The HUD Mod

After some inspiration from Mike on the LTAG boards, I decided to make use of an otherwise useless (as it never gets used) HUD unit by taking it apart and using the pieces in a new way. I did very much what Mike did in this post, but took it a couple steps further. I chopped off the majority of the tube for the LED display (almost all the way to the LEDs) so that it's not so big, and doesn't need the lens. And I wired a single in-ear headphone to the wires for the HUD speaker. Problem #1 is to determine the best location for the LEDs part. At the moment, it's tucked between my red dot sight and the LCD screen of the tagger. This works well so far, I just need to make it a little more stable and less likely to shift while playing. Problem #2 is the wires. I guess I'll have to tape or glue them to the tagger in some fashion, though I don't know if I'm ready to scar the tagger that badly yet. Problem #3 is that the speaker volume is much too loud for an in-ear headphone, and there's no way to adjust the volume. It was designed to be away from the ear on the HUD, which works well. But with this mod, there's no more goggle thing to have the pieces hang off of. Anyway, here's the pics.

Here's a view through the red-dot sight. Yes, it's accurate. The perspective created by the camera being so close makes it look way off, but it's not.

Another pic through the sight, this time with the HUD brightness turned down. The bare LEDS are plenty bright, even at the lowest setting. I haven't gone out in the sun with it yet, but there should be enough shade in the tube to be able to see them anyway.

This one shows the wires hanging in their loose and care free manner, and the headphone I connected to the wires. Like I said, it works great, just too loud. Anyone know how to reduce the volume? A resistor of some kind, maybe? Maybe there's a pan-pot on the tagger's mobo that I can turn down?

And just for fun, the parts shot, showing all the bits and screws left over from taking the HUD apart.

Finally, here's a shot of the modded HUD by itself. I've used heat shrink tubing for the headphone wires, then covered all the open wires with self sealing silicone tape from Radio Shack. Cool stuff, that, just wish it were black.

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