Item Number, SCP-217, Object Class, Keter. Special Containment Procedures. Containment areas to be kept behind two reverse pressure airlocks. Chemical shower sterilization, full contained atmosphere hazmat suits, and 24-hour post-interaction quarantine and testing are mandatory for all personnel entering containment area. Should containment be breached, the blast door for the containment and research area will seal, and Chemical Agent ZER-217-11 will be pumped into the air. Any humans exposed to SCP-217 are to be contained and held for observation. Any items touched by those affected by SCP-217 must be sterilized. Description. SCP-217 is a virus, incurable by current means, with a rate of infectivity at 100%. It affects all organisms in the kingdom anemalia, and can be spread via touch or contact with bodily fluid. SCP-217 is very hardy, and can survive for years outside the host body. The process of the infection is very slow, with some subjects going several years before manifesting any symptoms. SCP-217 alters the biochemistry of organic tissue, causing organic matter to rearrange into a form of organic metal. The processes involved with this change are not yet fully understood, but the advanced stages are well documented. A subject will begin to turn into a complex arrangement of gears and clockwork, these taking over for the former biological functions. Advanced stage infection is reported to be very painful, but earlier stages are oftentimes unnoticed, with only vague feelings of confusion, insomnia, and joint stiffness. Also replaced by gears and small tubes, joints by gear networks, eyes by structures not unlike primitive hand crank film cameras, etc. SCP-217 shows first on the outside of the body in all creatures, except mammals. In mammals, it first converts the internal structure, before manifesting outside the body. This can cause those infected to go for very long periods of time without knowing of infection. SCP-217 has even been shown to totally convert the inside of the body before showing any externally visible symptoms. SCP-217 has infected several major metropolitan areas in the past, most notably the mental state of those in middle to advanced stages of infection has been shown to be much diminished. Subjects respond in a repetitive fashion, are very dull and mechanical in action, are easily distracted and confused, and appear generally irritable when faced with new problems.  Document 217-6 Notes on Symptoms Subjects infected by SCP-217 have, at early stages, reported no major symptoms, aside from increased lethargy and a general lack of emotional response. Some have reported a feeling of fluttering or moving under the skin, coupled with a persistent ticking noise. This noise seems most prominent when SCP-217 infects the shoulders, neck, and head. However, it is inaudible if recording equipment is pressed against an affected area. Initial infection of SCP-217 is, as has already been stated, almost undetectable. As the infection advances, subjects will begin to feel sharp, tearing pain in areas that are being converted. It has been compared to a knife wound or a deep muscle tear, it can persist for hours or several days, depending on both the subject and the area affected. The new clockwork organs appear to tear and rip at tissue for a short time, before becoming fully integrated and settling into the surrounding tissue, and this is believed to account for the pain. Areas infected appear to be metal, mainly brass, steel, and iron. Other substances have been reported, appearing to be leather, rubber, glass, wood, and other basic materials. Despite appearances, it is purely organic material and even carries the subject's DNA. Organs and tissues affected appear more resilient than normal, carrying the same strength and density as the materials they resemble, instead of normal tissue density. Areas damaged repair over time, but it is much slower than standard human regeneration. Damaged areas can be instantly repaired by replacing damaged areas with new parts of the same type. Testing has shown that there are no ill effects if parts made from normal materials, steel, wood, leather, replace the existing biomechanical clockworks. People infected with SCP-217 can continue for months, even years, without being detected. With infection so easy to spread, hundreds could be affected before proper containment could be enforced. Infection appears to spread most quickly in large offices, malls, and other large concentrations of people. Note, anything or anyone suspected or confirmed to be infected with SCP-217 is not to be allowed near SCP-882. Addendum, at this time, cross-experimentation between SCP-229 and SCP-217 is allowed, only with 05 approval. Lesson complete. If you missed the previous orientation, go watch SCP-216, the safe, right now. Or for the complete course, watch this playlist.


You are seeing this right now. This is God's display of His love for you. Even if you came here on purpose or you were flipping through the channels on accident, there are no accidents with God. He is here for you today. My name is Corey and I'm joined here with Amy. And today we're gonna be talking about love. Yeah, talking about love. We know that God loves you, but did you know that, you know, I know you're binge watching love stories. I know that you're binge watching romcom and I know you're on Netflix because we love love. We love love stories. But did you know in the Bible that there are some really unusual love stories? We're gonna dive into them today with our special guest, Cheryl Palermo, as she talks about her new book, Unusual Love Stories from the Bible. And here's the deal. Some of the stories, just a little warning, are messy. Yes, and I think some of the most beautiful love stories are the messy love stories because love is unusual. And I know