Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
http://minisentryalarm.wordpress.com/
This landed in my email the other day: http://minisentryalarm.wordpress.com/
I actually built something very similar a few years back out of plumbing parts from Home Depot. Difference was, instead of using a nailgun blank, mine used a shotgun primer….to ignite cannon fuse.
Years ago a fella had a couple options for this sort of thing ‘artillery simulators’ or ‘boobytrap simulators’ were available from some of the usual mil-surp sources and they were ten shades of cool. They havent been offered in many years. For a number of years, outfits like CTD, Sportsmans Guide, BQ, etc, etc, offered a trip-wire system that would let off a 12 ga. blank. (Homemade version here) Those were great but I guess some folks modified them into ‘trap guns’ or somesuch and they disappeared from the matket, only to be replaced with a Nerfed-down version that uses a cyalume lightstick instead of a 12 ga. blank. Lame.
If you hunt around a bit, you can find some slightly different designs ( 1, 2, 3 ) being offered.
These arent new ideas…about a hundred years ago there used to be cool little devices called ‘trap guns’. They were nothing more that short barrels affixed to an ation and the trigger was usually a long rod with some food attached. Youd nail one of these things to a tree and when a critter came and niggled on the food, the trigger would be activated and the gun would go off…shooting the animal in the head. Sort of a ‘fishing yo-yo’ for mammals. Of course, there was always the chance you’d wind up shooting a neighbors stock or pet.
The designs eventually led to ‘sentry guns’ or ‘burglar guns’ that were a similar design and meant to be affixed to a window or door. When the window or door was opened, it would trip the action and a small (usually .22 or .32) blank would go off. Most of these were big in the pre-War era of the 1920′s or so. They turn up as novelties at gun shows from time to time.
If I had a chunk o’ property and I wanted a fairly maintenance-free warning system I’d probably get something similar to the 12 ga. systems, but scale it up to 26.5mm, and a length of tubing to act as a barrel, and make sure I have a clear shot through the tree camopy and use 26.5mm flares. Illumination and warning at the same time…nothing makes folks freeze in their tracks like that popping noise and suddenly finding your stealthy ninja-approach illuminated in that ghostly flicker of a parachute flare.
Probably in about ten years even this stuff’ll be obsolete. We’ll have tiny copters the size of a deck of playing cards that will patrol our perimeters giving live-feed video. Or they’ll just have a few grams of explosive on board and a kamikaze subroutine when an intruder is detected. Seriously. You know someone somewhere is developing one of these things in their garage right now.
