From a tech standpints they're pretty easy, it's basically a screen displaying what a sensor feels. I suppose the sensor feels the spring load/tension and derives the ammo quantity from that.
Realistically speaking, the screen could also be a B/W OLED screen set at a viewable enough brightness, not to be seen at night
The problem is making one reliable enough and cheap enough while actually helping in combat. Easier to just add a transparent section of the magazine to see the remaining rounds. If you train properly you won’t need a dumb screen to tell you how much ammo is left
> If you train properly you won’t need a dumb screen to tell you how much ammo is left
I hate this argument so much. The whole point of technology is so the user doesn’t have to do stuff anymore.
“The autoloading pistol is a meme, just be a better marksman and you don’t need more than 6 rounds. Just use a revolver.” - you, 120 years ago
It’s not the main reason though, if you could make one cheap and very reliable they would be everywhere. If it adds hundreds of dollars to the cost of a gun and is finicky then nobody will want it.
Yeah, but that doesn't really apply to firearms the way you want it to. You can solve this same problem with a polycarbonate window in the mag. If you want to see advancements in weapons tech, go be a drone pilot or join the navy and have buttsex on a carrier.
>The whole point of technology is so the user doesn’t have to do stuff anymore!
This is why you become weaker, while I become stronger.
Posters ITT are basically the kind of fudds that 50 years ago would resist the M16 in favor of the M14.
um akshually automatics were wildly popular as soon as they got introduced and became even slightly reliable and rifles were more common than revolvers because ammo capacity and people with revolvers would carry multiple of them like a fricking pirate. same reason revolving rifles were/are unpopular compared to tube/magazine
>The problem is making one reliable enough and cheap enough
they are cheap and easy to make
>cheap
>easy to make
Pick one. To make one reliable, you need to track the follower position, which is not going to be cheap when you have to manufacture a bajillion mags in a total war. To make one cheap you need to keep it all on the gun, which means you can desync it
my boy
Useful, definitely. But I don’t know how useful. Any machine that consumes fuel always has a fuel gauge, so why not guns?
The round counter should not be displayed on the gun like that. It should be a separate reticle projected into the optic and on the same focal plane as the reticle. I remember we had a thread about this some months ago. Some anons suggested something like RFID from mag->magwell, conveying information on the distance between baseplate and follower, which would then communicate to the optic in some way.
>Any machine that consumes fuel always has a fuel gauge
No they don't.
>Any machine that consumes fuel always has a fuel gauge
Most lawn equipment and gas cooking equipment doesn't have fuel gauges.
Every lawn mower, edger, and leaf blower I've seen have a gauge stamped on the fuel tank.
>Any machine that consumes fuel always has a fuel gauge
Many of the motorcycles I've owned did npt have fuel gauges. In older bikes ypu got a reserve switch and just dealt with it if you forgot to switch it back after filling up.
>Any machine that consumes fuel always has a fuel gauge
I've owned motorcycles that didn't have a fuel gauge. They just start sputtering and you have to quickly reach down for the petwiener to switch to your reserve before you stall.
No, because people can count.
I've never seen a tool with a fuel gauge and only a few have integral dipsticks even
no. just like rpm gauges, and speedometers, after long enough you dont need them.
Yeah useful but not super useful. That's why you don't see them already. You can make one today but nobody is because there isn't a huge need for one.
Wrong board
No this is moronic video game shit and would break instantly on any real battlefield. Go away
>No this is moronic video game shit and would break instantly on any real battlefield. Go away
Are you a moron who doesn't think technology improves? It will be viable if small arms development doesn't stagnate.
You have to be 18 to post here
I'm probably older than your zoomer ass. Use your brain. Eventually the infantry is going to have electronic smart scopes like the one for NGSW but more advanced. Take that and imagine it including NV and/or thermal options plus other features. This fricker is going to need a good battery and it probably makes sense to have it somewhere in the gun powering the the scope and other devices through the sort of smart rail interface concept the Army has been toying with. That same battery can power an LED display which interfaces with some fancy magazine to read what ammo is left and if there is a round in the chamber. Might take at least a decade before you've got good enough batteries and everything is mature enough but it will happen eventually presuming civilization doesn't collapse.
Yes it will be a damn expensive rifle but even training and arming infantry is an expensive proposition these days unless you're just using them as poorly equipped disposable cannon fodder like the Russians are currently doing.