that God's love for me is very, very unusual. So listen, I wanna tell you this. By watching today's program, you will get a chance to learn how God delights in relationships. And you will experience the Holy Spirit right in your living room or wherever you are as we bring you God's word for today. That's one of the benefits of tuning in to hope today and experiencing the wonder of what God is gonna say. You know, I just ran into a couple. I was at Costco, okay, of all places. I'm in line. I have barely any makeup on. I maybe have had a hat on. I mean, I was kinda grunging it. And this couple is looking at me, are you sure? Yes, that's, are you Amy from Cornerstone Television? I said, yes, I am. Just out here running the little Costco run. And this is what she said to me. She said, we watch you every week on Cornerstone. And she said, my husband is not a believer. He's standing right there. And he cannot wait to watch Cornerstone Television. Wow. And unbelievable. That's why we're here. We're here because what other network, what other channels are sharing and bringing the good news? So Corey, I hope on your next Costco run that you run into a great couple that recognizes you. Well, I might not be at Costco. I'll probably be at Sam's though. Okay, okay, okay. But no, I totally, totally understand that. And it is, it's so special the opportunities with God does when we meet. We never often know exactly how the Holy Spirit is gonna speak to us and how he's gonna flow through what we share. But we're just thankful to be together. And then we're both wearing blue. I know, kind of matchy match. Yes. You know, we're about to discuss some love stories and unusual love stories.  I actually didn't know for years. When I began to learn about God more, I did not know that the Bible was really typology, all pointing to Jesus. I thought they were isolated stories. But the Old Testament has Jesus woven all through it. And it is a love letter to us to get us back after the separation and fall. And that just makes me love God so much more that he would do so much and go through so much for us. For us. Whoo. The stories in the Bible are often messy since the Garden of Eden humans have proven themselves to be flawed and broken. And on today's program, Sherry Palermo brings us unusual love stories from the Bible. We'll take a closer look at how God delights in showing how redemption works in relationships. So Sherry, welcome to hope today. Thank you so much, everyone. And thank you for having me. I really appreciate this opportunity to speak about the love of God with all of you. Well, Sherry, what is your passion about love stories? I mean, what made you wake up one day and say, I want to write about love stories from the Bible. Well, that didn't, it didn't happen that way, Amy. Actually, I was on a mission, trying to find out more about love myself. And I explained that in the introduction of the book that even though I had been saved for 39 years, I know that's giving my age away a bit, but I just didn't think that I loved people. I know loving people with the love of the Lord is an eternal process or at least a lifelong. But I just wanted to experience the heartfelt feeling that went with my words. So I explored and studied love under the guidance of a mentor and with whom I also mentioned in the book and in studying all the different Hebraic terms and Aramaic because of the wonderful resources I had. I saw many facets or many aspects of love that the word love, the English word does not in and of itself describe. So in taking notes, writing copious notes over and over, I realized I just couldn't stop writing and I might as well write a book. So that's how the book came about, so. Cheryl, you know, we are raised on Disney Princess movies where they have the ultimate perfect ending to this love story right now. We are binge watching Netflix and we can't wait to watch the next rom-com out. What do you have to say about these unusual love stories in the Bible? I think the stories are portrayal of the many facets like a diamond of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, their love and if we can latch on to God's loving us no matter where we might fit into any one of these stories and I'm sure every reader, Amy, somewhere along the line is going to find themselves or be able to relate some way to recognize that love and to live with it and to walk with it and to know it and understand it and whether you feel anything or not, that's not the point. It's just to have that knowing and understanding. It's a life changer and I believe that God has utilized me as one of his vessels to portray. Just a teensy-weensy bit of how much he loves each and every, no matter who we are or what we have done. Okay, let's dive into one of these love stories, the story of Rahab. I want you to share what it looked like in that time of Rahab. What was she doing? How was her story such an unusual love story and how do we see God's love in Rahab's story? Well, Rahab changed over the years due to her occupation, would be a tough nut to crack. And how many of us are desensitized to the point of even seeing a crush on the road and thinking, oh, how disgusting, rather than sympathizing over the poor thing. Many things can cause this hardness and Rahab's story shows nothing is too difficult for God. He can break through anything, he can and he is willing. So her story is directly linked to Joshua, the appointed leader of the Israeli army by Moses himself. Going back 40 years, Joshua and Caleb and 10 other tribal leaders were sent by Moses to strategically scout out the land. Joshua and Caleb were the only two to deliver a good report. Instead of one from each tribe, Joshua sent two to evaluate the situation in Jericho. They wound up at an inn on the wall owned by Rahab. She hid them from the King's soldiers and aided in their escape. When the time came for Jericho to be toppled, Joshua sent the same scouts to rescue her and her family and ultimately live victoriously among the Israelites. I can go on a little bit, want me to about Rahab? Sure. Say a little bit more? Yeah, just skip through some of the talks. Well, moving away from Jericho meant change to location as well as lifestyle for Rahab.  