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Tech index -> Custom Work -> Euclid upgrade board

I entertained the idea of producing my own upgrade board for Shockers and Nerves back in 2005. Ultimately the board was never mass produced, but it was still a veyr intersting project that had some unique visual features compared to other upgrade boards out there. Euclid boards were the first drop-in circuit boards that I built and programmed myself, so the boards hold a unique place in my head.

The ideas I had that would make my Euclid boards unique included some of these characteristics:
· Provie a simple way to increase or decrease setting parameters while at the same time being able to see how the setting is changed.
· Offer a large LED array that would strobe and pulse while the marker was idle. This is just a cosmetic thing, but I thought it would look cool.
· Isolated beam-break eye wiring harness for custom mods.
· Provide a test platform for marker experimentation on my own. (possibly to be used by others too)
· Simplistic programming (as the one who is programming it....users of the board wouldn't tell the difference). I'm familiar with Assembly code, which is the language I used for these and some other custom boards of mine. Most paintball marker controllers are programmed using C language, which is much more advanced than Assembly or BASIC, but I don't know any microchip language besides Assembly and I had no interest in learning any new ones. My background in robotics and factory automation means I already know enough languages as it is.

Version Alpha (early prototypes):
I worked with a few different versions of homemade circuits while I was developing the firing programs. The original Euclid prototype was made from a do-it-yourself soldering circuit project kit. It looked like this....

This prototype board was never meant to actually control a marker, but rather test out the programming needed to simulate a trigger/solenoid/eyes/LEDs. Keep in mind I had never programmed a paintball marker's controller at this point, so I needed to start basic and move up from there.

Version Beta:
Once I finished creating a functional circuit that would do most of my goals, I designed a prototype circuit board and had a small number of them produced for further testing. These boards could be theoretically used in a marker (they were the proper shape) but I never actually went that far with them. Instead they were used for testing only.
However the important feature that can easily be seen from the outside is the full LED array that lined one side of the circuit board. The goal for the project was to use 10 seperate LEDs which would be used for a real-time adjustment. There were three buttons located on the board, two for setting adjustment (increase/decrease) and another for entering programming mode and saving adjustments.

This version of the board could be interfaced with the upper board, but I would need to manually solder together a conversion harness between the two boards. This was a dumb idea on my part so I went straight for the real thing in the next version.
Here's one of my sample programs used to test the LED array: LEDtest3-3.ASM
I would post the actual firing program, but I can't due to contractual obligations from the time.

Version Gamma:
Hey it's finally 2006 and this was my New Years' gift to myself!

This version board was intended to be my "production version" if I ever decided to get them mass produced. I had another batch of these boards produced, this time more than enough if I decided to sell any to players on the ZDS team. My plan was to assemble three of them for testing, and this is ultimately the only three Euclid boards that were ever made functional. I snapped the bwloe pictures when I was about halfway through populating the third board.

These boards introduced a new feature: built-in beam-break eye wire connector located on the side of the board. At the time (2006) the Predator boards could use their own beam-break wiring, but the connector TAG decided to use on the boards was stupidly large and very difficult to create. The connector I used was the same as the ones used by Ions, so anybody could buy an Ion eye wire harness and chop it in half, thus giving them a pre-wired harness they could use with my board. This is much preferable to buying a $125 crimping tool necessary for making your own wire harnesses.

Anyway, these boards actually used a Shocker/Nerve wire harness connector at long last. I promptly installed the board in a Shocker and tried out a fullyauto test in the basement:

When it came to semiautomatic modes, my boards were very good. It took my quite a while to figure out how to program a true ramping mode. I could program it using other means, but I'm not an expert in any language used to program microchips, so it was a crazy challence for me.

The Future:
Well, as you probably have figured out, I never ended up releasing this upgrade board. The reason was simply because there were already enough upgrade boards available for these markers, most of which were probably better than mine here. At the time I was developing my Euclid boards (2006), you could already choose from Tadao, TAG Predator, FCP Reloaded, and AdvantagePB/Virtue boards. This is what I consider to be a "saturated market" so I saw no reason to try entering it. Now here's the dumb part: since 2006, Shocker/Nerve owners were also exposed to boards from Hater, Nox, SP, Nitro, new Virtue board, Virtue RL board, Virtue OLED board, and the new Tadao board. Why any of these companies would want to bother making boards for Shockers, well that's a pure money reason (besides for companies like Virtue and Tadao that were already invested in the market).

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