Do you have a PDF of the schematics? Do you transmit an ID with the shot? How do you do that?

@Xasin have you considered using a mesh network on the esp32? https://www.espressif.com/en/products/sdks/esp-wifi-mesh/overview

Maybe!
I haven't tried it out yet, but I also don't really see the benefits. A mesh network might have pretty high latencies, depending on how the ESPs are connected. I measure pretty nasty ~200ms ping times sometimes with the ESP directly on a WiFi AP with minimal power saving settings, so meshing the ESPs might add a lot to the latency.

Setting up WiFi routers for a proper network connection seems more sensible.

Having said that, if someone knows more about the ESP Mesh performance, I'd be a little interested. Could make the game field a bit larger :D

I suppose it depends on the kind of experience you are building.  As you pointed out, open air outdoor military simulation type experiences could benefit greatly from a mesh.  Latency might not be an issue depending on what the UX is.  I may give this a go https://gitlab.com/painlessMesh/painlessMesh https://www.hackster.io/davidefa/esp32-wireless-mesh-made-easy-with-painlessmesh-part-1-f716f5

Well, even for open-air type installations, it wouldn't be too hard to set up a bigger WiFi grid.
Get a beefy outdoor WiFi hotspot with decent range, set it up on an elevated position, and potentially add a few small WiFi repeaters throughout the arena to cover more occluded spots... Should be fine.

I do think that latency would be noticeable because every hit that a player gets has to be sent to the server for confirmation. That is how my system avoids having a single shot kill multiple targets.
But that also means that even just 500ms round-trip time means it takes 1 to 2 seconds before the weapon registers that it's supposed to now be dead :P

Thats an interesting issue I had not considered (the single shot hitting multiple targets problem)  Not sure if that would be considered a bug or a feature :) I wonder how difficult it is going to be to really hone in the IR to avoid spillover, perhaps that is really difficult, I need to play around with the power levels I send to the emitter to see if this has any effect.  I also have some lenses that I am excited to play with.

This looks really cool. I'm getting together different gerbers to order after Chinese New Years is over and was wondering where the project stands as far as functionality, updates, bugs, etc. I'd love to try this out with the IR laser you mentioned below 

Hi Ko4dnm!

The current hardware will work, I have four Lasertag sets with it in my possession and so far it has been quite nice to use them.

However, I do advise you to wait for me to get around to the redesign of the hardware, in approx. 1 year or so.
I want to add a bunch of important features such as better haptic feedback, better battery power monitoring and regulation, as well as fixing a few small issues with the LEDs etc.

The main difference will be that I intend to use the upcoming ESP32-S3. The increase in GPIO pin count means more peripherals, and the Vectoring Instructions can hopefully be used to accelerate the OPUS audio playback to smooth out some issues I am having in the current version.

Sounds good, I appreciate the reply and transparency. 

I'm happy to see a project with continued support and future plans, so I think I'm going to order a set of 10 from PCBway to use until the updated hardware comes out -- and I'd be happy to test features or let you know of any issues if that would help.

You probably are aware of this, but if not, PCBWay also has a shared projects database where they supposedly give you 10% of the proceeds from anyone that orders your boards.

Alright, keep me reported on the progress of your adventures!
I believe that the KiCAD Files I uploaded here on HackADay should be the most recent ones. Do *not* use the files from GitHub from the Master branch, it's a bit outdated because I got rather messy about merging branches in.

You might also need to fiddle with the software a bit to get it to compile, I'll have to publish some changes to make the audio work with the newer audio system that I wrote, but those don't require hardware changes.

And no, I had no idea that PCBWay has that shared project database. That does sound very nice though, and I'll have to look into that for the next revision!

Will do! Is the 3.2 KiCad rev the one I should be using? In the description here on Hackaday, it says to use the GitHub files, but both GitHub and Hackaday seem to be rev 3.2.  This is the Hackaday folder (this one says last update 2019--unless there's another one somewhere else) folder: https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1608046879838336/KiCAD_R_3.2.zip         Here's the pcbway shared projects: https://www.pcbway.com/project/  -- I found some cool projects using it, plus it's good to know that the developers are getting something back.

https://www.pcbway.com/project/shareproject/LZRTag_Project_Revision_3_2.html

Does this look about right?
I have not used PCBWay before. Also, caution, I didn't add the BOM-File yet, partly because I don't have one for all the smaller components.

I checked, the KiCAD file uploaded here on HackADay is the latest one, if you want you can use it to check which components you need.

