The Future

Thanks to everyone who has expressed their excitement and enthusiasm for the projects Dustin and I have been working on. The Zombie Sensor, NOMAD and the Echo Base are all projects we're committed to and extremely excited about.

Unfortunately the processor we have been working with, the Atmel ATmega328u (the one used in the popular Arduino Uno series) just doesn't have the horsepower and specs we need. The vision we have for everything is bigger than what this processor can handle.

In addition to this, my programming skills are not advance enough to keep moving us in the direction I'd like to go.  The vision is pretty awesome, but getting there is going to require changes and more help.

As such, I'm happy to announce the newest member to the LT-MMO development group... Ryan "Izzy" Bales! Izzy is a long time Lazer Tag enthusiast and Software/Hardware genius. Ryan and I share the same vision for various "enhancements" we'd like to add to our favorite Hasbro Lazer Tag gear - it made sense for us to team up.

After much discussion with Izzy about the problems using the ATmega328u, for the NOMAD and Echo Base, we have decided to change the processor and move to the more robust ARM chip.  There are many versions of the ARM out there, and we chose one has a similar price point tot he ATmega328u - so the final price of the NOMAD and Echo Base should not be affected.

The downside to this is that we are essentially starting over with our software code and the NOMAD and Echo Base projects will be delayed further. Izzy is currently writing various new libraries for the NOMAD that can be reused for the Echo Base. Once these libraries are finished, we can begin the actual main coding for these projects. While delays are a pain, we believe the end benefits will be worth it - especially if this means our products will run faster and more reliably than ever before.

There's a lot we want to accomplish with these gadgets, but we're taking everything one step at a time - so we appreciate your patience.  Stay tuned. Exciting things are on the horizon!