PixArt camera, and why none of them is the next experiment
    8. Vol 8 Verdicts and a Bench Programme — What to Try, in What Order, and Why Every experimental idea ranked against the gun being built, with its cost, its risk and the bench test that settles it; eight experiments in order on the ADP3450; and the decision rows proposed for the category's log