More Skorpion fiddling

I've had a couple of evenings free to faff about with the Skorpion carcass so now it's getting much closer to the point where it can be turned into a functional Lasertag gun.

I think I now have most of the pheripheral connections I need and it's down to sticking a microcontroller, sound board and speaker inside.

What I've managed to squeeze in so far is...

• Homemade 7.2V battery pack consisting of six NiMH AAAs soldered up
• Power switch
• Charging socket
• Trigger switch with decent action and return spring
• Mode switch for single/auto
• Reload switch
• Emitter assembly from Splinter Faction fitted so it resembles the original barrel
• RGB LED on the side to show status

With the battery pack inside the grip this actually leaves quite a lot of space to play with in the main section of the body. Buying a battery pack ready made would have been better but a quick bit of surfing didn't show up anything in the right shape.

This leaves me with just a muzzle flash LED to sort out before it's ready to stick a board in. I'm very tight for space on the front edge of the gun, it all kind of slopes backwards. About the only place I can see for this is immediately in front of the magazine. There's a little cutout that should allow me to embed an LED or two in a chunk of clear acrylic to make them more robust.

I'd like to have it inside the IR emitter 'barrel' but don't want to attack this with a drill. It was bought as a focused working unit and I don't want to mess that up.