Here, the Israelite encampment was close and had one important thing in common. They loved God. They had the scrolls, the commandments, the prophets and the Ark of the Covenant. They were headed to the promised land. The miracle of Jericho was no small secret. The Israelites encircled the city once a day until the seventh day, then encircled it seven times. Joshua's command, they shouted, blew the shofars and the wall fell. Rahab and her family were rescued as the army went in and destroyed Jericho. The destroying Rahab's old way of life. She was considered part of the miracle. She spared the lives of the scouts, enabling them to return with important information allowing Joshua and his leaders to plan strategically to order to secure the battle. She went, in other words, from prostitute to hero practically overnight. And you mentioned that a lot of these women in the Bible, they end up in the lineage of Jesus Christ. I mean, a prostitute, someone that's looking out on the wall, having men in their house ends up being in the very family of Jesus Christ. It is so amazing. But a lot of these unusual love stories in the Bible, they're not all just male and female. But you talk about the love stories from father and son, like King David and Absalon. You talk about sibling, a great love story about Lazarus and Mary and Martha. Can you kind of just touch on one of those unusual love stories and how God brought redemption? Well, God is not an authoritarian. That opens up his kingdom to certain types only. How can we reach the center if everyone is a royal? And even some of the royals have questionable background. God's including the lowest rung of the ladder or the social ladder speaks to his mercy and immeasurable love. Our salvation is not based on our good works and deeds. It's based on the blood sacrifice that covers everyone. The blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God's son the savior. And in rare instances, but in some of those instances, such as Rahab, such as Ruth, such as different ones that one would not think. Ruth, I mentioned her even though I don't discuss her so much. I just referred to her in the book, but she was a foreigner. But there are people everywhere having done everything you can possibly imagine that God has utilized and some so much so that he included them in the very lineage of Jesus Christ himself. Cheryl, what you're talking about is absolutely, I'm sorry, absolutely incredible. Can you tell us, what do you feel that the Lord led you to talk about these particular stories? Why did he prompt it on your heart to do that? Well, that's a good question, Corey. And I honestly don't know the answer except that as I was right, I felt like I had the pen of a ready writer, so to speak. As I'm writing one sentence, another thought would come to mind and then I would research it. I think that the book will bear that out. And after I would finish one story, actually the stories that I wrote were not in the order of the book. I then put them in chronological order, but then all of a sudden another story would come to mind and I would find myself curious to how could this person have gotten to this place? A good example of that would be the madman from Gadar, the demoniac, and how he went from being a demoniac to an evangelist. I mean, there's gotta be a lot of information there. And not all the stories end positively. There's the whole situation with David and it's on Absalom. And just, it was mainly curiosity, but I thought that I was being more or less led to research these particular characters. And I wanted to write more, but my pastor said, believe it, this is enough. You have made your point. No, you've gotten the message out there, you don't need to add. So I'm planning on a second book to get some of these, get more characters in there. It's just like, how did they go from A all the way to Z? Cheryl, how has God's love touched and changed your life? Was there any messy parts in there that He walked with you and loved you through? Sure. Well, I have a little script here. It's not gonna answer it exactly, but I grew up in a Christian, a non-Christian environment, even though my parents didn't realize that, I think, you know, being religious. But there was a dichotomy there because one served a very well-known church. And the other one was, one was Catholic, one was Protestant, believe it like that. So, you know, it was a strict, and it was oftentimes a restrictive environment, but I stayed there until I was 19. And then since it was so restrictive, and I wasn't allowed to do mostly anything, including go out on my first date until I was 18, I tried to make up for lost time, partying and clubbing all while going to school. Now, into my third decade, once again, I'm referring to my age, much of that was behind me. I was ready to settle down and get a little more serious about life and God. Then He sent a laborer, and this laborer was a major change in my life in that now I took things more seriously.  