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Marker Board with bluetooth for programming via smartphone app

Gadget

Platinum Member
Jul 16, 2002
1,759
619
148
Essex, UK
Given how rarely you need to adjust your board settings, it seems like overkill to me - plus it may add to the battery drain on the marker (unless you need to activate it via a dip switch......which kinda kills the convenience factor) and you still need a custom app to access it.

Now if it could operate as a self-contained wifi basestation with inbuilt webserver for settings config, that would be nice and generic, allowing access from any wifi-enabled device and any browser.......although again, massively over the top given how easy it is to modify settings anyway.
 

Steeeeeeve

Member
Jun 26, 2009
25
2
13
During my masters i wrote many papers on new wifi technologies, one of which would be amazing for paintball:

Zigbee

While this will NEVER happen a bit about zigbee and how i would implement it, zigbee is a very low data rate wireless protocol which uses tiny amounts of battery (20 years on a watch battery is not impossible), it is inexpensive and perfectly suited to a self healing mesh network. What this means is should one unit lose connection to a base station it will try and find an alternate route through another "node". These devices for reference can be TINY.

Now picture every gun being a node with a base station somewhere near by, each node could transmit stats to the base station including average rate of fire, max rate of fire, GPS positioning and so on.

Why would this be cool? Imagine you can watch digitally (dots on a virtual field) whats happening if you cannot find a stream as each GPS node will be moving and transmitting in real time, you will know who is firing, how fast, how much paint has been shot, which direction they are shooting. An announcer could tell you XX player fires XX paint per game on average and get XX hits you can work out ratios, accuracy, efficiency you name it. A ref could get an alert if a gun is firing too fast or too hard or even changes settings mid game.

As for changing settings this can be done using a wifi device which connects through a base zigbee node but i dont see that as the best use of the technology.

Primarily i researched the use of Zigbee for medical purposes (recalibrating a pacemaker without surgery and without the risk of the battery needing changing every 5 years) but the implementation is simple and cheap.

Just thought it might be of interest to some, feel free to shoot me a PM for more information.

As a disclaimer it was a few years ago now that i worked with these devices so the technology may have slightly changed or gone in a slightly different direction by now, please do correct me if this is the case i would be more than interested, for those who might want to play if it is still available the "crossbow" zigbee platform was a nice little development kit you could get to develop on.

Regards,

Steve

Edit, i have changed some of the more technical terminology for more commonly used words which are similar for the sake of those less interested in the more geeky part of the technology and more interested in just understanding the concept i am trying to paint a picture of.
 
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Lewys

"Swampy"
Jun 17, 2013
24
1
3
26
Pontefract
spottydogz.webs.com
ok so i have been thinking about this for a while and had some chats with some of my balling friends, so i deviced a list of what is good and what could be bad about it, so...

GOOD:
change modes quickly
change ROF ect
update firmware
check battery life (maybe)

BAD POINTS:
drain battery life
allow other people to change it
cheatrs changing halfway
cost alot to produce
not all phones support it.

I hope these are good and bad points, good luck with it!!!!!
 

cwrenn1991

New Member
Jun 30, 2013
27
1
3
33
Also nowadays Bluetooth is low power consumption I left it on all day on my iPhone and it only took like 10% charge :)
 

F3Z

Well-Known Member
Mar 17, 2003
800
66
63
38
Bristol, UK
Yes but your iPhone is using a Li-Ion battery not your average 9V powering a paintball marker. Bluetooth as well as most conventional connectivity methods in mobile phones are power hogs.
 

~Solo~

Active Member
Sep 13, 2007
129
19
28
Kent
My original idea was that you would only switch the Bluetooth on when you are programming using a button on the grip. To leave it on during the game would be pointless and to put the switch inside the grip would partly defeat the point of the whole idea.
 

hoot

Mad Sqad Rebels
Sep 17, 2011
158
49
48
Falkirk, Scotland
Worth pointing out that the iPhone's implementation of Bluetooth is audio only. There's no method for capturing data transmission at all (this is why you can't bluetooth a picture from a Nokia to an iPhone). So far anyway. I haven't checked the documentation for a year or so right enough, but I don't think it's changed. WiFi would be the next best solution unless you're limiting it to technology that's only going to be available in future phones (e.g. NFC).

edit: Just double checked the documentation. One of the Bluetooth profiles is a Personal Area Network which looks like it's geared towards peer-to-peer device networking. Think along the lines of playing multiplayer games against one another on your iOS device. Could possibly work through that I guess.
 
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Bolter

Administrator
Aug 19, 2003
9,497
2,027
348
Kettering
www.facebook.com
Who pays for a marshal to sit there all game monitoring a bunch of numbers?

Its not like these huge paintball firms dont have R&D departments, Id be extremely surprised if they hadnt tried bluetooth.
 
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F3Z

Well-Known Member
Mar 17, 2003
800
66
63
38
Bristol, UK
Who pays for a marshal to sit there all game monitoring a bunch of numbers?


I think the point is you wouldn't need a Marshall to monitor numbers if it was done right. One thing computers are good at is analysing numbers by themselves :p