>eventually
Yeah the operative word being ""eventually"" buddy, if you were actually older than me you would remember that every time the army tries to do shit like this it never fricking works. Get real.
Nah man it’s pointless tactical larp. All this high tech shit is great when you’re posting on YouTube. All that thing is is another piece of tech that needs to be charged and maintained when you could simply learn to count.
It’s cool but not really
>Keep count of up to 30 or 31 shots in combat while you're possibly using bursts of automatic fire.
All of the smart scopes and lasers and fancy gadgets can break too doesn't mean they're worthless.
>electronics needs buff batteries to power a simple counter
Frick off LARPer.
>but muh technology
TrackingPoint XS-1. Neat idea. Terrible cost, and impractical except under tightly controlled circumstances.
Your ammo counter is a digetic design choice for vidya, since the player obviously cannot physically inspect a firearm in-game like one can in real life.
Even an ocular implant (somehow) synching with a bullet capacity sensor in either weapon (fricking KEK) or the disposable magazine (even more fricking KEK) would be subject to performance issues.
But if you want to go invent it, go right ahead. Don't expect any large orders though. You do sound exactly like a legislator who makes up gun laws without knowing the workings of a firearm.
You're a moron who ignored everything I wrote. Again look at the fancy fricking NGSW scope and tell me this sort of shit won't be viable within 20 years or less.
you can have round counters right now, it's just that no one who actually shoots guns wants it. there's a gorillion near trivial ways to accomplish it and yet it's relegated to hobbyist youtubers whose audiences don't even replicate the items. why do you think that is?
Because a good one will require a power source, sensors, and quality magazines that don't suck and this all costs money. Again wait till all of the shit on your rifle is powered by some internal battery probably in the stock through smart rails. Luddites will always find something to b***h about but the fact is even if you run out of power or something breaks there is no reason the rifle still can't mechanically function.
>a power source,
a 1$ CR232 button cell battery like goes in your red dot or keeps your BIOS intact in your computer
>sensors,
a few strips of conductive material and a 3$ programmable microcontroller
>and quality magazines
ok kek got me there, there has never once been a reliable STANAG magazine and i am being 100% serious
>it the fact is even if you run out of power or something breaks there is no reason the rifle still can't mechanically function.
this is already true of all these boolit counter concepts and you can already buy shot counter devices as it is that just clamp on.
>all of the shit on your rifle is powered by some internal battery probably in the stock through smart rails.
why do gun people think anything electronic/computerized has to be so complicated? with some extra wire and some nimble hands to twist them together you can already feed your flashlight, holo sight, and skittles warmer from the same 9v battery you cram into the foregrip or pistol grip compartment (you lose the space for a single fun size mars bar but sacrifices have to be made for progress)
also kek but i was thinking of a real one that was supposed to be display cases for convenience stores and stuff. LCD display that shows what's inside as fed by cameras, because ??????
>you lose the space for a single fun size mars bar
Unacceptable. Back to the drawing board. Give me my fricking Smart Rails.
Glass freezer are terribly energy inefficient. It probably costs less energy to have a camera and screen.
Just because you don't understand why things exist doesn't make you a visionary.
use? an opaque door then?
I think it’s funny these people brought up the LCD screen fridge as an example against round counters, when these are the exact type of morons that, when tasked with coming up with a round counter, think you will need lasers and recoil sensors and computers and it’s own power source
I guess anything past a red dot is witchcraft.
Ironically I prefer an etched reticle over red dots.
That's a myth.
You don't want soldiers to look at their gun during a firefight.
Might be more useful on a pistol rather than a rifle
They already exist to some degree
seems iffy so long as it requires anything inside the magazine, you'd need it in all your magazines and it must be much more resilient.
why does anyone bother replying to these shitty threads every month, it's lasergay tier moronation
It goes in the options field newbie, stop bumping
>Would bullet counters be really useful?
Yes, especially on machine guns. Someday it will be cheap enough to put it on every issued rifle. There's no reason not to put it on your personal rifle.
>b-but what if it breaks!
Then you have a rifle without a round counter.
>nobody ever needed it!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bravo_Two_Zero
>As more soldiers came out of the hut, MacGown aimed his rifle and fired but heard a click, indicating he was out of ammunition. It was apparent that Phillips had never reloaded the weapon after the initial contact on 24 January
>it's lasergay tier moronation!
