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Electronic Hopper

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paintballing, fun :lol: the coolest sport.

it depends on the kind of motor u use. i dont really know wut kind of motor would be used (how much power it would need, how much voltage it uses . . .). if you could provide maybe a link to a motor that would be used and the specs, it would be helpful. also, how much voltage is going to supply the circuit? 9v, 3v, ???

a hopper holds paintballs and feeds the gun. if uve evr seen a paintball gun, its the big thing on the top of the gun. the purpose of an electronic hopper is that it feeds the balls faster. a sensor in the pipe that goes from the hopper to the gun (the neck?) senses when there is no balls in it and spins a little thing in the hopper so that balls fall into the neck easier. paintball guns now shoot a ridiculous amount of paintballs per second, a friend of mine sed his gun could shoot 13 a sec, so there is a need for quick loading :lol:
 
I love how every time I go to the paintball field there are all these 12-14 year olds with these $500 guns that mom and dad bought them. When I was their age all I had was a stingray II.

No only are they expensive to buy, but you'll use a lot of paint with it. I can make 500 paintballs last me 3-4 hours, these kids are going through a case (2000 balls) every 1-2 hours. I probably get as many kills as they do.

Ok Ok, enough ranting....
I'd suggest just buying one. or getting it for christmas. There is alot to consider in this:
You cant use your average dc motor salvaged from an old drill or dust buster. (I tried :oops: ) You need a geared motor or better yet a servo motor. Assuming you do find one of these for pretty cheap, then you have to make up an augger to move the balls around in the hopper. and mount this rig to your hopper.
Then you also need to figure out the sensor at the neck of the hopper. (IR beam ect) and mount that to your hopper. YOu'll need a ciruit to turn the servo on when it doesnt sense a ball. Op amp maybe?

So assuming you get everything made up, and connected to the hopper, then you have to worry about a paintballs blasting into it and damaging it.
I cant even count how many times I took a hopper hit...

Sorry to put down your idea, but I went down this road, and you are better off to just buy one, (Maybe used off ebay?)
 
The electronics for this is simple, implementing it (with motors, paddles, hopper etc.) into a usable product is another story!
 
yeah. I am an avid paintballer, have tons of different hoppers, and i can tell you you're wasting your time. for $30 or $40 you can get an x-board revolution loader. to make your own, you'd probably wind up spending just as much money, and it would look like crap. Back in my early days i did make a homemade hopper, using a radio shack electric motor with a wooden paddle on it and wires going to batteries and a switch on my marker. Turned out to be nothing but a paint blender that broke a lot anyway...

my current hopper loads up to 24 balls per second and my marker can fire about 20. If you stick with paintball, you are going to need a GOOD hopper eventually, so even if you managed to make a cheap one for yourself, you would probably get fed up with it very quickly.

the fact is, paintballing is NOT a cheap sport. you can't even go play paintball cheaply because of the costs of paint. I've learned many times that if you want to do it right you gotta spend the $$$ to buy the right equipment or you'll just wind up frustrated with broken stuff on the field. considering it's typically $60 or more to buy a case of paint, the $30 or so to get a used revvy shouldn't be a big deal, especially considering you'll tons of use out of it.
 
whoa, the hoppers are only 30-40 bucks now? back when I was making mine, they ran for about 85-100 bucks. Mine also turned into a blender :lol: I didnt get as far as you though, once I got it mounted to the hopper and I connected the power to it, it just destroyed every ball in there. I just gave up after that.
That was also back when the Autococker was the top of the line, and the game actually took some skill, instead of staying the back corner of the field and spraying paint everywhere.
 
well, you can get revvys for 30-40 bucks... those are pretty much the bottom-of-the-line though... they run the gamut up to the Halo B (which is what I have) which is around $120.

having experienced modern paintball, I would argue that the game still requires skill, it's just an entirely different kind of skill. You say that it is a matter of sitting in the back and spraying a lot of paint. well for some people it is. where the skill comes in is when you try to move around when someone like that is shooting at you. Try running 20 feet to the next bunker when someone starts unloading 15 BPS at you within a half a second of leaving your bunker :D another part of the skill involved is snap shooting. since you have VERY little time from the time you stick your head out of the bunker to when tons of paint starts flying at you, you have to be able to pop out, fire a couple of well-aimed shots, and get back in very quickly. There's no more opportunity to carefully line up a shot or anything like that. It's a whole lot more fast paced, a whole lot more tiring, but a whole lot more fun in my opinion :D
 
ok, the reason im making this is for an Electronis class final project....so i cant just buy a hopper, which then cancles out about half of all the posts up here. so basically i need to make the motor which would run on 9V, it would be sound activated(so when i shoot it would reload), i can buy the shell for it so it wouldnt look like crap(from a paintball store), and ya...so i just need to make a little motor revvy thing. and thats where u guys come in. I need schematics plz! anyone...can u help me?
 
We can give pointers in the general direction in the form of suggestions, block diagrams, evaluation of circuits etc. As a final year project, I feel (and a lot of other members on this forum) that you should design a circuit and not just copy one from somewhere. I mean, you expect grades for this and surely your Professor's want to find out what you know and your ability to do reasearch, design etc. So come with ideas, circuits, calculations then we can talk. We are not here to do the work for you, because then you will not learn anything in the process. If this sounds very harsh, I am sorry but that is my feeling. :)
 
I agree. considering all the circuit has to do is detect sound and spin a motor... if you're in an electronics course you should have the skills to do something like that. and either way... having us do it for you isn't going to help you learn anything.
 
well if we get the schematics, then we build the board, and then learn how it works, and explain how it works in a report. sum kid in my class is making a tetris game, he didnt make the circuit schematic but hes building it and hes gonna learn how it works. thats what we do. SO just for the final project i need a schmatic, because i dont know how to make an electric engine, i need help. providing me with these schematics will help me further to learn more. plz u guys. i need help
 
well if we get the schematics, then we build the board, and then learn how it works, and explain how it works in a report. sum kid in my class is making a tetris game, he didnt make the circuit schematic but hes building it and hes gonna learn how it works. thats what we do. SO just for the final project i need a schmatic, because i dont know how to make an electric engine, i need help. providing me with these schematics will help me further to learn more. plz u guys. i need help
 
well if we get the schematics, then we build the board, and then learn how it works, and explain how it works in a report. sum kid in my class is making a tetris game, he didnt make the circuit schematic but hes building it and hes gonna learn how it works. thats what we do. SO just for the final project i need a schmatic, because i dont know how to make an electric engine, i need help. providing me with these schematics will help me further to learn more. plz u guys. i need help
 
so its not like im getting a mark on the circuit, im getting a mark on how well i understand the circuit. so plz guys. its for my grade 11 electronics class.
 
hey, im in 11th grade too. wish my skool had an electronics class.

duz it HAVE to be sound activated? cuz that makes it a whole lot more complicated.

i did a litle experminet last night wher i connectd an LDR in series w/ a motor that came off a CD player. the voltage suply was 9v. wen the LDR sensed light the motor spun w/ enuf force to probably turn one of those things, forget wut u call em.

but thats probly not complicated enuf. i also used a 3v supply n a 2n3904 transistor, LDR, and the motor. it worked good.

if it HAS to be sound, it'll be quite more complicated :(
 
I am sure you can make this work.
 
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