As the second part of our hacked studio begins to get into gear, we have begun to search for objects and dismantle them to find out how they work . My four items are as follows; a broken CD player, a broken printer, a very old portable tranistor radio, and a childrens "laser challenge" gun and vest combo. In terms of intrest v. complexity, the laser tag kit seems like the best choice and as such I have begun the vivisection of the vest.
A simple looking circuit, it consists of a battery pack, on/off switch, alarm speakers/lights, a circuit board, some sort of jack, and a sensor. The sensor suggests that it isnt an actual laser system [which would make sense as this is a kids toy and little boys with eye-tissue-damaging lasers generally isnt a good thing] but is in fact a Infrared set-up. I read up on IR, and did some tests to confirm this:
Basically, with older digital cameras, instead of filtering out the IR, it becomes scrambled by the antiquated digital system and gets picked up as white light. Photo taken with an early model canon powershot. Apparently this works with remotes as well.
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