Lasers are the best way to aim at anything between 15 and 150 yards.
>heard a click
>from an m16
Yeah no, that part of the story is completely made up Hollywood tier moronation. Do you own guns?
>doesn't know that you can close the bolt on an empty mag
Do you own non-airsoft guns?
The m16 and AR-15 lock open on the last round. there would be no click. It's not an AKM. You are a child.
Do M16s not have hammers where you come from?
Do m16's not have bolt hold open where you come from?
>As more soldiers came out of the hut, MacGown aimed his rifle and fired but heard a click, indicating he was out of ammunition. It was apparent that Phillips had never reloaded the weapon after the initial contact on 24 January
Literally user error, why would you not check the chamber if youre taking a gun off a dead guy? It could have been a FTF or FTE that killed him after all. A round count gimmick wouldnt have changed anything because he apparently didnt inspect the gun at all.
>Literally user error, why would you not check the chamber if youre taking a gun off a dead guy?
Give them some slack, they were stranded in the desert and freezing to death. Military technology strives to minimize the possibility of a user error. For every loud wiki-worthy story, there are thousands of bubbas forgetting to reload for hours.
If you're so smart, why didn't you understand what I said in my post?
>Yes, especially on machine guns. Someday it will be cheap enough to put it on every issued rifle. There's no reason not to put it on your personal rifle.
heres the thing
magazines in reality dont work like they do in videogames.
your extra mags do not magically reload themselves.
the knowledge that you have 15/30 vs an exact count of 12/30 doesnt help you.
you should be able to tell by feel at mostly full, half, almost empty and empty cause it clicked.
you do an admin load with a fresh mag you still have that 12/30 in your pouch or you just dropped it.
then you shoot a bit of the 30 get it down to 7 rounds. well now what? you stick in your 3rd mag.
now your reloads are a 12/30 and a 7/30. the frick are you supposed to do with that? they wont magically combine in your invisible backpack.
you either have bullets in the mag or not. the exact number doesnt matter unless that number is 0.
if you ever play games where the mags are tracked and dont combine themselves you learn how useless a round counter is.
you want a rough idea of how manybullets are in a mag so you know i need to reload, but reality means you wont always have a full mag on hand
Soldiers fighting in reality don't work like gamers sitting in their cozy chairs, you're right that there's no real need to know if you have 15 vs 12 rounds remaining, but you sure can benefit from having "RELOAD moron" flashing in your weary face if you have 5 rounds left and didn't reload for 2 minutes because something distracted what remains of your concussed brain.
>waow!!! It's just like my heckin vibeo games!!!!
I remember morons saying the same shit about holographic sights around 2004. Hell, around that time they were saying that grunts don't need ACOG and this "toy optics" a waste of taxpayer money.
Whoa, a superman with x-ray vision.
>fiddling with the box cover is just as good as having a round counter!!!
Yeah right.
did anyone ever say this? when Canadians issued ELCANs en masse in bosnia everyone was very impressed, and hobby shooters have loved scopes since they were introduced and it used to be very common to get collimator sights on hunting rifles. in the 70s and 80s many hunting rifles didn't even come with iron sights at all on the expectation that you would fit a scope or high-end peep sights
>did anyone ever say this?
There were 150 page long holywars about the stupidity of fixed 4x optics because closer than 400 yards iron sights are just as good, and beyond that you need more than 4x, and grunts don't need anything more sophisticated than iron sights, and how they will even fight in close quarters with that, and the glass will break, and it's heavy, and where will the carry handle go, every rifle needs a carry handle...
Next time you can just say you've never fired a gun in your life upfront and save everyone the trouble.
weird how many in this thread are disagreeing. i sure would've loved a convenient round counter in iraq. I never ended up in a situation where I was totally boned by not knowing exactly what was left in the mag, but there were times where I REALLY wish I knew how much was left in which mag. It can be hard to keep an accurate tally on each mag when the pressure and adrenaline is flowing. you fumble your partially loaded mags into your pouches as fast as you can during the reload and after 2-3 mags it becomes a blur. Sure this is inexperience and user error but a round counter would enable said individual to perform better in the moment imo
>I REALLY wish I knew how much was left in which mag.
this is important but the gun wont really tell you that untill you fricked up and loaded it. then you see hey you reloaded a shitty partial from earlier good job you get to reload again. hope the next partial you fish out of your dump pouch and stick in the gun has a higher number.
we have a way to tell how much is in your spare mags now. its called mag windows, transparent mags, witnessholes.
then weight which is unreliable.
