Date Started: 4/2024 Date Finished: 7/2024 Current Dispositon: In Use, as scary as that sounds.
Evil Wall-E is a semi (I want to keep it that way) autonomous turret with both visible light and thermal optics, scene lighting, a tippman paintball marker and an airsoft rifle. It is entirely self-contained with an obscenely large battery can can maintain a station without power for over 18 hours.
Why? Well I found a paintball marker at a garage sale, then had a couple old thermal IP cameras i got cheap off ebay a couple months earlier... so the idea was obvious then... right?
It can be left to its own devices to try its hand at area denial, or you can plug an XBOX controller into a laptop, sign on its' broadcast wifi network, and look for squirrels yourself.
It has the following, industry standard features:
- A sleek Web UI complete with all relevant system info, such as air pressure, voltages, round counts, and other system states.
- Remote re-cocking mechanisms and other problem solving features to keep wall-e in the fight.
- An attached speaker, playing various samples from the terrifying drones in the Tom Cruise movie, Oblivion.
- A separate power delivery system for the airsoft marker, making sure it's always ready to hurl little plastic balls.
An Important Note
This system, especially the hardpoints and movement servos, were deliberately designed and chosen to not be able to sustainably use an actual firearm or any lethal platform. So for question one of "can you put an actual gun on it" - the answer is yes, for a little bit, but that's about it and there's nothing to actuate the trigger... but if you did ever make that work, the servo arm would snap the first time you tried to move it, and if you did manage to get it to fire, it would break off the hardpoint.
Videos: An early test when I was still remembering to film things UI of Dry Fire test (depleting air)