I had walked up to the television screen when Billy Graham would be on, and I'd repeat the prayer after him, but none of it stuck. But after this time, and I'm driving my car when I'm saying the center's prayer, this time, you know, I'm confessing my sins to the Lord and asking Him to forgive me my sins, but this time I got filled with the Holy Spirit. He led me to this wonderful woman who became my mentor. And that milestone became a major change in my life, and I've been going strong ever since. My only regret, Amy, is that I did not receive Jesus into my heart sooner. Wow, Cheryl, that is profound, and that is exactly what we want for all those watching, for them to receive Jesus as early and as quick and as soon as they can. Thank you, Cheryl, for this awesome book, Unusual Love Stories from the Bible. You can find the links to purchase her book on our website. Thanks so much, Cheryl. You're more than welcome. I recommend everybody go on a self-exploration. Open up the Bible. Read a little bit of it every day at the very least and see what God will unfold to you and see how He will change your life, how He will take you from A to Z, which is all a part of His purpose and plan. Don't worry, He won't give up on you. He'll stay with you as long as you reach out to Him and call upon the name of the Lord. Amen, I agree. When we come back after the break, we will have a powerful time of ministry and prayer, but first, here is Sydney with the latest on The Glory Hour. Ramadan starts Sunday, March 10th at sundown, and millions of Muslims are gonna be fasting and praying. And on this episode of The Glory Hour, you're gonna hear the story, the salvation story of a Muslim background believer and how God met her in a very special way. She learned that growing up as a Muslim, that Jesus was simply a prophet, but when God entered in and met her life in a special way, the truth of Jesus set her free. It was so hard for me, but I kept going. I kept attending the church. I kept going to the church because I loved the worship. I loved the way Christians will worship God. So be sure to tune into this episode of The Glory Hour happening this Wednesday, at 3 p.m. you can tune in on Cornerstone Intelligence Network's YouTube channel. Also, we're now streaming on Spotify. You definitely wanna hear this conversation with Sarah. It's so insightful, so enlightening. She also goes into how we are called as the body of Christ as believers to be uncomfortable, to step in, and to have relationship with Muslims so that we can show them the love of Jesus like never before. I can't wait to see you there. Discover what God's word has to say about healing and deliverance. Best-selling author John Eckhart makes topical Bible study easy with his new book, Scriptures for Faith, Deliverance, and Healing. This handy reference is for those who wanna have a greater understanding of healing and deliverance to incorporate God's word into their prayers. Eckhart also includes targeted commentary to highlight key scriptures and life application. His spirit-filled perspective will enhance your time in God's word and encourages the spiritual disciplines of memorization and meditation. Request scriptures for faith, deliverance, and healing as our thank you gift when you support Cornerstone Television this month. Request your copy today. If you want to strengthen the ministry of CTVN, share your best gift by visiting us online at ctvn.org slash donate or call us at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Thank you for your partnership. Hope happens here. Welcome back to Hope Today. We just had a phenomenal interview by Cheryl Palermo talking about unusual love stories in the Bible. But I know that you have an usual love story in your life right now. In many of us, one of the reasons why we struggle with having a love life with the Lord is because we compare God to people. And God is not like people. He's not like men. He's not like women. But God has an unusual pursuit of your heart in a way that you really may not understand. I know for years I struggled and said, God, I know you love me, but I don't know if you like me. We talk about that oftentimes. I love you, but this is like a like generation where it's like liking is more heavy than loving because love is, you gotta do it. But like is, I want to do it.  You might say, I feel like I did too much. I feel like I'm out of the parameters of God using me. But when you look into scripture, those in the Bible were very, very messy. And in the midst of the mess, please understand this, that the identity that God has for you is not the identity that your mistakes put on you. I know people struggle with that. And I wanna say this, Amy, what is one way that you feel that people can begin to experience God's love in the midst of them making mistakes in their life that has defined them? Well, you know, one of my favorite scriptures, King David said, listen, when I made my bed in hell, you were there.  I mean, he pulls you up from the abyss of darkness, from despair, from despondency, from rebellion, from hatred towards God, from addiction. I mean, for any, he pulls us up and he sets our feet upon a rock.  I mean, you need them to see and to know how much God loves them. And I remember myself, Corey as well, needing God to show me how much he loved my daughter more than I did. I mean, she was, she never, she always loved God, but she very much had the pull of the world on her. And honestly, she was rebellious towards, you know, her father and I, and I just did everything that she could as a strong, willed daughter. And I struggled through that season. But one of the scriptures that God gave me to stand on is one that our guest mentions in her book. And boy, when I read that, I was like, whoo, these flood of emotions hit me. It was almost overwhelming because, you know, now my daughter came over before I came to the television station today, mom, hi mom. She's going to work at the church.  