ATTEN-HUTTT!!! - Unmanned ground assault!!!

ATTEN-HUT maggots!!! On your feet and pay Attention!!!

**edit June 18, 2011 - added video:





Today, during my stop through Value Village, I stumbled upon THIS!!!



For $3.99, how could I resist? I had never seen the likes! It's an RC controlled 12 shot turreted unmanned vehicle of espionage like destruction!... potentially.



At first I was slightly disappointed. It only attained a maximum range of 6 feet! Pretty sad. But I knew I had the ingenuity and intestinal fortitude to transform this impotent little toy into a beast of hard intentions!

So I proceeded to dismantle this diamond in the rough.



The turret came off relatively easily, nothing a degree in Astro Physics...or watching every single episode of Macgyver couldn't handle.

Opening the turret, revealed it's internal secrets.



Here's the heart of it.



Upon further inspection, it seemed the only real improvement that could be done was the removal of the air restrictors. Look at those nasty things. It's like your moms hair in the middle of a humid day in Ju-ly.



Like bringing your dog to the vet, I neutered that son-of-a-gun! Dremel goes, snip-snip,Buzz Buzz!!!



Using Goop and hot glue, I nested 3.5" barrels in place using the cover as a guide. This stage actually proved quite difficult. Timing was crucial to the success of the barrel installation.



Here it is with the cover in place.



Before putting it all back together, I padded the plunger head with a rubber pad. The seal was pretty close to 100% so I left it alone. I chose not to widen the holes because I didn't feel the turret to plunger seal had the required surface area to cover the widened holes sufficiently. People have had this problem with the current Swarmfire mods.



Here it is after putting it all back together.



Ranges at a 45 degree angle (the turret is fixed at that angle), average at about 45 feet!!!

Still some tweaking to be done. Some barrels don't fire very far. It's probably the seal. All in all, a worth while mod.

Now drop and give me 20!!!

Check out those biceps! HOT DAYUM!

Lol I love the idea. I'd be worried about someone just running out of the line of fire and kicking it over

What a beast!! Sweet find, MIG (:

Wow thats cool.

I used to have something similar when I was little.

lol.. MIG you silly

Anyway nice find!

- Brad

That's totally awesome, if not slightly unusual. Now next to install a small camera and a screen on the remote...

Nice Mod

Find the rainbow in the first and last picture

This automobile looks so sexy, soo..

WE WANT VIDEO!

What's the remote operating range of the unit?

It would be good, if the firing component could be positioned to the side.

Then you could do a drive-by or pull some circle strafing.

Epic work

Awesome work. Would love to see a firing test video hint hint

That is absolutely awesome!

Haha thats fantastic, 45ft out of that little sucker.

You have great insight looking at things. Like you did when you spotted the TS and the 8-shot blaster together, which created the Octo.

I think when people are out there shopping, they will be looking more closely.

Great mod mate.

That is sexy as how far is the range for the remote? also you should give it a good paintjob like army camo.

Well it already does look pretty hardcore. Especially with MIG behind it.

That's actually pretty cool, REALLY cool for the price!

How about throwing a bit beefier spring and some Trustfire batteries into the equation?

How far could you be able to drive that before it goes out of range?

mull wrote:What's the remote operating range of the unit?

It would be good, if the firing component could be positioned to the side.

Then you could do a drive-by or pull some circle strafing.

That soldier, is an excellent idea.

watchadoin wrote:That is sexy as how far is the range for the remote? also you should give it a good paintjob like army camo.

Luke wrote:How far could you be able to drive that before it goes out of range?

The remote control range of this thing isn't very far. Only about 20'. But I've been told I could increase the range by going to RC forums to find out how.

A camo paint job isn't in store for this thing. It will most likely be meant only for in door wars. If I wanted to camo it, I'd paint it to look like a hardwood floor.

Luke wrote:That's actually pretty cool, REALLY cool for the price!

How about throwing a bit beefier spring and some Trustfire batteries into the equation?

I don't have access to those batteries at the moment and the spring is actually really strong. It's very similar to a Wipeout/PistolSplat spring.

makeitgo wrote:

Luke wrote:That's actually pretty cool, REALLY cool for the price!

How about throwing a bit beefier spring and some Trustfire batteries into the equation?

I don't have access to those batteries at the moment and the spring is actually really strong. It's very similar to a Wipeout/PistolSplat spring.

The problem with the idea of putting more voltage into it is that at a guess there is only one set of batteries powering the electronics for the RC parts, the mechanism for the drive train and also the firing side of things.