Cool, thanks! No problem about the BOM - I probably have most of the passive components, I'll try running the KiCAD BOM output. I replaced the IR sensors from the files with an eCAD model from mouser so that the sensor board outputs the BOM properly also. Will keep you posted!

Would it be possible to use an ESP32 thing from Spark fun to run your code?

Yes, quite possibly!

You should take a look at which pins are available on the ESP32 Thing, and you might need to change the pin layout a bit if some of the ones that I use are occupied.

But in general, any ESP32 WROOM Module with at least 4MB Flash should be sufficient to run this code, there aren't that many important prerequisites.

@Anthony Webb 

Good news, first things first: I just bought a proper Unity asset pack for Sci-Fi weapon SFX, and they are AMAZING! 
Will have to do a video of that soon :>

The receiver needs to be a 40kHz IR receiver, I used the TSOP32240 (DigiKey MPN) - a bit pricy but it delivers very clean data output.

The original transmitter diode is a SFH 4346 (which might be discontinued now?), but I really want to see what this new diode like the VSLY5940 can do.

I recommend a driving BJT or Small-Signal FET, anything that can provide the ~100mA that we will be pumping through the transmitter diode. Apart from that, you won't need anything more.

Keep in mind that the VSLY doesn't need much current since it's a laser, so maybe add a resistor, measure the current and adjust until it's in the recommended operating current range. It might even be OK to run it directly off of the ESP32's I/O if it's below 10mA.

For the current IR LED I actually didn't use any resistor at all, and probably pumped a few 100mA's through it using a BJT, but we don't need to do that with the VSLY.

VSLY5940 is backordered at DigiKey, but I should see them in the next couple weeks.  Got everything needed to breadboard up some tests.  I'll let you know how things look!

@Xasin I have the VSLY5940 in house and have set up a test right for it.  It is communicating very well.  If I shield the sides of the housing it appears to be pretty directional, of course if I do not it will spew IR all over, which was somewhat surprising.

I was curious what specific things you would like me to try?  As I understand it, I will not need any sort of lens with the VSLY5940 correct?  Are you aware of any IR camera setups that I might be able to use to display the IR pattern/size being thrown by this thing?  if I shield the sides it does seem to be pretty directional, its just hard to really know how accurate it is without being able to visualize it?

Hi @Code Press, that's already great to hear!

The spillover of IR is something I experienced with other LEDs too, even with shielded sides where I used some 3D printer filaments that weren't opaque enough. The receivers are incredibly sensitive, so I think they might simply be picking up some faint reflected/diffused light coming from the emitter.

The main thing that I am interested in is:

- Maximum reachable distance at night (so I can compare it with my system)
- If communication is achievable during daylight, and if so, how far it can go
- The beam spread or accuracy of the system, especially in the first five or six meters. If you can hit an enemy that is 30° away from where you're actually aiming, that's a bit annoying.

I sadly do not know of any camera setup that will definitely work. Some phone cameras can detect IR light due to a missing filter! 
And night vision cameras will definitely do the trick, they use IR LEDs as light source.

Truth be told, I am thinking of not using the VSLY5940 in favour of a LED with a lens system. The main idea here is that the beam spread would be adjustable by using a small motor to move the LED back and forth a bit, which would let the system both do very accurate long-distance shots, as well as shotgun style, close-range ones.

But knowing that the VSLY5940 will work as good long-distance emitter is awesome!

@Xasin oops I see I was logged into my code press account.  At any rate, I will give the night vision camera thing a try.  Would be real nice to visualize that.  I was watching a video where a guy was using a lens and actually uses a RED LED to get the focus on his lens just right, also looks like the lenses are pretty cheap too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKUF_zrhvQg

@Xasin got some more info.  I am seeing the same, lots of spillover, in our testing, and that receiver is WAY sensitive (wish we could tone those down a bit) such that I really think that I'm leaning toward the lens route myself.

I did find that an old security camera I had laying around could see the IR and would work great to dial in the focus.  From the camera I could tell that the IR from the VSLY5940 is indeed pretty tight already, but the spillover is making it a little difficult to test directionally.

You mention in the comments that you were thinking of using VSCEL IR Laser diodes. Have you tried that yet? What type are you looking at? Link?

I haven't yet tried anything out, but I would really love it if someone were to test it <3
Right now I have some more pressing matters in Uni going on.

I was looking at a VSCEL in standard 3mm LED packaging, with about 3° beam spread. That thing would easily double the distance of the system, but might also pose more of an eye-safety risk (though honestly, I think it's minimal unless someone stares right at it while the MCU glitches out and continually activates the beam...)