And I just thought the joy, the peace, the saving grace on her life, it's all because we just believed God, that God would open the eyes of her heart, that she'd be flooded with light, that she would be submitted to Christ, submitted to God's will. But here's the scripture, Corrie, are you ready? Hosea 14. And if you haven't read the book of Hosea, just please do it right away. It is the ultimate love story. Actually, the love story is really about God in Israel, but it's so applicable to our life today. But this one line, I will heal their waywardness and love them freely for my anger has turned away from them.  Maybe you need to say right now, God right now, you are healing his waywardness. You will love them freely and your anger has turned away from them. Like, let them see that. Let them know that. Let them experience that for themselves. God is the master, like nobody, Corrie, can outrun or outcommit God's love. And when his mind is made up about us, there's nothing you can do to change God's mind about you. And it's like when you have a baby, you've already chosen the name for that baby before the baby knows what their name is. And how does the baby learn their identity? It is in the constant repetitive calling and looking of that direction. My son's name is legend. My daughter's name is wisdom. And they learn their names by how much affection we had with calling them continually that same name.  He calls you fearfully and wonderfully made. He calls you his peculiar people. And you may not feel like that at all because the world may have named you and it may have named you by your mistakes and you may have named yourself as failure and misfit, not loved, unlovable, unwanted. But God never turns his idea of you. He just continually, consistently beckons you with what he knows about you until we start to say maybe that's my name. Maybe I am loved. Maybe I am special. He doesn't change his mind because the more you spend time with him, the more you'll feel the confidence and the authority to know that I can run to him when I make a mistake. I know I hid from God for a long time because I was afraid. I was afraid of rejection. But you know what? God, there's moments of rejection where he does things to get us back in alignment with him but he never rejects us from his love. It's impossible. No, it's impossible. You know, my son, when he was little, like two, three, four, he always wanted to pour his own milk into the cereal bowl and you know it, that's why you're all just like, please, because there's about to be a huge mess. Okay, first of all, they put in too much cereal. The milk pushes the cereal out over, then the milk spills and then they carry the bowl because they want to do it themselves. And it's just, it's a mess. So this one time, my son has this great big thing of milk and he pours it and it just spills everywhere. And I'll never forget what he did. He ran right to his father, grabbed his leg, he said, daddy, daddy, daddy, I love you, I love you, daddy, daddy, daddy, I'm sorry.  That's what God wants for you in your life today.  It actually says that we've all sinned, we've all messed up, we've all fallen short of the glory of God. That's why we needed Jesus. That's why Jesus came, for this cause was I born, for this reason I was born. You messed up, I messed up, he messed up, we've all messed up, we're all in this same camp. Run to the father, run to his love.   I am well pleased with you. And one thing I love about God is he doesn't bring it up over and over like people. With people you have to have a consistent credibility of doing the right thing all the time. And they're gonna remind you of what you did. But God is like, I don't even remember. I threw it in the sea of forgetfulness. And he continues talking with you as if nothing ever happened. And you might be wondering, when are you gonna bring that up? And when are you gonna hit me about that?  I'm here to love on you.  Most people do what they do in the world because they feel like the world is where their love and their affirmation comes from. I'll keep doing this because I keep getting rewarded for it. And even though it doesn't feel like pure love, it's enough for me. But God is elevating your experience of love to another degree today and forevermore. Thank you so much for joining us. And I pray that God's love stays with you continually.


Hello, hello. Hi, good afternoon everybody. The next talk is going to be by Mike Turner, and it's about Cwysar, as you can see. Hello, when I first signed up to this I said about 20 people so I could be a little bit interactive and then I discovered I was actually on a stage in front of a lot more people. So I had to make some slides, so you may spot in some of the background some of the photos the ground sheets of my tent, so that's what it is. So we're actually celebrating a birthday, and it's the 30th birthday of Laser Tag, which was first invented in 1984 in Texas in the USA. A system called Photon, and George Carter, the guy in the middle, was the inventor of it, and you can see those packs, they were quite heavy and robust. You had a helmet, you were allowed to run at people, and they weighed just under six kilograms.  So it's quite a long way from what we're used to these days. There was no laser in the first Laser Tag system, in fact. It was just purely infrared, and they had a little LED that lit up at the end of the gun when you fired. So it's quite different. The most interesting thing about this system is it used a system known as Reverse Infrared, which is very unusual. It's one system in the world at the moment that I'm aware that actually makes use of Reverse Infrared. What that means is that when you aim at somebody, and you pull the trigger, it actually receives infrared from their vest and then transmits the hit over radio to the other pack, which then goes down. Needless to say, there's a bit of a lag on that, and this system used to take the best part of half a second from when you hit somebody to when they died, which is a long time when you're playing a game of laser tag. And it also was very expensive