>especially on machine guns
you can literally see the cartridges you frick
Dumb newbie
>It was apparent that Phillips had never reloaded the weapon after the initial contact on 24 January
user error and if he wasn't moronic he'd also notice his gun weighs significantly less and the bolt would have locked back if he tried any clearing drills
maybe on a machine gun it'd be useful but ones that are automated at all generally DO have a counter (generally relegated to vehicles with a fitted gun like aircraft but still, tv operated ones and the like do)
>he'd also notice his gun weighs significantly less
>30 rounds of 5.56
>weighs significantly less
DYEL?
You can just say you've never fired a gun in your life. It's a lot faster.
Im not really sure. In principle any extra information is valuable, but youre topping off mags in each lull in shooting regardless; and so knowing exactly how many rounds you have left could result in people getting killed by taking risks with half a mag when they should have just reloaded.
Yeah the Army always does that shit but that doesn't mean that the technology isn't advancing with or without their involvement.
Paul Harrell doesn't use one. Why should you?
rifle optic that connects to mag release, every time a mag is released it resets to full mag #
small low voltage e-ink that displays assumed ammo count
every recoil impulse subtracts one
pros
optic already has a battery to piggyback off of
no complicated mech in mag or in the way of regular operation
cons
ammo count cannot be fully relied on
Generally speaking, the allergy that gun people have to electricity is pretty fricking moronic as feels like it's holding back the entire idea of a firearm.
We could have firearms with inbuilt batteries, attachments that all draw from the same battery, digital rangefinders, electronic triggers, electromagnetic recoil systems and all sorts of sci-fi IFF shit with the current technology we have.
Instead, we have mechanical firearms with overly complicated mechanical flaws out of some fear the "The government might turn the electricity off and make your gun unable to fire".
>some fear the "The government might turn the electricity off and make your gun unable to fire".
thats never been the fear. if you ignore the legal aspects on why its not done it boils down to i have to actually carry around all this bullshit.i also have to pay for this bullshit.
fragile bullshit of questionable utility.
now when it matures and stops being large and fragile garbage more adopters increase. but it still doesnt make the gadget a must have.
>In March 2014, the California-based Oak Tree Gun Club was criticized for selling the iP1 at its shop, with lobbyists citing the New Jersey law to argue that its owners were acting against U.S. citizens' Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms. Despite evidence to the contrary, the club denied that it had offered the gun. Similar threats, including death threats, were received in May 2014 by an owner of Engage Armaments in Maryland.
that had nothing to do with a hatred of electronics and more a hatred of locked guns in the same way people hate s&w hillary holes.
the people making the ip1 werent trying to make a cool electric gun with a built in feature shooters actually want.
I'd say a system to prevent you from getting shot by your kid getting into your gun safe is actually pretty high on the list of things firearm owners should be worried about.
Statistically speaking, of course.
Did you even read the sentence before that in the Wikipedia article you dumb motherfricker? It's because New Jersey had a law that basically said sales of all non-smart handguns are banned after one has been on the market for 3 years and that piece of shit could have triggered it. Big surprise people were pissed off.
>New Jersey
>California-based gun club
The NJ law didn't care where the guns were sold. Just that they were on the market.
Since when are gun rights lobbyists upset at people doing things in the grey zones of gun laws?
Are they trying to get "pistol braces" banned too now?
>suppose the sensor feels the spring load/tension and derives the ammo quantity from that.
For maximum efficiency the sensor should be located in the receiver (or elsewhere on the gun) so that you dont need modified magazines to make it work
As far as what its sensing goes, the most logical solution to me is to have it count the number of shots fired and reset every time you swap the magazine, but that won't be able to account fir undercoated mags which I understand to be particularly common in military settings
>sensor feels the spring load/tension and derives the ammo quantity from that
I'll stop you right there. This won't work. It will never be consistent enough.
Yes, what
proposes is not feasible, but you could inlay a linear potentiometer into the magazine wall and put the contact on the follower.
Short circuits are likely an issue though.
Someone would get doom running on it on day 1.
It would be great, you swing the rifle to turn so it's like a VR control.
And on day 2 someone get's ND'd for standing where an Imp is on the screen.