Try something like the VSLY5940, it's a Vishay 950nm "Surface emitter" (I guess the term VSCEL was bought by someone else?), with 3° beam spread and an absolutely stellar 600mW/sr output power at their nominal voltage!
(Eye safety for temporary exposure is 100W/m² or 4W/sr according to the VISHAY IR safety datasheet, so this is still OK.)

The receivers I use have a minimum irradiance of 0.25mW/m², so... Ok I am bad at this kind of spherical surface maths, but this is quite far <.<

I have a few cycles over the next month or so that I could do some R&D on this VSLY5940 device.  I'd need to get a receiver set up so I can validate the entire emitter/receiver stack.  Do you have any extra boards laying around that I could buy from you?

@Anthony Webb 
I sadly don't have any spare boards I wish to part with, and not really any time to solder up a new one.

A simple test setup could consist of only an ESP32 devboard and one of the Vishay receivers (about 1€ in single quantity), which are pretty cheap and quick to get though, and the IR Sender/Receiver code is packaged in a standalone library that can be used independently of the actual Lasertag system.

What might help there is to retrofit a better checksum or redundancy, but we'll see about that.

Thanks for the reply @Xasin I will build up a testing environment with a couple ESP32 I have laying around if you can help me identify the hardware I will use for testing.  I am thinking of trying the VSLY5940 emitter, and maybe pick up one of the one you use in the current design, which part number is that?  Also on the receiver side of things can you get me a part number for that as well?  Will I need any other components to breadboard out this thing and start testing?  Really excited to see what kinds of improvements we can make!

Aren't you considering MILESTAG 2 support for the lasertag protocol?  https://openlasertag.org/language/en/milestag-2-protocol/

I am not, not right now. It would be possible by writing a different ESP-RMT parser, but I would essentially have to send all commands back to the Lasertag server to have them executed there.
It makes more sense to run the commands such as "Add health", "add rounds", etc., directly from the Lasertag server, and since I doubt that any MilesTag2 systems will have WiFi and/or MQTT-Capabilities, mixing devices might not make sense.

Very maybe you could Re-Use the MilesTag beacons for Ammo, health and flags though, but my protocol already supports positional beacons for that.

I do like the overall idea though - maybe I'll take some inspiration from it.

Looks great! How much run time do you get off a single 18650?

It's hard to say, if I am to be honest, but with the current setup of the Lasertag I haven't had that much trouble running them for an hour or more with a much smaller 400mAh cell.

The ESP32 with its WiFi enabled probably averages 100mA (+ the LEDs and all that), so with a larger 18650 you can surely go an afternoon :>

Nice project. I created a prototype lasertag a while back using IR leds/receivers and atmega. I've always wanted to resurrect it someday. Looking through your docs I didn't see anything about a lens. Are you using lenses to increase distance?

@Xasin, I tracked down some info that I was looking at back when I was exploring it. This may be useful to you. But this person seems to have had a lot of experience with DIY lasertag back in the day and says that glass optics work well... http://web.archive.org/web/20080613050558/http://www.lasertagparts.com/mtoptics.htm

Nope, I am not using any lenses!
I felt like those are hard to get, integrate and tune, and thusly would overcomplicate things for the average hacker trying to recreate this.

Right now I am thinking of buying so-called VSCEL IR Laser diodes, which might increase Range x4 at a cost of just 4€ per IR diode, with a spread of only 4°
That would make lenses even less necessary.

Good suggestion on the VSCEL, however have you had any thoughts on encoding information on the laser and also receiving / decoding it? I think that is where a lot of projects go back to IR, because over IR that is well understood.

Edit: nvm. I understand.

Hey @Xasin - this is a really incredible project. You did a great job detailing everything out. We are working on a project and we were wondering if you do consulting work (paid, of course). If so, is there a way to get in touch with you via Skype or something? I think you'd be interested to hear what we're working  on for an experiential marketing event this summer. Please let me know when you have a chance. Great work again, very impressive!

Thanks a lot for the praise, amd599!
This was my first attempt at a more community-oriented project, and I am glad to hear that it worked out.

Regarding your offer, I must politely decline. I am still a student, and with my Bachelor's thesis starting next semester I am not sure if I will have the time to give your project the attention it deserves, while also focusing on my own work.

I see no problem with offering some advice on certain issues every now and then, but I can't ensure that I will have time to reliably respond.

Thanks a lot, and I wish you the best of luck for your own endeavors!