because it was using radio. So it's a very expensive system by comparison to some of the others. The good bit about it was that if you shot someone, it actually made a noise to let you know you'd hit them straight away, something you don't get on a lot of systems. So, Reverse Infrared. Another commercial laser tag system uses modulated lasers. What that means is the information is carried inside a laser beam rather than being a separate infrared beam and a visible laser beam. So, there's only, again, one system using that that I'm aware of, and the reason why is because the receivers to pick it up are not commercially available as standard. It's a custom development, so it's very rare. Pretty much everything else uses forward infrared, and the reason behind that is it's very cheap to implement. It doesn't require any kind of infrastructure to allow it to work. All you need is to transmit one infrared beam from one device to the other, and the remote device dies, records the hit, and processes it from there. So you pretty much find everything uses forward infrared. So, the history of Quasar, the system here, dates back to a news article that was about Photon. So, that news article was noticed by somebody in New Zealand, where they created a laser tag system there. Then that was noticed by somebody called Jeff Hazelhurst in Australia, and he went on to develop Quasar from that idea. We should then sold to some people in Ireland, and that's why Quasar is so predominant in the UK as a whole. So, the original Quasar wasn't quite what you see before you hear. The best looked like that. That's one of the only last remaining first versions of Quasar, and it's changed considerably since then to something more like that. So, this is the main circuit board of a Quasar gun. I've actually got a couple of examples here, and you're welcome to take a look at them and have a nose around at them. All the components here you can still buy. So, this system was designed in the late 80s, and literally every component is available off the shelf to this day. All very generic. The main processor for those interested is a Motorola 68HC705C8. Anybody familiar with the Motorola 68 series? It's along those lines. The main thing about it, in a similar way to processors like Atmel, PIC chips and so on, is everything integrated. It has its own RAM, its own ROM, its own peripherals built into the CPU. So, everything is stored inside of that main CPU. The circuit board, because of the age, uses very old infrared technology. It uses individual infrared diodes to receive the infrared signals. So, what happens is, all of the little black pieces that you can see around the edge, I can't really, I don't know if you can see them there, they're the infrared receivers. They're only two legs. And what that means is that it gets an analog signal that it has to decode into a logic signal. And it does that at the front of the board. So, what I'll do is, I'll just, that's the main CPU section. I should also, I should realise the wrong order. The dip switch is down below. I identify the gun ID. So, dips one through to five indicate the number and then the final dip is the colour red or green. And that way, the guns know who's shooting who. The yellow section is the speech. So, pretty much half the board was dedicated just to the audio. And the way it did this was quite clever. It actually used technology taken from telephone systems. So, the chip that you see that's going vertical on there is actually a CVSD chip, a continuously variable slope delta. Basically, what it means is, it draws a line up and down based on ones and zeros. So, a one makes it go up and a zero makes it go down to produce the waveform. And it pulls it all out of that big speech chip, which is just a normal ROM. Pass it through various filters into an amplifier chip and out into the speaker. Nowadays, you could condense that down to almost nothing with today's modern MP3s. And then finally, there's the infrared section there. Unfortunately, the photo I took is missing a chip off the front there. That's actually the demodulator. It converts the analog infrared signal coming in into a logic one zero, which gets fed into the CPU. The way that the chip generates and communicates was done actually in hardware. They use the serial port to do the infrared communication. So, unlike most infrared protocols which use various encoding mechanisms, this system purely uses, if it's a logic one, it turns the infrared on, if it's a logic zero, it turns it off again. And that's literally it, just straight RS232. What that means is that you can actually connect a little infrared receiver straight to a serial port and receive your data into it. So, it's a very, very simple protocol and it's effective. It runs at 2,400 bits per second, which actually in general infrared terms is a relatively high data rate. And it runs it pretty reliably. So, move on to the display board. This is the rather horrible looking version of it because it's been a bit molested in its time. A lot of these boards are old ones, which is one board long. So, basically what this simply does is it's connected over an SPI connection to the main processor to update the display. So, the processor does everything in hardware pretty much that it can do, including that infrared comms. The little LED that you see on the right hand side is just the charge LED, shows if it's being charged or not.  