Making a positional gun

[SeaMonkey]

What is really needed to MAKE, from SCRATCH, a positional gun for "Space Gun", "Operation Wolf" or "T2" ?

Let's bottom line this. Bare minimum.

A squirtgun (weighted with putty, and painted black)
two 5k pots, one button, one micro-switch for the trigger, and what else?
Is there a circuit board I need a schematic for? What is the bare minimum it takes to get Windows to see an analog joystick?

I mean, I am not going to use the reciever from my Tek 9 just to make it look cool, I just want to know what my options are, other than play "screw your neighbor" on eBay.

[Xiaou2]

 You can take a typical pc analog joystick appart - and use the pots and encoder.

 You will need to fashion some sorta way to turn the pots... either using gears, or direct drive d-pot system.  direct drive can result in low resolution and possible problems with windows registering it... which is why gears work best.

 Take a peek at the super hangon controller here for examples:

 http://www.xiaou2.homestead.com/arcade.html

 May be better to carve your gun from wood... or hack a better toy gun.  I think a squirt gun's quality is too low and will fall appart too easily.   The thing should be able to widthstand (accidental?!) abusive play.  
 

[Minwah]

You can take a typical pc analog joystick appart - and use the pots and encoder.

Or interface the 5k pots & switches with an AKI: http://dave.bit2000.com/

[SeaMonkey]

 May be better to carve your gun from wood... or hack a better toy gun.  I think a squirt gun's quality is too low and will fall appart too easily.   The thing should be able to widthstand (accidental?!) abusive play.  
 

Yeah, I was looking online, and there is a place called the collector's armory that has pretty realistic mock-ups. I would have to pick one that was a metal build as the full resin models are probably one piece.

[Lilwolf]

But remember... you can get a T2 gun for around 20 bucks on ebay... pretty often.

[SeaMonkey]

$20 really? I just saw a pair with the panel, and some boards go for 80+ but maybe I will keep my eyes open longer.

Thanks for the tip. That would be a better option, if for no other reason, than it has the built-in feedback.

Although....the collector's armory has a sweet looking Thompson SMG

[SeaMonkey]

You can take a typical pc analog joystick appart - and use the pots and encoder.

 You will need to fashion some sorta way to turn the pots... either using gears, or direct drive d-pot system.  

Wow, fantastic work.
Where do you get your gears?

[Bgnome]

You can take a typical pc analog joystick appart - and use the pots and encoder.

Or interface the 5k pots & switches with an AKI: http://dave.bit2000.com/

cant you plug the pots directly into a gameport?  i thought that it had support for analog axes..

[Xiaou2]

found the gears at a local hobby shop.   you may try a surplus place as well.  

if you are good,  you could wire up pots to a gameport... but thats a little scary for me.  Also, I prefer using usb hacks now.

[SeaMonkey]

You can take a typical pc analog joystick appart - and use the pots and encoder.

Or interface the 5k pots & switches with an AKI: http://dave.bit2000.com/

Minwah, if I read your site correctly, I could use that board to control two T2 style positional guns, with buttons, correct?