I used to play Q-zar lasertag, and was intrigued by the system. I guessed
they used standard 40khz carrier ir encoding.. and using an IR demodulator
module from radio shack, built a little 'detector'. I plugged the output of
the detector into a minicassette recorder, since I was pretty sure the data
rate was pretty slow (ie... audio frequency range). And then simply played
some games. The data was clearly heard on the cassette.  I then sampled the
recording into my mac, and viewed the wave form. From there, it was easy to
decode the data stream.  Was only 2400 bps.

My main goal was to 'armor' myself from others, so using a 556 timer and
some IR leds, I built an ir 'jammer'. I'd tape the IR array of led's to the
front of the pack and aimed them into one of the IR detectors. It worked as
I hoped....with the flip of a switch.. I was almost completely invulnerable
from being 'hit'.

Incidentally, the 'jammer' worked great at preventing tv remotes from being
effective as well. Fun when friends are channel surfing and you announce
that a particular program is good, and suddenly the remote stops changing
channels. :)

Actually, my primary motive was a couple of 'regulars' at the lasertag
place where completely arrogant, and rude to just about everyone... and
with some help from my little black box... I could beat them time after
time... much to their frustration.  Great fun.

With a Pic, you could easily build a datalogger (or you could use a
programmable remote), and record all the various codes and play them back
on demand. There are lots of 'administrative' codes, like recharging the #
of shots, special features, etc.

Newer systems use IR + RF, so those are harder to 'fool'.  I don't advocate
cheating... but it is fun to try and design electronic counter measures. :)

- Mike

At 12:22 PM 3/22/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Does anybody know how LaserTron (a place where you go to shoot each other
>with 'laser' rifles) encodes their signals? Is it IR? What is the carrier
>freq?
>
>As a fun project a customer/partner-company wants me to 'crack' the
>LaserTron scheme and build a black-box that will give our team a tactical
>advantage by being able to  recharge our guns without returning to home
>base.
>
>Since this will only be done for fun, and to demonstrate the ability of my
>customer to do amazing things (in this case through me), I am pretty
>comfortable with it from an ethical point of view. It might even get me some
>interesting real work.
>
>Bob Ammerman
>RAm Systems
>
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