So, the front pack is the one on the left, the large one, with the big flashy digits that flash when you're playing. And the back pack is obviously on the right. So, a lot of this circuitry is purely to make lights flash. There's a little bit in there to do infrared reception and transmission. An interesting thing about Quasar over other laser attack systems is every sensor area is also a transmission area. And it does that for a couple of features in the game. So, what happens is when it transmits, when you're firing, obviously only fires out of the barrel. When it needs to transmit anything else, it transmits out of every sensor area. It aids communication, but also allows it to do features like bombs. So, you can pull the trigger and hold it and it fires a bomb off from every sensor. That sort of feature. Because this is all done and they're trying to be as cheap as possible when they design this, they actually only use 6-core cable. They multiplexed the transmission and receive onto one wire for infrared. So, the net result is only the 6-core cable. And the backpack, as you see, is pretty much just lights and receivers. So, just talk you through how it works when you take someone. So, basically, the red player shoots the green player, then the green pack stores the hit. It's not the pack that does the shooting, it's the pack that receives the hit that stores it. And it stores it on this system just purely in RAM. The green pack then transmits, and it transmits it from every sensor area, a confirmation that this red pack hit it. And what happens is the red pack can receive that, process it, and let the person know that they actually shot somebody. So, I don't know if you can have a couple of volunteers to put on a couple of packs.  Ah, there we go, two people first, sorry. There will be an opportunity later, I think around nine o'clock, when we'll actually have this set up somewhere that everyone can play. So, large one to the front, small one to the back. That's it. So, if you just want to come up on stage once you're ready. You can do the cyclips up if you like, but not essential. So... OK, so, does the red player want to shoot the green player then? So, I don't know if you could hear that. Do you want to come over here? I'll do it again. So, if you shoot him. So, it announces a good shot. And if you keep doing this, hold on a couple more times. Oh, there we go, there we go, rapid fire.  So, there we go. Thank you very much. That's it, if you just want to take them off. Thanks. So, we've introduced the pack and the basics on the pack, but the problem you then get is how do you collect all that information, because obviously all these different guns know who hit them. They also know how many times the trigger's been pulled throughout the game. And you need to get that information back so you can let people know how well they did. The way we do that is with network units. And these network units can act as a number of different things within the arena. So, the key one is data collection, so that would be energizers. So, what that does is it allows us to collect the information from the pack and transmit it back on a network to a game computer. It also allows us to do things like mines.  Or you can have bases. So, you can have team-aligned bases or neutral bases.  So, you can see on this unit there's a couple of power connections there. They're turned on and off depending on what's going on in the game. There's a little de-connector there which goes to a scoreboard so you can have an electronic digits showing the scores. And the other connector is the network connection. That actually links us back to the game computer.  So, this is the basic interaction of somebody energizing. So, the energizer is sitting there and it constantly sends out these little signals going, hello, I'm an energizer, waiting for somebody to pass by. When a pack receives this little energizer, we call it energizer click, the energizer click is received, the pack will then attempt to download its data. So, it will look up all the players who hit it, how many times it's had the trigger pulled, how much time it thinks it's left on the game, things like that, it collects them all up and what it does is it transmits it to the network unit and if the network unit successfully receives it, it transmits the game settings back to the pack. And what happens then is depending on the content of those game settings, the pack will then decide what to do. It could be if the game time is set to zero in there, then it will go, thank you for playing and turn itself off. Or it could go and make the up sound as we heard, which is game on, carry on playing. Depending on the game format, some games you have to energize during the game, some games you only energize at the end of the game. It's played strategically, so some games you'll deliberately only have, say, six lives before you have to go and reload to prevent people just owning positions in the arena, camping in one spot, that sort of thing. So the link back from this game computer, well, it uses RS232 and what happens is each of the network units is optically isolated. So what that means is that they are completely independent of each other and it's a single bus, so not quite the way RS232 was intended to be used, but it works. So what happens is the game computer will know which network units are on the network and each network unit has its own ID in the same way that the guns have the dips, the network units have the dips, and this identifies what type of device it is, what data it's collecting and so on. The game computer simply transmits the idea of the network unit and the network unit responds back, either with a, here, but I have no data, or here's a load of data for you and the game computer will then process it. It does, this network operates at the whopping speed of 600 bits per second. So super fast, but it doesn't particularly need to carry huge amounts of data. So part of the reason is in the hardware that they utilise, they probably couldn't do faster because the CPU only has one hardware serial port, and it uses that for the infrared communications. So there's nothing, no hardware serial ports available to communicate on the