Post by PaintballinSaint on Jul 21, 2005 2:15:49 GMT -5
Well everyone remembers hearing about WAS's Halo boards. Well we finally have some more info about them as well as their new board.
This is a replacement board for the Odyssey Halo-B and Empire Reloader hoppers. One board will work with either type of hopper.
This product was started shortly before the belt driven Halo was introduced. It has been in active development for nearly 2 years, with real-world testing over the last 6 months including a complete re-design to add support for the Reloader.
Motor control circuitry with forward/reverse, speed, position, & torque feedback, piezoelectric resonance sensor, anti-jam logic, and numerous other patent filings were due to the creation of this product.
When we set out to design new hardware for the Halo we had several goals in mind:
Make it feed as fast as possible
People like to throw out big numbers for marketing reasons. We like to provide the facts. The facts are simple, too much pressure on the stack of balls with too brittle of paint means you have broken balls, and then a VERY slow hopper! How fast can the Halo go? Well, in practical applications the Halo will exceed what any marker can shoot (today). The Equalizer board can spin the motor roughly 50 times faster than gravity will allow the balls to become caught in the drive cone. So, it is fair to say that the Equalizer board could drive the motor faster than the Halo mechanics and gravity will allow for proper feeding. In real world testing, anything over roughly 40 balls per second passing through the drive cone assembly will result in balls being missed or crushed by the drive cone fins. The Equalizer's motor control circuitry and logic is extremely easy on paint and spins the motor only as fast as needed. Maintaining extreme pressure on the ball stack is not necessary and only results in broken drive cones, sheared drive cone fins, and burned out motors. The Equalizer board's microprocessor is the latest state-of-the-art version with a code execution speed of 2 MIPS (million of instructions per second), and having an operating frequency of 8Mhz. This is twice as fast as any Equalizer board we make for markers!
Fixing the problem causing paint to break in the breech when the hopper is nearly empty
This problem requires the ability to determine the exact motor speed and position. By knowing the exact motor speed, motor position, and the drive ratio (motor pulley:drive cone pulley), you can determine the exact position of the drive cone. The electronics use EMF feedback to determine the exact motor position. You don't need to have a sensor on the drive cone assembly (like the patent recently filed by Odyssey would suggest). If you know the drive cone position and monitor the motor's torque and use the eye system (if it exists) you can deliberately slow down the hopper when the balls start "bobbling" in the hopper. The end result is that no matter how fast you are shooting, if the hopper runs out of paint you will not get any breaks as a result of the Halo. This approach is so unique that we have applied for several patents pertaining to this.
Reduce jamming and fix jamming problems that occur
How many times have you sat in a bunker with the Halo blinking red/green? It's jammed and now you have to fight with manually fixing the jam using your finger or the rip drive (if you have one) and turn the hopper off and back on. 5-10 seconds have easily gone by with a marker that is down. In X-ball, you probably just got bunkered!
The Equalizer's patent-pending motor control hardware and logic not only reduces the chance of jam occurring in the first place, but also has the ability to know when a jam has occurred! If a jam does occur, the motor is reversed to clear the jam and then the drive cone is wound back to the same position without putting excessive pressure on the stack of balls! This anti-jam logic detects a jam and clears it in as little as 1/4 of a second!
Detecting any type of paint
Everyone knows that the Halo has a problem seeing dark colored and transparent paintballs. The Equalizer board's 10 bit ADC and programmable eye power level allows you to use any type of paint. The circuitry is so sensitive that it can determine the amount of time between balls falling into the breech, even between two balls falling together.
Reduce battery consumption
Unlike the stock board, the Equalizer is OFF when it is turned off and does not drain the batteries just sitting in your gear bag. Although power consumption is relatively low with stock board turned "off", you will find after a month of sitting that your Halo-B's batteries are very depleted.
The stock board uses old microprocessor technology and motor control logic to control the motor speed. The motor frequency is 100Hz, which means that the motor is turned on and off 100 times per second. Although this might sound fast, it's not! The efficiency suffers greatly and you do not have much resolution for controlling the motor speed. The efficiency equates to how much battery life you get. The Equalizer board's engineers came from the R/C market, having designed numerous products for the R/C industry including electronic speed controls used for R/C cars and planes. The Equalizer board's PWM motor frequency is 20,000Hz! The efficiency is enormously better than the stock board, giving you a battery life of several times of what you get with the stock board! The Equalizer for the Halo might be the only product in paintball that actually pays for itself in battery savings!