What is the picture in OP from? Some sort of mock-up somebody built?
idgaf if it's useful or not, i just want to live in the aliens timeline
This is just a shot counter. It relies on you knowing exactly how many rounds are in the mag when you start (it's not uncommon for unreliable mags to be under capacity) and it relies on you not having things like partial failure to feed, depending on how you count.
Sounds like an insurmountable obstacle, it's over.
I'm the future, Grunts will be able to play Doom on their compy-scope
I have one of those mounted on my meme keltec 5.56 bullpup Halo larp rifle.
Hopefully it holds up, haven't shot it yet because life is crazy right now. But I think it'll be fine
I wonder if it could usefully report barrel heat and the need to quick swap for LMGs? Probably more useful there.
Standard doctrines exist about when to change barrels and usually you're supposed to do it long before it would ever really impact accuracy too much, let alone be hazardous.
Also you can probably tell when it's getting too hot because it will be significantly warmer near it.
If you're dead set on such a device, you can get one for 5$ off wish
no, it's totally unactionable information. either you need to be shooting, at which point you will keep shooting all your ammo in the mag, or you have time to reload, at which point you will.
what do you gain by knowing you have 17 shots left instead of 16?
Its more crucial if you are holding a position that might be attacked again, and dont know if you shot 24 or 29 bullets
you would reload in that situation anyway. it didn't help you at all.
Ideally you would reload, yes, but reloading takes time, which would put you at a disadvantage if someone bust around the door you've been holding when they hear you drop a mag
you still have a round in the gun and how many times do you expect anyone to be in a cqb holdout situation where they actually survive anyway?
Knowing exactly how many rounds is in your magazine is better than not knowing how many rounds is in your magazine. Even if it’s not a massive advantage, there’s still no reason to forgo it if it’s a cheap reliable system that doesn’t hinder anything
I think as
said, it would be more useful for situations in which you have multiple partials. And don’t know how many are in left in which mags. Even with windows or witness holes, the ammo count would eliminate the need to visually inspect the magazines before, during or after loading. Regardless if that action would only take a second or two. It’s all a matter of convenience, and to make actions, no matter how trivial, easier and faster. I seriously don’t understand why a lot of people would be arguing against that. If it’s durability, then build, conduct field trials, tweak, and so on. And even if it breaks somehow, well now you just have a fuctioning rilfe and no round counter, meaning you’re no worse off than you were before you had it. If it’s cost I could see where people are coming from, but even then it’s a non issue, as it it could be implemented when/if a new platform is adopted.
that's not something that actually happens unless you are intentionally leaving partial mags instead of shooting them dry. what is your proposed order of operations? reach into your dump pouch several times, plugging the mag into the gun to read it's fullness then discarding it to check another? that seems like a problem caused by the ammo indicator more than anything.
>reach into your dump pouch several times, plugging the mag into the gun to read it's fullness then discarding it to check another
If you have the time, sure. If not, you have an exact count in front of your face, so you can mentally prepare yourself for another reload in the case the one you picked out only has 5 rounds left. Regardless, you missed the point, it’s about convenience.
playing musical magazines is probably less convenient than shooting the next dude through the door twice then reloading. or just plugging in a heavy mag.
You are stuck in videogame-brain, where you aren't panicked nearly out of your mind, have some wounded dude behind you screaming, grenades, squadmates to help you watch the door, etc. the only use case you've managed to concoct is something practically no soldier will ever face, but you want to triple the parts count in the magazine, add batteries and electronics to the gun, contacts that will get dirty and wear out, a light source you have to fiddle with.
have you seen what service weapons look like? they get beat to shit because they don't spend all day in a safe. a glass screen wouldn't last a month in deployment.
this is why i think, at best, you might see ammo readouts on magazines themselves with some photovoltaic panel and a reflective lcd. all of the electronics are self contained into the magazine and it could probably be engineered into a reliable piece of equipment
but, again, what does that solve? that's gonna be a fricking expensive magazine and probably would only work for one cartridge type at a time
The electronics required for a magazine ammo counter would be less advanced than a mass produced 99 cent calculator. It’s literally just a potentiometer feeding a display
less advanced but significantly more precise in construction and engineering which would drive up the cost quite a bit which is probably why this was never attempted in the 80s
Bro it’s not that fricking complicated, you’re measuring the position of a follower in a magazine. There are a million ways to do this
now do it without quadrupling the number of parts.
