Lazer Tag Team Ops

Battery Jiggle Lockup Problem

Sometimes it is possible to knock your Tagger hard enough (or swing it up or around fast enough) to force the batteries on the left side of the Tagger to compress the spring at the front end of the battery tray. When this happens, the batteries break contact from the other end, which is the +4.5 Volts which feeds the processor. The result is often a "lock-up" of the processor, forcing users to reset their Tagger. This is a big pain in a hosted game. A simple solution to prevent this from happening is to fashion a little spacer to keep the batteries pressed back towards the user on the left side. It has to have a little cutout in the center for the spring to poke through:

I made mine from two pieces of flat sheet styrene from the hobby store -- one was 0.060" thick and the other was 0.015" thick. That gave me just over 0.075" thick when they were glued together with solvent glue, and that makes it fit perfectly snugly between the little "feet" around the spring and the negative end of the battery. It does not fall out when tipped upside down (which means the batteries can't move forward at all), but it can easily be pulled out by grasping it with a pair of needle-nose pliers or even a pair of tweezers (which means it isn't stressing the plastic tray). It just sits at the negative end of the batteries like this:

I will soon be publishing an electronic modification for the adventurous Modder, so keep looking back here from time to time! For more LTTO mods and ideas, visit the LTTO Yahoo! Group (click here)