Extend motor life
By using a high frequency PWM motor control pulse, the motor brushes are not subjected to high current startups like with the stock board. A lower current startup reduces brush arching, which pits the motor's commutator. Lower current startups also reduce power consumption, saving battery life. A high frequency pulse allows you to drop the startup current without sacrificing the needed initial startup motor speed.
Extend drive cone life
By having complete motor control feedback, there is no need to wind the drive cone up for some arbitrary period of time. It is the constant winding (without stopping before excessive pressure develops) that causes the drive cone pin and fins to break off.
Support for new high-tech batteries
With the recent release of high power lithium-polymer (LiPo) batteries, electronics can now be powered by light weight and long lasting power solutions. A three cell pack (4.2v peak each cell) generates roughly 12.6 volts and is ideal for this application, but this voltage is too much for the stock board. Many people have been doing a mod to their Halo that uses two 9v batteries in series (18 volts) and the result is a lot of burned up boards! Other companies are also offering Nicad and Nimh battery packs with higher output voltages also damaging boards as well as the motors. The Equalizer can handle up to 35 volts (and up to 20amps of current), making it an ideal candidate for a LiPo conversion. We will be offering a LiPo battery pack when the Equalizer board is released. The battery will last an entire tournament week (a dozen or more cases of paint shot) on a single charge with the Equalizer board!
Dual hopper support (Halo-B & Reloader)
The Halo-B has an optical ball sensor ("eye") system and the Reloader uses sound activation. The Equalizer board supports the eye system, but instead of using a microphone to "hear" the sound of the marker firing (like the Reloader does) we developed a custom piezo-electric sensor that we call the "EVS(tm)". The EVS(tm) generates a voltage proportional to movement of the sensor. Sound itself will not trigger the sensor, so a nearby marker can not trigger the hopper. As an added bonus, if the eye system fails or is deliberately disabled, the EVS(tm) will take over and allow you to keep feeding. Realistically, an optical sensor system is a better method as the computer can correlate the required motor speed with the rate at which the balls are being put into the breech, however, knowing how fast the motor is spinning, its rotational position, and how many rotations are necessary to load a single ball, the computer can calculate the feed rate with a fairly high degree of accuracy.
Make it adjustable
Just like every Equalizer board, we give the user the ability to adjust settings to suit their needs. The stock settings will always outperform what a marker is capable of shooting (today), but we think ahead and give the users what they want... tweakability! The programming is similar to all other Equalizer boards, using LED flashes and button presses to check and change settings.
Keep it affordable
It doesn't make much sense to spend $100+ for a hopper and buy an upgrade board that is nearly the same price as the hopper! The Equalizer board will retail for less than $50.
The Equalizer board will also come with a new back plate sticker.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Left - µEQ shown with a U.S. dime (production model will be 75% smaller!), Right - µEQ with AKA Viking header
Left - µEQ shown with Intimidator header, Right - µEQ with AKA Viking & Intimidator headers
While the competition is still trying to play catch-up with our technology, and are busy copying things that we invented (trigger programming, Debounce(tm), Forced Eye Modes, etc.) we have been taking hardware to the next level.
The µEQ(tm) [micro-Equalizer] is the latest hardware that we are close to releasing. This hardware features a CPU that is twice as fast as anything we previously have used, offering a hardware level trigger scan rate of an unprecedented 2 million times per second! The pictures shown above are of an early prototype that is nearly twice the size as our current model!
This new board is a universal board. Simple header plugs for whatever application you might need (DM4, Intimidator, Viking, Shocker, etc.) will be readily available. By using a single board for all markers, we can keep the cost of the board down due to the large volume. The various header plugs will be priced based on their complexity. We hope to keep the board itself in the sub-$50 range!
Remote updating will be possible using our new patent-pending communication interface. This interface offers a simple wireless solution for updating boards, obtaining information, and tweaking settings. A simple plug-on adapter for the Equalink will be available. No more opening the grip.