Sure thing! It's an incredible project and no worries at all. Perhaps some day in the future we can collaborate more :) Thank you for this awesome project to the community!

Been interested in doing something similar and just found your project. Nice one! One small question tho, i can understand how the player detects he got hit but how do you know which player hited him?

Hi Andre,
glad to hear you like my project! I hope it'll give you some inspiration.

Player hit detection is done very similarly to how TV remote controls work. The IR LED sends out a digital signal very similar to how UART looks, except at only 2000 Baud and with a 40kHz modulation on top of that.

Inside the IR Signal I've encoded a 8-bit player ID, which allows the hardware to figure out who it was hit by.

Since the data format I made is easy to expand with custom information, you could in theory also use the IR sending and receiving for other data. I've already built small positioning beacons you can use to play King Of The Hill etc.

Just came across you project looks great.  Going to be following this project.
Just played with a Lazertag system at the Halo: Outpost Convention in Anaheim the other weekend, provided by Battlecompany.com.  There system was one of the best I have ever seen and used. It uses a Class 1 Laser that will reach out with accuracy across a football field in day light.   They had a test target out 150 - 200ft and if you didn't have the red dot on it perfectly you would miss.  very accurate and apparently you can adjust the beam width manually based on skill level.

They also use BT to connect to head band sensors, so no wires between head band or vest.  Just a thought as I know how the wiring is the weak link in most commercial products out there.  Thought that was a fantastic idea.  The rest works over wifi so figure a ESP32 or something.

I loved how simple the system was.  you carried just a rifle and a head band connected via BT to that rifle.  It had life indicator through 4 LED that changed colour as you die. Sounds for weapons fireing, hits and enemy hits.  LED read out for shots left and a simple button to reload.  No wires.  Respawn you just had to aim your rifle at the box and it respawned you in 5 seconds.  back in game.   Controlled through there  software, that ran off of tablets and had a display for score for all to see.  Sounds exactly what you are trying to do here.  Which I love.

Looking forward to see the progress, I will be building it myself

Aw, why thank you!
I recommend waiting a little while for me to receive and test the newer hardware generation, to see if there are any problems. Most likely it's fine though.

Regarding the Battlecompany com technology, there are a few reasons why I chose to do my system this way:
1) IR Lasers are a bit expensive to come by. Even if you find a model for only 10€, it would still increase the price a good bit. The best I can do is a VSCE IR Laser diode. 4° of spread, 4€ price, should give you 100m range in dark conditions :)
2) A bluetooth headpiece would require another ESP32, LiPo, charge controller ... Essentially, a whole new main board. It could add 20 to 30€ of cost, and while I agree that cables are slightly annoying, they're sadly not that big of a problem to make me want to replace them with Bluetooth. It's still cool stuff though!

Health and ammo indicators are currently not added on the weapon itself, but it's very easy to add modules via I2C to realize this. My current goal is to build a interactive Webpage though, which lets you display stats via phone or projectors or such :)

Oh, one thing that I am going to do a bit nicer is respawning:
I'll be using Infrared beacons to determine player position, and set rooms for players to respawn in, as well as to capture. No weapon-pointing necessary :>

Have a question. If u only carried an headband. Did you have to headshot people to kill them?

I fly scale RC airplanes and would like to mate this to an in-cockpit FPV setup . Xasin, seems you might be into RC as well, might you be interested in getting a project going? here's a cool setup with some fancy optics on a beautiful day- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L57KXqWJSDE&t=1s

That sounds pretty awesome, actually!
Adapting the code here to work for FPV shouldn't be too hard. The core components like shot handling can essentially stay the same, it just needs a remote trigger and most likely a better network connection. 

I'll be focusing on the normal setup for now, getting the new hardware up and stuff, but after that ... Why not.

Hmmm...does seem like a fair amount of work has gone into the networking aspect. I wonder if we could just drop something like an Xbee3 onto the pads and run with that!

Also, any reason you aren't using a IR laser diode?

Well, the ESP isn't just networking. It also controls all the peripherals, from Audio to the IR data transmission and WS2812 control. I could, however, connect an XBee or LoRa module, and tweak my code to communicate via that. 

Also, if you have a good source of cheap IR Lasers, please do share! 

I just haven't found any on Digikey or similar yet, and so far the IR led has worked well. A laser would be way cooler though... 

Actually, I need to go back on my own word here regarding lasers.

Turns out there is a technology called Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser, or VSEL 

I found a emitter for only 4€, so an acceptable price, with monochromatic light output at the wavelength of my detector, and a near perfect 4° beam divergence without further optics. Makes me wonder how far I could push the range with these! 

