Marty Boren

martyboren@gmail.com

Laser tag

I've been working on developing a simple, durable, and cheap laser tag system for the past 2 years. I'm hoping to make a whole bunch of these and run big games and lend them out to kids birthday parties and stuff.

I'm currently finishing assembly of my latest round of prototypes and hoping to organize some games in October. Everything is working well in playtests (you can reliably score hits at 70-100ft!!).

It's been such a long journey getting to this point, and it's really exciting to see it all finally coming together! There's nothing better than watching people have fun with something I built.

My first portable prototype! I just hot-glued everything directly to a 1x3.

Instead of a laser, I use an infrared LED focused by a lens. I found a lens that rests perfectly on the lip inside of a 1" PVC coupler.

The LED sits in a hole drilled in the center of a wooden dowel that fits nicely within 1" PVC pipe. Credit for this lens assembly design goes to AnotherMaker on YouTube. It's really perfect for this application and saved me a lot of time!

I've kept the design as modular as possible so that if something breaks in the field, it is easy to swap parts around and replace stuff without any tools. This also makes it easy to try out new designs and incrementally upgrade my prototypes.

Over time, I've shrunk the design and moved all the electronics inside of the enclosure.

PVC has been great for prototyping: it's incredibly durable, easy to source, and easy to machine with simple tools. In the future, I may explore 3D printing the case, but for now I really like keeping the design more accessible.

Players wear a vest that has an array of sensors and LEDs to indicate which team they are on.
The vests are currently made out of cardboard and webbing straps. If I ever increase my budget, it will all go to the vest; I would love to have more sophisticated lighting effects and vibration.

It's not pictured here, but I've recently replaced all the vest electronics with custom PCBs.

In the future, I intend to replace the cardboard with fabric and encase more of the electronics to give it more moisture resistance. I don't need it to be water proof, but you should be able to set it down in wet grass without problems.

Holiday dinosaurs

I built this holiday scene with my mom. We used a projector to trace the designs onto plywood, cut em out with a jigsaw, and zip-tied them to landscaping stakes. They've held up great outside, and neighborhood kids go absolutely nuts when they come out every year.

Murphy bed

A twin bed takes up about half of the space in my tiny bedroom, so I built a wooden bed frame that folds up against the wall. This gives me space to use the room as a little workshop for electronics and small woodworking projects during the day.

CAD model

As the bed folds up, the headboard also folds inward and slides out of the way. I modeled this with OpenSCAD to make sure the moving parts would have enough clearance.

Folded up

When the bed folds up, the hinges go just a little farther than 90°, so it won't fall down on its own. I originally thought I'd need an additional latch to keep it in place during earthquakes, but it's remarkably stable, so I've kept it as is.

Unfolded

I "built" the mattress from sheets of mattress foam of different densities that I picked out. I needed it to be as light as possible while also being supportive enough for me. Shoutout to /r/MattressMod for pointing me in the right direction!

Janky scrapwood furniture for my bedroom

Corner shelf

Tool organizer

Soldering station

I've since replaced this with a nice motorized sit-stand desk, but sometimes I miss this lil guy.

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