Tie a string to the follower and wrap it around a potentiometer. Feed the output to the gun through the magazine catch
I thought it that in 30 seconds
Before there were computers people made electromechanical pinball machines, and now we have morons like you who have computers so deep in their ass that you can’t think outside the box anymore
The reason there aren’t commercially viable magazine ammo counters is because people don’t make them, and because shooters are moronic luddites that hate innovation because ‘duh military don’t use it’
you don't really know how this stuff works, do you? how does it reset when you load the magazine? how is it powered, what contacts are you using, where does this all go in terms of spacing?
you haven't thought of anything, you obviously can barely think.
“How does it reset when you load the magazine” Jesus Christ do you hear yourself right now? You’re a fricking dumb Black person
At worst your magazine will be 5% longer at the base to make room for the tech required for this. This technology is 50 years behind your fricking red dot, it’s not complicated at all. If you want to know why nobody makes them, read this thread and realize that 99% of these morons hate innovation because they think they have it good enough already
>my magic, self winding, self powered, potentiometer will send it's pixie signals through the aether to a 0part count board that will send a display signal without a battery to a screen that needs no power
I get it, you stock shelves for a living.
The stuff he's talking about is simple as shit. You can get a set of digital calipers that are a hundred times more accurate than what you'd need to count rounds in a magazine at Harbor Freight for $10. Ruggedizing a magnetic strip and reader and powering a readout is easily doable, gun people are just hyperconservative when it comes to new things, at least until gunstagram picks up on it. Do you feel the same way about those stupid overcomplicated scopes, NODs, radios, and a million other things soldiers carry?
I didn’t even consider digital calipers, yeah that’s even more elegant
Anon, are you familiar with a tape measure? You don’t have to wind up your tape measures, do you?
I’ll make this simple for you. Round counter is mounted on the rifle, and is connected to the magazine catch. The magazine catch has two pins which contact the magazine, for in and out. Power goes from the round counter through the magazine, in which the follower is attached to a cable under tension which acts on a potentiometer. The input signal is sent through the potentiometer and back through the output pin, which the round counter reads and converts into a round count. There is even an analog version of this exact concept which is commercially available. Please take a long walk off of a short pier. It’s morons like you that are responsible for engineering going down the shitter, because you mentally stunted fricking monkeys actually think of elegant simple solutions to even the most basic of problems
>engineering going down the shitter
what's the most complicated thing you've ever designed and made? you have quadrupled the part count of the magazine, all for a gimmick that has no value. you are the quintessential know-nothing never-designed-or-built-anything backseater. go do it. it's obviously trivial because you are so smart and have spent your life making things that actually work.
go do it, should only take about an hour. it won't have any impact on the cost, reliability, durability or weight of the magazine.
You are coping so hard holy shit please just kys and save everyone the second hand embarrassment
I'm impressed by your repertoire of successful projects. all those words definitely don't make you a pathetic all-talk-no-action moron.
I work in a welding shop. When I punch out today I’m going to be building a form 1 silencer from scratch using a custom tool I made for our punch. It presses the inside diameter, forms the baffle, and the outside diameter in a single operation. A machinist is making me an alignment jig to line up the bore with a 1/2 x 28 threaded nut, all parts will be plug welded into a stainless steel pipe. The result is a low parts count simple cheap silencer that can be made without requiring tight tolerance machined components. What have you made, anon
so what you're saying is you didnt make shit, you're assembling parts you bought from other people
That's your comeback? Hope you personally mined the ore that was used to make the guns you own.
>he didn't take globs of clay from the local swamp to build a forge and fire it with charcoal he made in a fire started with a bow drill composed of cordage he wound himself and fallen sticks he found and sun dried
If by parts I bought from other people you mean raw material I sourced from mcmaster, and by assembles you mean punched, formed, cut, and welded, than yeah
>you have quadrupled the part count of the magazine
So what? If the round counter fails then you still have a magazine, it's not like the entire thing will explode.
>all for a gimmick that has no value
Like scopes. Iron sights are far better since they have fewer parts. Night vision? Who needs it? Just eat more carrots. Radios? Just yell.
