One of the most enjoyable experiences of Camp Perry for me is shooting the air pistol matches at the Gary Anderson CMP Competition Center. It’s a state-of-the-art facility, equipped with not only the air conditioning, showers and free wifi (super important!), but also with the electronic targets. Yeah, I know, we are all old school guys, there’s nothing wrong with paper targets, but isn’t it nice when your target tells you your score and your windage and elevation errors as you go? No need for scoping each shot, no need to guess how many clicks do I need to adjust my sites, it almost feels like cheating!
Ever since firing my first shot at the electronic target I was dreaming about making my own version for our range. Of course, procrastination is my specialty, so it took me a few years, but finally I decided to start this project.
The core of the system will be the new Raspberry PI 4. I also ordered a bunch of different Time-of-Flight distance sensors to see which one will work better and give me the best measurement accuracy. I’m planning to use at least 4 sensors (maybe 8) and triangulate the position of the pellet. If this won’t work, my plan B is to use acoustic sensors, but I need to do more research to decide which ones I need.
The sensors will be mounted on a rectangular frame, and the frame will also have slots for the actual paper target. The pellet will fly past the array of sensors before hitting the paper and the software will calculate the position of the shot based on the reading from the sensors. Then the UI will display the last shot, all other shots and statistics.
The UI will be accessible via remote desktop viewer (e.g. VNC), shooters may be able to use their own devices, or maybe I’ll get a few cheaper Android tablets for the club.
I’m going to post the updates here as I make progress. Of course, there’s no guarantee that my idea will fly, but if it will, I’m going to publish the detailed plans and instructions here, as well as the source code for the software I’m planning to write. As always, your questions, comments, suggestions, objections, curses and other nice words are more than welcome.
Stay tuned!
Good luck, I’m very interested in your results. When I looked creating an e-target, I didn’t think TOF sensors had a fast enough response to detect a pellet, but as I read this I realized my thought process was wrong. I was calculating the time it took to pass through a plane (10-50 uS) but since the TOF sensors range is a cone, perhaps they will work. If so that would be a great solution.
I did look at the acoustic sensors (i.e. sonar range finders) but it looks like the resolution is just not enough for a small object like a .177 pellet. I might try this one https://www.pololu.com/product/1605 as well.