DIY Steel Plate Impact Detection

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Originally Posted by janleroux

For a month or two I have been tinkering with this steel plate impact detection idea for when you go practising target shooting on your own. I found it sometimes difficult to hear a hit (earplugs) and to see the hit (recoil or dare I admit it - old age). I got it working and today I took it to a dog-walk park with my son and tested it all the way to 350m.

Here is a video of it working in my workshop: https://youtu.be/7acWxYwWrTg

50m test: https://youtu.be/jYXJJbm0JaI

100m test: https://youtu.be/ID9QplH6RR8

200m test: https://youtu.be/JgVao70CrxY

350m test: https://youtu.be/f0KK7jSD3as

I tend to over-think/over-engineer things, so what sort of range would one need to make it work at to be really useful - will 2 km be enough?

Any all ideas and feedback appreciated.

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I think it would be useful to have a relay to power a bright Strobe. Is it possible to get the plans or even buy a set up from you? A 1000 meter range should be sufficient for my purposes but your suggested 2KM would be ideal.

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Originally Posted by Rebel Grey

I think it would be useful to have a relay to power a bright Strobe. Is it possible to get the plans or even buy a set up from you? A 1000 meter range should be sufficient for my purposes but your suggested 2KM would be ideal.

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Still work in progress - like most of my projects I get side tracked and the projects evolve into something different. This project is no exception (unfortunately).

Current setup works well with 22LR. Current version does not have a strobe light, but it has two high-bright RGB LEDs that means I can use the same receiver with multiple plate detectors and assign a specific colour to each one.
Centrefire cals have created some issues especially with smaller plates on shorter distances - the impact shock created all sort of issues. Shooting antennas off turns out to be a real problem similar to finding methods to reliably install the impact sensors on existing plates.

I am working on a revised prototype that we plan to test in about 2 months. I will post on here when I get it working reliably.

We’ve been using the magnetospeed ones for about 3 or 4 years. I rebuilt steel mounts bolted to the target for them as we shattered the plastic ones that came with them, and the Velcro was useless. We keep them on the targets on the range 360 days a year, replace batteries once a year. They have a few sensitivity settings but found big cals set them off when flying past the target even at 2km. So the solid mount stopped that as they are on the low sensitivity settings, have no problem 6.5 creedmore setting them off at 2km.
I made the same mounting system and protection for the targets I made for the military.
I’ve seen units fall off from Velcro at 1000m then someone shot it when lying on the ground.
I have a home built one made by a local guy. Works ok. Needs a better mounting system than the magnets they used as it just fell off. You have to turn it off each time though. The magnetospeed ones have a sleep mode.
We used other ones made locally once upon a time too that used a camera flash off to the side, but still had to be taken off each day.
The magnetospeed design took out the 1 hour range prep time putting up flashers.
Sparrowhawknz