>you are the quintessential know-nothing never-designed-or-built-anything backseater
What the frick have you made, Debbie downer? I've at least milled a couple one off parts for machines at work, and have some experience with control circuits on industrial machinery, used to solder in new pots and pickups for my buddies' guitars too, which is about the level of complication we're dealing with here. Neither my idea or the other anon's is very complicated, there's just very little market for it because gun people hate anything new, at least until someone starts shilling it to /arg/ types.
Came here to post this.
Add a window to the top of the magazine, add a $5 rgb color sensor that checks the color of the tape to the mag well, and a rail-mounted rgb led that mirrors the color of the tape - that's it, you have a near-perfect and cheap solution that will work 2 months on a single battery.
Did I forget to reload? Nope, led on the rifle is green/Yep, led is yellow/red.
Do I need to know the exact number of rounds left? Which half-loaded mag in my pouches is the fullest? Look at the window on the mag.
Why not just run a current through a coil and have copper wire around it unwind as follower goes up? You can just measure the magnetic field with even cheaper sensor
I mean honestly the problem was solved a century ago when we adopted electrical switches.... You can make pic rel into a thin plate with 30 different settings, have follower unwind it
>one solid state sensor or a variable number of mechanical switches?
>btw this is on a platform that gets hot enough to catch fire if mistreated, shits hot carbon dust where it eats, and is mostly operated by hicks who will throw it around a lot
u dum
Okay smartass, how about we just a run current through the fricking magazine spring? We'll hook the gaps with resistors that may or may not touch the spring depending on the position of the follower. Then we calculate current in the circuit
It needs relatively complex and electromagnetically noisy electronics to induce the current in the wire, or unreliable physical contacts to work. And you still need a way to see the number of rounds in the unpowered magazine, why not piggyback on that existing tape.
>Add a window
coulda stopped there
>Okay smartass, how about we just a run current through the fricking magazine spring?
potential/resistance through a spring won't change significantly based on its tension afaik. a mag follower won't be tightly wound enough to generate significant magnetic flux either.
>We'll hook the gaps with resistors that may or may not touch the spring depending on the position of the follower. Then we calculate current in the circuit
You're thinking like you have to build this out of fricking LEGO or something.
watching /k/ try to design anything is always hilarious, you literally cannot think of the world except in terms of what you can get at Cabelas right this second with the most haphazard childish modications
If you REALLY want a solution, you could trivially use a conductive tab on the follower, an only somewhat conductive (or variably conductive if you wanna be fancy but it's not necessary) rail on the follower guide, and the position of the follower on the rail makes the rail work like a potentiometer.
Still, the key problem is
>a round counter is a shitty gimmick and even clear/windowed mags never really took off.
There's a million ways to do it gracefully and with a minimum of extra parts, almost none of them moving. But why? Other than looking cool, what does it achieve that being able to count doesn't?
>You don’t have to wind up your tape measures, do you?
I have. Don't buy your tape measures at Dollar General
why do you need LEDs and a color sensor when you can just use a conductive strip and a metal tab that slides against it
again, you probably have one of these in your home, right now
>t-tie a string
you know pots come in linear versions right, you probably have a few in your house. homie youve never seen a dimmer switch that isnt a knob before??
damn i didnt know bodybuilders couldnt tell the difference between a full can of preworkout and an empty one, that must get embarrassing at the gym
putting an ammo counter on the top of the p90 magazine could have been accomplished 40 years ago and honestly yeah it would be pretty sick
the problem is that the p90 is oversized 10/22 upside down and costs two thousand dollars. if they can't even get an oversized 10/20 made of fisher price plastic to mass production after 30 years, then how the frick do you expect any of these dipshit major defense contractors to put in the legwork to develop something that technically complex?
listening to /k/ try to engineer the most basic devices is always a laugh and a half but at the end of the day a round counter is a shitty gimmick and even clear/windowed mags never really took off.
I'm like 90% sure I've seen at least two hobbyist made ones that worked fine but it's just kinda pointless. It's like watches with barometers and shit on them, no one uses that crap.
The P90 failed because the cold war ended. Multiple gun companies almost went out of business because no one needed crazy space guns to fight russian conscripts anymore. And the P90 is unsuitable for most civilian purposes. Even for tacticool larpers, as a self-defense weapon it's too big and heavy to be convenient for mall-crawling.