Of course, all of the normal features that you come to expect from Equalizer boards will be part of the standard programming.
from www.wickedairsportz.com
discuss.
This is a replacement board for the Odyssey Halo-B and Empire Reloader hoppers. One board will work with either type of hopper.
This product was started shortly before the belt driven Halo was introduced. It has been in active development for nearly 2 years, with real-world testing over the last 6 months including a complete re-design to add support for the Reloader.
Motor control circuitry with forward/reverse, speed, position, & torque feedback, piezoelectric resonance sensor, anti-jam logic, and numerous other patent filings were due to the creation of this product.
When we set out to design new hardware for the Halo we had several goals in mind:
Make it feed as fast as possible
People like to throw out big numbers for marketing reasons. We like to provide the facts. The facts are simple, too much pressure on the stack of balls with too brittle of paint means you have broken balls, and then a VERY slow hopper! How fast can the Halo go? Well, in practical applications the Halo will exceed what any marker can shoot (today). The Equalizer board can spin the motor roughly 50 times faster than gravity will allow the balls to become caught in the drive cone. So, it is fair to say that the Equalizer board could drive the motor faster than the Halo mechanics and gravity will allow for proper feeding. In real world testing, anything over roughly 40 balls per second passing through the drive cone assembly will result in balls being missed or crushed by the drive cone fins. The Equalizer's motor control circuitry and logic is extremely easy on paint and spins the motor only as fast as needed. Maintaining extreme pressure on the ball stack is not necessary and only results in broken drive cones, sheared drive cone fins, and burned out motors. The Equalizer board's microprocessor is the latest state-of-the-art version with a code execution speed of 2 MIPS (million of instructions per second), and having an operating frequency of 8Mhz. This is twice as fast as any Equalizer board we make for markers!
Fixing the problem causing paint to break in the breech when the hopper is nearly empty
This problem requires the ability to determine the exact motor speed and position. By knowing the exact motor speed, motor position, and the drive ratio (motor pulley:drive cone pulley), you can determine the exact position of the drive cone. The electronics use EMF feedback to determine the exact motor position. You don't need to have a sensor on the drive cone assembly (like the patent recently filed by Odyssey would suggest). If you know the drive cone position and monitor the motor's torque and use the eye system (if it exists) you can deliberately slow down the hopper when the balls start "bobbling" in the hopper. The end result is that no matter how fast you are shooting, if the hopper runs out of paint you will not get any breaks as a result of the Halo. This approach is so unique that we have applied for several patents pertaining to this.
Reduce jamming and fix jamming problems that occur
How many times have you sat in a bunker with the Halo blinking red/green? It's jammed and now you have to fight with manually fixing the jam using your finger or the rip drive (if you have one) and turn the hopper off and back on. 5-10 seconds have easily gone by with a marker that is down. In X-ball, you probably just got bunkered!
The Equalizer's patent-pending motor control hardware and logic not only reduces the chance of jam occurring in the first place, but also has the ability to know when a jam has occurred! If a jam does occur, the motor is reversed to clear the jam and then the drive cone is wound back to the same position without putting excessive pressure on the stack of balls! This anti-jam logic detects a jam and clears it in as little as 1/4 of a second!
Detecting any type of paint
Everyone knows that the Halo has a problem seeing dark colored and transparent paintballs. The Equalizer board's 10 bit ADC and programmable eye power level allows you to use any type of paint. The circuitry is so sensitive that it can determine the amount of time between balls falling into the breech, even between two balls falling together.
Reduce battery consumption
Unlike the stock board, the Equalizer is OFF when it is turned off and does not drain the batteries just sitting in your gear bag. Although power consumption is relatively low with stock board turned "off", you will find after a month of sitting that your Halo-B's batteries are very depleted.
The stock board uses old microprocessor technology and motor control logic to control the motor speed. The motor frequency is 100Hz, which means that the motor is turned on and off 100 times per second. Although this might sound fast, it's not! The efficiency suffers greatly and you do not have much resolution for controlling the motor speed. The efficiency equates to how much battery life you get. The Equalizer board's engineers came from the R/C market, having designed numerous products for the R/C industry including electronic speed controls used for R/C cars and planes. The Equalizer board's PWM motor frequency is 20,000Hz! The efficiency is enormously better than the stock board, giving you a battery life of several times of what you get with the stock board! The Equalizer for the Halo might be the only product in paintball that actually pays for itself in battery savings!
