Discussions

It's been brought to my attention that this particular subject is bordering on an ethical line that I can completely understand may be a bit touchy given the nature of this community. And I've gone back in and edited this post accordingly. Before you read any farther, regardless of your personal opinion, just understand that paintball is a game, a recreation and nothing more. I have no ill intentions regarding this project and I want to make sure those who read this understand that. If there are those of you who still feel that this is an inappropriate subject then I will promptly remove this post from the forum.

This is my first post in the forum and I'm excited to hear back from a community that I think can provide me with a lot of knowledge into a unique project I'm currently working on.  It's far from being an areal drone, but much of the tech is affiliated to topics on this forum, so just bare with me here.

For those of you that are familiar with the the Video game Call of Duty: Black Ops, I've been working for the past six months making a real life (nonlethal) RC/XD to be used in large scale paintball scenario games. For those of you not familiar with the RC/XD, I've basically built an RC car that when triggered releases a large quantity of paint over a wide area very quickly to eliminate the opposition. This past spring I built the first prototype to test proof on concept and brought it to "Living Legends" in Illinois, one of the largest paintball scenario games in the US. The prototype ended up being extremely effective in game play and eliminated around 70 players in the two day game.

This is a video I made before going to the paintball game describing the construction of the prototype along with some field demonstrations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysBlBl8OdjY

So while at the game a few paintball companies witnessed the vehicle in action and offered to sponsor me for the next build. So for the past three months I've been intensively collecting components and working on plans to build a completely new vehicle from the ground up. The main differences from the one in the video will be a much higher quality RC platform (Traxxas E-Maxx brushless), a custom carbon fiber body to house the secondary components and a long range 2.4ghz video system. That last part is the reason I'm posting in the particular forum. I came across this site while looking for a way to boost my transmitter power and found an article on this website about using a wifi signal amplifier. The video system is the only part of this project that I'm still a bit shaky on, so I figured this would be a good community to discus potential components.

Now there are obviously some specific differences here form a UAV. I'm looking for a long range 2.4ghz video transmitter that can pump out at least 500mW. This isn't necessary to provide a very long range, but instead to be able to penetrate threw thickly wooded and potentially hilly terrain. I've been looking at one of the units from hicam.com, but I would look into what some of the other options are for video transmitters. In terms of the video receiver, I need something small and portable with it's own power supply that I can carry onto an active paintball game. Something like this,

http://www.ecrater.com/p/11353684/24ghz-wireless-spy-camera-pen-and#

I'm not interested in the pen camera but the mini dvr is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. Something with an internal power supply that I can throw into one of those strap on waterproof mp3 holders and strap to the inside of my forearm. I'm also not sure about camera options, but I would like something that can be powered off of the vehicle's radio receiver rather than having to tap directly into the battery supply. Unlike a UAV, weight really isn't an issue here, but I would still like to keep the size minimal. The other requirement is that this thing has to be paintball proof and mostly waterproof. I can run antennas externally, but I'm thinking about mounting the camera internally and integrating a polycarbonate window into the carbon fiber body. I'm also thinking about maybe some sort of image stabilization, although I wouldn't consider that to be a necessity. So my overall goal here is to be able to operate this thing from a distance, via the camera, and still have it be just as effective in game play. So what do you guys think, any ideas?