In my previous electronic targets post I had new info and I would like to share it with you.
I visited a shooting range for the Army few days ago and asked the technical people to explain to me how their electronic targets work, they explained the following:
When bullets penetrate the air they make waves in the air like when you throw a stone in the water you get circles around it which can be detected by aquostic sensors to determine x - y position of the shot.
They have 4 aquostic sensors in each target pit, 2 to measure the x distance, 1 to measure the Y distance and one in the front to see if the bullet hit the ground and got reflected on the target( so that it is not counted) they also have another sensor at the shooting pit to start timing of bullet.
there is a microcontroller board on each target pit with the combination of sensors it can calculate any target hit up to 1 meter square above the protected target pit.
target themselves are just pieces of special plastic (which when penetrated by 10 mm bullet the hole shrinks back to 1.5 mm) sticking up on 3 ranges 100m, 200m and 300m. the 100 m targets are the size of head and sholders of a big human being while the 200 and 300m targets are the size of a big human being to the waist.
after the bullet position been calculated it is sent to the main computer screen using fiber optics to be processesd.
This technology is 25 years old and they are looking for replacements.
It is still unclear weather I will take the project or not, they are still looking into it.
Regards
Mahmood