24/11/2020
Prints have been printed...
logistics have been logisificated...
Materials have been tested... the AWMS is ready for sale
/TLDR Sights will be going on sale on my discord: https://discord.gg/MfvGzxpZms, first batch of 10 will be sold for an early price of £150 /$200 each + shipping (little extra if you want extra power cables and the like) batches will be released periodically and price will likly slowly increase to final retail of around £180 (tbd as unseen costs such as shipping for components, tax ect may increase this for repeat production) as the batching process is refined and sped up, wait times planned for first batch of 2-3 months, will reduce as orders become more regular and new orders can be anticipated, after first few batches stock will be going up on a website too but that is being saved to work on firmware improvements before launch.
It is time... this project has been in my mind for close to 3 years now but only over the last 6 months have I actually been able to make significant progress thanks, in part to u/delta_129 and his amazing work on his round counter which can be found here.
V1 (which you can see here: https://imgur.com/gallery/IZpZ5r3) proved that the concept worked, that it was useful and helped with game play no end... but it was huge... it had a narrow field of view and was super impractical to use...
V2 was an improvement! it looked like this: https://imgur.com/gallery/mmW97oJ and whilst it was still huge it was awesome to use, if a bit out of scale for the smg i am using it on. it had a huge FOV and i will probably produce a big version of this for use with LMGs and BigBoi guns who may be far from their rail segment and who can match its huge size...
And now finally V3, the first version I'm putting up for sale. its appearance can be found here: https://imgur.com/gallery/vXvQSzJ now the sight is compact, rugged (with a new tougher resin) .
So what can it do?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyALzZhRaI&t=31s
well the core functionality of this unit is more or less the same as the tachyon round counter, it is after all based on its electronics, so what it has inherited from the tachyon is:
Real time round counting
compass
Hopup assist (is your gun level)
multiple round count profiles
battery voltage/percentage measurement
colour customisation
round delay and RPS calculation
Now it does have a custom firmware which has had a few upgrades:
all the information is displayed around a central reticle
4 different backgrounds for ammo bars and data layout (these are under development and will be completed before shipping)
10 different reticle designs adjustable independently to the background allowing for loads of customisation (same as above, under development)
custom hybrid compass display to combine cardinal and bearing values and to make it easier to read
How does it work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLOQknDL3qs
the biggest difficulty in this type of optic is presenting the image of what you want to see correctly focused for your eyes to focus on both the image and the target. I achieved this using the reflex sight method, with a 45 degree reflector to place the screen out of the way. so optically the light from the screen shines upwards, reflects off the 45 degree reflector towards the mirror at the front, this mirror is curved like a section of a sphere, this makes the light from the screen parallel and allows for co-focusing. the hard part was determining that this method would work, the implementation wasn't too difficult, however another hurdle did rear its head, zeroing. the screen isn't high resolution enough for digital zeroing to work so a mechanical method would have to be installed, unfortunately you ideally dont want to be moving the board around so i need a way, that can be 3d printed easily, to move a planar mirror in two axies. the method this uses is kinda tricky to get used to zeroing but basically i have two parallel bolts that push or pull on the bottom corners of the front mirror, the top is pinned on a pivot, if you tighten on and loosen the other the mirror pivots left to right, if you loosen or tighten both it moves the bottom forward and backwards and moves the reflected image up and down. whilst this is complex it does allow for a near seamless assembly as the front mirror is slid in from the front. it also allows for a user serviceable and macro assembly to be decently precise and reliable without being super fiddly and complex. the board its self uses an infrared light break sensor mounted to the end of the barrel and runs off the guns internal battery or has the option for a 9v battery connection or can be run of a peq mounted battery (but you lose the gun battery monitoring.
How will purchasing work?
to start with at least i want to be hands on with the ordering process, this allows me not to get snowed under with orders and i can keep people posted on the progress of their orders with ease whilst the process will be taking longer, stock will be released in batches of 10 or so. the wait time for an order is targeted at around a month and a bit (shipping parts from china) to start with but for potential issues with first iteration production it could be between 2-3 months.
stock will go up on my dscrd (link in commends cos bot) in a channel just for the purpose, the first 10 to comment they want one will get it then the chat will be locked until more stock or someone backs out, i will then send a form out to collect information for your order as well as sort out payment through either paypal or bank transfer if you don't have paypal, if we cant sort this within the day the stock will be reopened to others.
FAQ
here im going to respond to some of the best questions on my original form to collect interest so if you asked a question there answer should be below :-) :
1)open source. atleast initially i do not plan to release the files for the sight, not only do they represent hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds worth of experimentation and development that id like to recoup theyre also nearly useless... the board im using is not flashable at home and is using a custom modded firmware, whilst the base firmware for the tachyon is opensource and you could make something very similar to this off of that and i hope my explanation of how it works above would help others see how to produce this if you have any questions about making your own feel free to PM me
2) colour settings. the colour of most major components is totally customisable via RGB values
3) magnification. id love to make a magnified unit but the optics are confusing enough as it is without having to zoom, maybe one day!
4) material. the sight is made out of siraya tech tenacious resin, this was found to be the most impact resistant resin very close to the toughness of ABS but slightly flexible (especially when warm) but it does return to shape if left
5) recoil: i have used it for multiple game days on several different guns but not been able to test it on any extreme recoiling airsoft guns yet so if you want to run on your shoulder hurting GBBR maybe hold out a little while until i can test further, that being said ive had no issue with it holding zero for an entire game day!
6) shell colour: i am planning some basic shell colouration but cannot guarantee any until ive done further tests on strength and printability with different pigments.
7) I plan to ship anywhere i can. if this isn't illegal to own where you live (thats your responsibility to check) then i can probably get it to you, shipping will be at standard rates from the UK
8) rail riser: yes i can sort out a rail riser if desired
9) kit: I may offer a kit version for people to assemble on their own but not just yet
https://discord.gg/MfvGzxpZms
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