I haven't looked at this project yet, but all your pictures look really f***ing cool.

Hey, what looks good sells better!
Right now there's a bit of a lack of documentation. I'm going through some University stuff right now, and will do a new revision of the Hardware, with a proper clean-up of the Software and Documentation, and a better Server with a nice webinterface.

The whole base is fully functional though, and I got a few "in-action" videos already :>

So feel free to stick around and see what it'll turn into!

I am going to *have* to build this.  Good job!

!!!! 

Oh, please do! But don't order the PCBs just yet. There's a bit of a redesign I need to do, since I switched to a different audio processor, and the current design has a PCB trace shorted to ground and needs fixing.

I'm assuming you can Solder QFN parts, but if not I'll include Solder points for a breakout board to be attached on. All other parts are hand-solderable though.

At this point I'm pursuing the #P2 - Pick and Place for 3D Printers project mainly to attempt to compensate for my rapidly failing ability to solder anything small without screwing it up.  :)

What an amazing project! 
Many many moons ago I built the first generation of laser tag units down here in NZ, they used a 8080 processor and ran a HeNe laser tube. A real pain in the rear as after a few big knocks the mirrors would go out of alignment. The vest was constructed from motor cross armor and had a pile of small solar sensors installed to register hits.

We later changed the system to something a little more simple and used a strobe light constructed from an engine timing light. These were a little more robust but there was no communications as to who hit who.

Your project is really cool, having it set up like you have creates so many opportunities to expand on it.  

Gha, your version sounds like a heck of a lot of fun too though!
I haven't done much in terms of vest equipment yet, but the connector at the back exposes a WS2812 signal for as many vest LEDs as wanted, as well as a general purpose I2C connector for other peripherals.

All source files are available for others to work with, mainly on the Github site! The PCB uses mostly hand-solderable components, so feel free to take some inspiration from it :D

All the HeNe lasers I used in the 8080 era already had bonded optics.  I guess I was privileged and didn't even realize it..

This looks awesome, man! Very promising!

I've implemented a Laser Tag project myself using a very similar method...I initially used an ESP8266 + Arduino IDE for the hardware side and C for the software side. It worked well, but for scalability and reliability I re-did the server side in C++ and implemented checksums and a HTTP web server. I want to do the hardware with the ESP-32 as well, as the extra power and comms are attractive...

Who knows, maybe that project will make it here too! ;)

You made the server with HTTP and in C? 
Now that's kind of impressive! I had no idea how to make something like that, so I chose Ruby for my server software. I intend to stick with it though, as it is a lot more flexible than C or C++ in terms of live reloading of software - something that could come in very useful for custom servers or similar.

At least I didn't use the Arduino IDE - I prefer the cleaner, more professional environment of Eclipse (as well as the C++ autocompletion it offers <3)

This is great!

Some interresting details in your build - how uncool of visahy to call the IR receiver TSOP >_< it's not even an SMD package :P

Are you only registering hits on the gun? I would love to see a vest with targets as well!

Oh, thanks for pointing out my mistake!
I accidentally called it that because the vendor I buy my parts from has their own naming scheme. Their IDs vary quite a bit from the original ones, I must have mistaken that!

Also, it's exactly the opposite - the guns don't have any built-in sensors (although adding one is trivial), and it's only the "vest piece" (or in this case a tiny strap-on shoulder sensor) that registers the hits.
Since the sensors I use have a pull-down output they're easy to connect in parallel, to have as much sensor coverage as you need.

post some code.  Super cool start man

The link to the GitHub is already there. I'm still working on a bit of documentation, but it's mostly self-explanatory. 

There's also a directory with one or two example game scripts ^^

Oh, the IR camera is just to be used to sight the gun in as the "image" is invisible.

I use these sort of flashlights and have IR LEDs to put in them. Just the LED and lens is used, in a 3D printed housing.

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/5x-CREE-Q5-LED-Zoomable-Focus-Bright-Flashlight-Torch-1200LM-Light-AA-14500/172292965071?epid=2256915909&hash=item281d7602cf:g:4r4AAOSwK8BbQ~4V

And that feeds into one of these...

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Clip-on-12x-Optical-Zoom-HD-Telescope-Camera-Lens-For-Universal-Mobile-Phone-JFA/253742359147?epid=730731908&hash=item3b1439226b:g:GWAAAOSwR6RaRD~E

Yes, the WT558D modules are great. But don't forget to buy a programmer too.