Extend motor life
By using a high frequency PWM motor control pulse, the motor brushes are not subjected to high current startups like with the stock board. A lower current startup reduces brush arching, which pits the motor's commutator. Lower current startups also reduce power consumption, saving battery life. A high frequency pulse allows you to drop the startup current without sacrificing the needed initial startup motor speed.
Extend drive cone life
By having complete motor control feedback, there is no need to wind the drive cone up for some arbitrary period of time. It is the constant winding (without stopping before excessive pressure develops) that causes the drive cone pin and fins to break off.
Support for new high-tech batteries
With the recent release of high power lithium-polymer (LiPo) batteries, electronics can now be powered by light weight and long lasting power solutions. A three cell pack (4.2v peak each cell) generates roughly 12.6 volts and is ideal for this application, but this voltage is too much for the stock board. Many people have been doing a mod to their Halo that uses two 9v batteries in series (18 volts) and the result is a lot of burned up boards! Other companies are also offering Nicad and Nimh battery packs with higher output voltages also damaging boards as well as the motors. The Equalizer can handle up to 35 volts (and up to 20amps of current), making it an ideal candidate for a LiPo conversion. We will be offering a LiPo battery pack when the Equalizer board is released. The battery will last an entire tournament week (a dozen or more cases of paint shot) on a single charge with the Equalizer board!
Dual hopper support (Halo-B & Reloader)
The Halo-B has an optical ball sensor ("eye") system and the Reloader uses sound activation. The Equalizer board supports the eye system, but instead of using a microphone to "hear" the sound of the marker firing (like the Reloader does) we developed a custom piezo-electric sensor that we call the "EVS(tm)". The EVS(tm) generates a voltage proportional to movement of the sensor. Sound itself will not trigger the sensor, so a nearby marker can not trigger the hopper. As an added bonus, if the eye system fails or is deliberately disabled, the EVS(tm) will take over and allow you to keep feeding. Realistically, an optical sensor system is a better method as the computer can correlate the required motor speed with the rate at which the balls are being put into the breech, however, knowing how fast the motor is spinning, its rotational position, and how many rotations are necessary to load a single ball, the computer can calculate the feed rate with a fairly high degree of accuracy.
Make it adjustable
Just like every Equalizer board, we give the user the ability to adjust settings to suit their needs. The stock settings will always outperform what a marker is capable of shooting (today), but we think ahead and give the users what they want... tweakability! The programming is similar to all other Equalizer boards, using LED flashes and button presses to check and change settings.
Keep it affordable
It doesn't make much sense to spend $100+ for a hopper and buy an upgrade board that is nearly the same price as the hopper! The Equalizer board will retail for less than $50.
The Equalizer board will also come with a new back plate sticker.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Left - µEQ shown with a U.S. dime (production model will be 75% smaller!), Right - µEQ with AKA Viking header
Left - µEQ shown with Intimidator header, Right - µEQ with AKA Viking & Intimidator headers
While the competition is still trying to play catch-up with our technology, and are busy copying things that we invented (trigger programming, Debounce(tm), Forced Eye Modes, etc.) we have been taking hardware to the next level.
The µEQ(tm) [micro-Equalizer] is the latest hardware that we are close to releasing. This hardware features a CPU that is twice as fast as anything we previously have used, offering a hardware level trigger scan rate of an unprecedented 2 million times per second! The pictures shown above are of an early prototype that is nearly twice the size as our current model!
This new board is a universal board. Simple header plugs for whatever application you might need (DM4, Intimidator, Viking, Shocker, etc.) will be readily available. By using a single board for all markers, we can keep the cost of the board down due to the large volume. The various header plugs will be priced based on their complexity. We hope to keep the board itself in the sub-$50 range!
Remote updating will be possible using our new patent-pending communication interface. This interface offers a simple wireless solution for updating boards, obtaining information, and tweaking settings. A simple plug-on adapter for the Equalink will be available. No more opening the grip.
Of course, all of the normal features that you come to expect from Equalizer boards will be part of the standard programming.
from www.wickedairsportz.com
discuss.