>doing a full reload takes less time than glancing at a window
boolit counters are just a solution looking for a problem. it offers no new capability, unlike fancy NV sights or AR displays or whatever
Anyone suggesting ‘sensing recoil impulse’ is a fricking moron that should be permanently banned from the field of engineering
Your magazine follower changes elevation based on the amount of ammo in the magazine. Just use an analog sensor to read the level of the magazine, you don’t need insane fricking digital sensors for this trivial task. Potentiometer in the magazine outputting a value between 0 and 1 for magazine capacity, and if you want to get fancy a loaded chamber detector. These both readout to a simple display. It’s not that fricking complicated
then how does it know how much capacity is in the magazine if you switch between, say, a 10 and a 20? what if someone puts 9 into a 40 mag?
im not trying to disagree im trying to point out potential complications
I’m thinking strictly in terms of 30 round stanags. If people aren’t loading the correct rounds into a magazine, that’s on them, cross compatible magazines would just need to be programmable/calibrated to the capacity/cartridge. It would be a pretty trivial thing to set up imo
The rifle knows how much it has loaded by how much it doesn't.
Knowing how many rounds are in your magazine is a convenience that shouldn’t be overlooked just because it’s not useful for hyper tactical larpers. Even just at a range, it would be convenient.
I play with hud off in video games because I find all the counters and gauges distracting. I imagine an ammo counter would be distracting irl too.
ITT:
>Why the frick do you need a watch, that’s not tactical moron. I just look at the sun to tell what time it is.
probably fine until the suns on your back and you can't see a thing on the screen
>Would bullet counters be really useful?
as usual FPBP. here's a runner-up.
the benefit a lit round counter confers is absolutely not worth the added complexity and potential hazards posed by a glowing screen on a gun.
You can have low intensity displays and even then red dots and such exist but for people going hunting at night or whatever yeah i guess
I'd give it 2 months post release before someone's running Doom on it
just make the mag see-through?
these threads are always the exact same thing
someone points out that a windowed magazine is much more robust and elegant with no moving parts and then the moron OP spends hours hitting the bong and going back and forth with anons coming up with a bunch of stupid ass shit that's just going to fall apart under real world conditions. the fact that half of these solutions are immediately invalid because they would just get sharted all over by the gas system makes me think that OP doesn't even own guns.
there's ways it could be done but yeah like 90% of this thread reeks of a child playing with a robotics set for the first time
Fuds really do be out here thinking electricity is scary and bulky and would turn an SMG into the gun from Alien.
Mechgays acting all smart is genuinely the worst, I'm glad I fricked your gfs in medschool
>COUNTING YOUR SHOTS IS HARD
>USING THE CLEAR WINDOW ON THE SIDE OFTHE MAGAZINE IS TOO HARD
>just add a bunch of points of failure to your gun
>WHAT IF X EXISTED
>x does exist, it's just lamer than you think
every time
If it wasn't bulky, didn't take up a bunch of rail space, didn't add too much weight, didn't require proprietary magazines, was inexpensive, and worked perfectly 99.99% of the time, then I'd buy it. Even then, I would almost certainly never need it. Just like everyone else said, windowed or transparent magazines already do it in an affordable and practical manner. Ammo counters are a solution in search of a problem.
TL:DR They simply do not offer enough of an improvement over the statis quo to merit further development.
this, it's like those techbros who install light panels in their houses instead of just having fricking windows
>"I don't want to use it so you don't need it SO STOP TALKING ABOUT IT!" -The Thread
I forget, we're on the PrepHole weapons board where a good chunk of people call others poorgays for not having NODs &/or thermal scopes right?
What would we do without the people here to tell them "Just see better at night/use a flashlight/ go to sleep stupid!"
you sound like one of those dudes who invested in that startup making fridges with an lcd display and camera on the inside so you could see the contents
instead of just having a glass door
or opening it
I see that the poorgays have arrived.
hey dog, I just want my fridge to be cold. I don't need it trying to sell me overpriced shit instead of just making a list like a functioning human being.
>an lcd display and camera on the inside so you could see the contents
What if I want to know what's in my fridge without paintakingly opening it?
>can they be useful
god yes
As long as the gun can shoot without it in a “dead mode” it is fine
>will it be useful
Not for several decades after it is technologically viable, because innovation trickles down from the military, and when it comes to being conservative the military would still be using muzzle loaders and horses they hadn’t been circumvented all those multiple times in multiple nations. They always fight the last war, but they wish they were fighting 5 wars ago.