Random Thoughts on Electronic Targets

[Orpanaut]

It's interesting to see that there's so much competition in the field, although this also makes it clear that the high prices aren't just due to the high cost of Swiss labor.

I also see evidence of innovation, since the Meyton system uses light (rather than sound) to locate hits on the target.

[methosb]

The scores for Beijing were updating live shot by shot, was that plugged straight into their targeting system (the stats themselves not the display)? If so I don't see why this can't be set up to be used for inter-club/city/state/national competitions.

[David Levene]

The scores for Beijing were updating live shot by shot, was that plugged straight into their targeting system (the stats themselves not the display)? If so I don't see why this can't be set up to be used for inter-club/city/state/national competitions.

The only problem with doing that on the Sius Ascor system is that someone needs to turn on the central computer (if fitted) and set up competitor and match details. It's not a difficult procedure, but someone has to do it.

[Welsh-shooter]

I think part of the reason why electronic targets are so expensive is that the manufacturers tend to use proprietary electronics, which are expensive to design and manufacture and incur a higher cost for software develoment.

Aside from the target detection unit, IMHO the rest could use off-the-shelf components - micro or nano ITX boards are now really cheap as are small monitors etc. These also have networking, wireless, video etc built in as standard. Using these components the majority of the work would be in software, which is no great effort or cost.

Economics would suggest that the reason why there are so many manufacturers in such a small market is that there are good profits available even on very short production runs.

[rrpc]

I don't believe that the electronics are the most expensive parts of these units. Software and software development would seem to be engaging most of the resources of these companies. Once you have the circuit boards designed, they would be easily and cheaply reproduced and even upgraded.

The other major cost would be in the materials and tooling for the metal parts. If you look at the product range from Megalink for example, they have (I think) eight different types of target head for different disciplines up to and including 300m ISSF. When you look at the potential market for these units, you can understand why they may be quite expensive to produce.

We have 8 of their 4K560 target units in our club which can be used for anything from 10m air up to 100 yard rifle and everything in between (including pistol - all flavours). The units are made mainly from aluminium with hardox steel cover plates. This stuff is not cheap. I recently priced Hardox steel in the UK and a 2m x 1m sheet of 6mm was costing £650 ex works!

Incidentally, the software that Megalink provide for audience viewing is capable of delivering the data to a web site via FTP. I have never actually tried this feature because we don't have web access at our range, but it would seem to answer the requirement for an online international match.

[David Levene]

I have just noticed that Sius Ascor have a new electronic target for airgun, the "Optiscore".

It would appear to operate without a paper roll, and I assume from the name, optical shot position sensing instead of acoustic.

Has anybody played with one yet?

[j-team]

[quote="David Levene"]I have just noticed that Sius Ascor have a new electronic target for airgun, the "Optiscore".
quote]

David, where did you find see this. i just checked the Sius website and can't find it?

[David Levene]

I have just noticed that Sius Ascor have a new electronic target for airgun, the "Optiscore".

David, where did you find see this. i just checked the Sius website and can't find it?

The SA941 Brochure on the Sius web site.

I was alerted to it by their advert in the latest ISSF news.

[Hemmers]

Having said that, it's not *that* huge an investment. Look at the cost of paper targets, especially the larger 25m pistol and 50m rifle ones. Because these costs are incurred on an ongoing basis and in small chunks, it doesn't look too bad, but if you add together the cost of targets for a medium sized club, then you're into pretty big money over a period of years.

Yes, but how much do the rubber scrolls cost for electronic systems? You still have a consumable expense after the initial outlay. Unless a scroll is cheaper than the equivalent number of card targets (I don't know how much they cost or how many shots they last), then you have increased consumable costs for the club.

[sparky]

As someone who works for one of the UK's leading academic computer science research centres, I know that producing innovative (and entertaining) display of shooting results to spectators would be a trivial matter, given only slight changes to the format of shooting events.

IMHO the real missed opportunity of electronic targets is the ability to network them globally - what other sport can offer the potential of competition in real-time with an almost unlimited number of formats to a global market at the press of a button? Most of us have shot in postal competitions both nationally and internationally, but electronic targets could bring a whole new dimension to this.

With a bit of imagination and financial backing, boring old target shooting could turn itself into the first "internet" sport.

Suggestions on a post-card please...

This would be a fantastic idea!!! Heck, if they can do it for PS3 and XBox at a much cheaper rate using arguably much more expensive technology, why shouldn't they be able to do this cheaply for air pistol and/or air rifle?

[Guest]

Because the cost of development of game consoles is amortized over millions of units, while you could only hope to sell only few hundred electronic targets.

[Welsh-shooter]

At the right price and if most clubs were to purchase at least a few units, I think you could reasonably expect sales globally to be in the thousands or possibly much more than this.

The only real challenge is to manufacture the target detection unit at a low cost, the rest is just software, which would need so little processing power that it could be run on any old PC and there are millions of these that clubs could pick up for next to nothing.

Networked across the Internet this could run like a gigantic real time postal competition, in which case the real money to be made, would not come from selling the electronic targets but running the competitions portal itself.

I have asked our University researchers to come up with ideas to minimise the cost of building the detection unit...

[AAlex]

One obvious approach to a novel electronic target would be to use CCD imaging to capture the silhouette of the passing projectile. Napkin calculations show that the clock rates of modern line-scan cameras are more than enough to image a passing bullet. Since this is so simple (in theory), naturally it has been patent-squatted. Not a problem, however, since the patented method uses two cameras, while with some intelligence you can get by with just one.

The cost of unit would be: several hundred bucks for the camera + frame grabber; lets say two hundred bucks for the housing / assembly parts. But add the costs of running the company, development/maintenance/warranty/employee-compensation/taxes/insurance and you're looking at your "normal" price range of over 1.5k.