Oh, the things I have seen. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
Errrr, wait. That’s not right. Sorry – had a moment where I think I called upon the spirit of Roy Batty.
What I meant was, I’ve seen a lot of cool stuff posted on the web. And it’s not always posted on the more visited or more “cool” sites. So here we’ll take a peek at one of the cooler things I’ve seen online that wasn’t posted on absolutely every major geek site out there (sure, a lot of them covered it, but one or two had to have missed it). Check out this home built Gaussian pistol (also known as a rail gun – at least to gamers).
- Two coils are precisely pulsed in sequence (350 Amp peak) to fire a steel projectile
- Two infrared sensors detect the projectile position within the firing tube
- Controlled by a PIC microcontroller
- Powered by 8 AA NiCd battery pack
- Built-in battery charger
- Bar display tracks capacitor bank charge progress
- Battery and Fault LED indicators
- Laser targeting sight
- Makes no sound when fired
Man, that looks like a cool project. (via DIYlive)
[tags]Gaussian pistol, Handheld rail gun, Do it yourself, DIY[/tags]