So any voltage increase would without a doubt kill the RC side of the workings.

But once again MIG, your insane nerf brain has again showed us another piece of madness.

Do we like it? SIR,YES SIR

Private Gooni reporting for duty SIR

gooni wrote:The problem with the idea of putting more voltage into it is that at a guess there is only one set of batteries powering the electronics for the RC parts, the mechanism for the drive train and also the firing side of things.

So any voltage increase would without a doubt kill the RC side of the workings.

Depending on the base circuit design, it may be easily fixed with a voltage regulator, a trimpot and some wire, which would be a total to a few dollars, methinks.

Or have 2 sets of batteries, plus a relay.

mull wrote:Depending on the base circuit design, it may be easily fixed with a voltage regulator, a trimpot and some wire, which would be a total to a few dollars, methinks.

Or have 2 sets of batteries, plus a relay.

Uh ohh!! I get easily hooked on modding things. I don't know what you just said but it sounds interesting! Modding foam blasters is expensive enough a hobby. If I get hooked on modding RC cars too....I'll be $5000 past broke by the end of the month!!

It would be cool to mount the turret onto the bottom of a Longshot, but who doesn't want an unmanned car that shoots ppl

makeitgo wrote:Uh ohh!! I get easily hooked on modding things. I don't know what you just said but it sounds interesting! Modding foam blasters is expensive enough a hobby. If I get hooked on modding RC cars too....I'll be $5000 past broke by the end of the month!!

Ouch!

It's pretty cheap to get started.
It helps a bit, if they teach you the basic stuff in high school (electronics or physics), but it's not entirely neccessary, as the basic concepts are easy to take a grasp of.

Most people start off by messing around with LEDs or torch/flashlight globes (battery, wire, LED/globe, resistor and switch).

Right now, I'm testing with motors for little racing cars which match the physical dimensions of the stock Barricade motors, except they are much more powerful.

mull wrote:Depending on the base circuit design, it may be easily fixed with a voltage regulator, a trimpot and some wire, which would be a total to a few dollars, methinks.

Or have 2 sets of batteries, plus a relay.

Considering that you are novice in electronics (we can't be skilled in everything, can we?), I suggest 2 batteries + relay approach.

The voltage regulator idea, requires a tad more knowledge but removes the need for a separate battery, as you can use a beefier battery (I'm assuming a cheap toy would use a bunch of standard 1.5V batteries, so 3.7V lithiums would fit in).
The voltage regulator can syphon off a fixed voltage (in this case, just enough to run the RC), while leaving the rest of the volts alone to do other things (like the turret).

There's probably plenty of empty space in the cab compartment to whack in the extra set of batteries, anyways.
It won't enhance the operating range of the unit, but it will make it fire faster and be able to use heavier springs (don't know how much the motor would withstand the extra load though).

It appears that you can remove the turret motor from the main circuit board, which makes things simpler.
This means you can replace it with a relay.

A relay is basically an electronically activated switch, used in this case, to turn on a separate circuit (an overpowered turret motor system).
Instead of the turret being turned on directly, the relay gets activated and flicks the switch, for the independently powered turret.

As the power supply to the turret is independent to the RC car, there is less siginificant performance loss (the relay doesn't use much power), if you try to shoot and scoot at the same time (depends on initial circuit design).



Of course, there's still the issue of limited operating range.
Now, if there's a hobbyist grade RC car with a secondary function, then a fusion mod would be possible...
Good RC car + $3.99 turret car sacrifice = WIN

Does the RC and turret slow down, if you try to do both at the same time?
What and how many batteries does it use?

ADF chocholate rations = WIN

Nice mod though, but if your trying to be a drill sergeant your missing a nice campaign hat.

Added video of this thing at the top of the page... Or click HERE !

Pop goes the weasel!

I love your videos MIG. You're a real personality

I'm going for some indoor warfare in the next few days. This thing looks so impressive that I'm tempted to go out looking for one!

absolutely legendary, just speechless. Keep up the great work.

makeitgo wrote:Added video of this thing at the top of the page... Or click HERE !

I fixed the link in the quote but yes, great video!

So funny watching it shooting everything. I love it.

I thought something like this would be fun to modify. I cant believe amazon are selling these for $74.00!! They must have seen your video mig, and bumped the prices up!
Great video MIG.

Great Video! Nicely done

Thank you for providing me today's first chuckle of the day.

I woke up this morning, laptop was still on from last night. Gmail account says-"MakeItGo has just uploaded a new video".

Didnt expect to laugh so much in the morning that early. 0800am on a sunday is early.