About the project




Telescopic Sight for Vision Impaired Shooters Project
It all started with the question by the local shooting club whether it would be possible to design an affordable telescopic sight for vision impaired shooters. Two members of the shooting club, Benjamin and John, suffer from this condition. As it is my usual MO, I would like to develop something without first looking at other, existing things. Therefore, I started this project without any input by shooters.
The reason is to start from scratch, i.e. with an open mind. I want to tackle the problem first by myself without creativity being affected. However, we will be needing the shooters very badly at a later stage.
My idea is to solve the problem by using a mini CPU board and a low-priced telescopic sight.
A light sensor which is connected to the CPU board via the sight converts the exposure value into pitch. A spotlight is used to illuminate the target card which is being shot at.
After having subjected the sensor arrangement to a series of tests performed by Benjamin, he started hitting bull's eye time after time. It turned out that the results improved when the sensor was placed out of focus.
Nice, now we have something to go on with. In Benjamin we have found a very passionate person when it comes to shooting. Now the time has come to listen to him. After some more target practicing, it became evident that he still needed someone to assist him in adjusting the equipment. We made it our business to design the device in such a manner that he will be able to do the shooting all by himself. Because we'd had the fortunate foresight to depart from a computer-based design, we were able to computerize a lot of adjustment operations. At present, he is able to adjust everything by himself and his shooting is out of this world.
The project can be called a success thanks to the help of many.
One of the things that struck me is the fact that shooting for the visually impaired does not differ from the shooter with keen sight.The discipline is the same, and so is the pleasure.  Ears become eyes.
I, too, have learned a lot. There was this moment when we were about to test a new light that I thought by myself: let's ask Benjamin how this light sounds.  That was the moment that, without realizing it, I could substitute vision with hearing.
Many thanks to shooting club Op De Korrel in Bemmel, Jan, Ben, and Benjamin.
This Friday, we are going to hit bull's eyes again with Benjamin, awesome!