I’ve been interested in making my own PC controlled Airsoft turret for some time now. I’ve been searching through a lot of other people projects on the net and youtube and I think I finally have a good idea of what I want.

Component considerations

Airsoft guns

For initial testing I decided on getting a Crosman AS Pulse M74 Dual Power Mini from Wal-Mart. At the time of writing this little gem retailed for $19.97.

A few of the features that caught my eye are as follows:

• Full Auto firing mode
• Light weight (0.75lbs)
• Low Velocity (175 fps)
• Mod-able (a large portion of the gun can be removed without affecting function)
• Price (at roughly twenty dollars I’m not out much if its a flop!)

Pan and Tilt options

I’ve been keeping an eye glued on to www.ServoCity.com. I’m highly interested in trying out the SPT200 Pan & Tilt as well as the medium duty SPT400 Tilt System.

I’ll be ordering one or both here in the next week most likely. I’m leaning more towards the SPT-400 for its strength for future projects.

Processor

I’m a huge fan of the PIC microcontroller offered by www.MicroChip.com so I will definently use a PIC on this project.

I ordered a PICKit 3 programmer/debugger for programming the chip. I have an old PICStartPlus that I have used for projects mainly using 16F876 microcontrollers but its getting a bit dated. The PICKit 3 will allow me to use a lot of the newer PICs that are no longer supported by my old programmer.

I took a few weeks to do research on whether I wanted an ICD 3 or the PICKit 3. I was pretty disappointed on the amount of material out there covering the differences. In the end I decided on the PICKit 3 because , at least in my opinion, I doubted I would use many of the debugging features provided by the ICD 3 that the PICKit 3 didn’t offer. Time will tell if it was the right decision.

As for which chip I haven’t decided yet, it will probably be a 18F series most likely.