network. So as a result, it uses bit banging to actually get the data out and back again. So it's a limitation. It also allows it to run very long serial runs without any real problem. So the very low data rate facilitates 100 metre cable runs that I've seen working on RS232. So it does have its benefits. And of course, it then gets fed back into the game computer, where the game computer protocol... I'll talk a little bit about the infrared protocols that are utilised on this. So the infrared, as I mentioned, is purely based around serial push straight out of the infrared. It's modulated and it does this via using the ripple counter. Fed directly from the crystal that drives the CPU. So they've really been economical with what they do. As the ripple counters count down for things like the speech, they count down for a variety of other, the chasers on the sides of the guns, everything is driven from the crystal timing. The data format is actually very, very simple. You've got one byte, which indicates the packet type, followed by one byte, which is in the case of a shot signal, your gun ID, followed by the one's complement. So all the bits are flipped on the second byte, that's right, on the third byte, compared to the second. So that is a shot signal. And the good shot signal is exactly the same with a different message type. The gun downloading game settings, because obviously there's more data, you can't do the one's complement. So they use CRC16s. So they've all got, every time it just calculates a CRC16 and transmits that. So that's a very basic idea of the download. The CPU doesn't have that much RAM. It has sufficient to handle 40 different gun IDs. If you try and put more than that in, then it runs out of memory. So the system is capable of doing 60. But the CPU itself, when you get to full, that 40th person hits you, it just turns itself off and goes, you've got to go back to your energiser now. A limitation of the CPU, which we've hit. The other thing to note is with all the infrared systems, the shots have to be focused. So that's the little lens that the quasi uses to focus it. Other systems use different methods to focus it, different lens arrangements, different sizes, and so on. Now, because it's an indoor system, you're never going to be firing that far. You don't need something too powerful. If you use an outdoor system, you get something more like that. So a much bigger lens can fire much further. And you can get sort of 200, 300 meter ranges out of these. So that pretty much sums up how the quasi system works. So the question is, what is next? And the answer is Wi-Fi, of course. So this is the first prototype of Wi-Fi module for Quasar, which I've been working on. You'll also notice, although I haven't connected it, the module on the left is an RFID card reader for a membership system. And the connector on the bottom is an i-button reader as well. So it does all sorts of bits and pieces in this and uses the Wi-Fi module from Microchip to do the Wi-Fi. And that successfully works and has been tested. It just needs a bit of refinement before it's production ready and will go live. So there we go. Incidentally, the reason I'm wearing this orange top, I should mention, is because a crew member of mine moans about the fact she has to wear orange and wants you to wear black. So as a result, that's why I'm wearing it. So Meg, when you see this, there you go. So that concludes it. So if you have any questions, is somebody going with the mic? OK. So definition of cheating by covering packs. For a start, you have to agree that that's cheating or isn't cheating because in competitive laser tag, Quasar is one of the only systems that does permit covering of sensors. Other systems generally don't or have certain rules regarding touching the plastic, but the Quasar system is one of the ones that actively permits it. As far as actually blocking and disqualifying somebody for doing so, that has to be one of the hardest things to... I can't think how you'd easily do that sensibly. Anyone else? Collisions between different transmitters. If two people fire precisely at the same moment on to the same target, then yes, you will get collision and the tag probably will not register. However, generally speaking, the tag time length is very, very short. You're talking sort of, I think, 20 milliseconds. So as a result, trying to get the timing, especially when we're talking about typically where it's played, say one or two shots a second, those things don't generally cause a noticeable issue that I've seen. The energisers typically are sort of put away somewhere and generally they're designed so that only the person in front of it will actively communicate with it. So there's not a huge amount of broadcasting going on in that respect. It's definitely possible, but it's so rare that it doesn't really cause an issue. Anybody else? The main reason for adding Wi-Fi is to aid game turnaround time. So at the moment what happens is, at the end of the game, you have to download. At the start of the game, you have to load up. We've already got to work around slightly, which is an infrared automatic downloader that sits in the pack room. So what happens is when we hit game start, all the packs turn on and when they come back in, it downloads them, but because of the nature of it, it's very difficult to make that work 100% reliably on the download at the end. Start-up's fine, but the download at the end can take a couple of minutes. So as a result, it hurts the game turnarounds. So by putting Wi-Fi in, the game ends, all the packs download straight away. You don't need to worry about it. Plus real-time scoring. So the laser quest system works via radio. So what happens with laser quest, it's one of the earliest radio systems that's still in use today. So it's actually a very, very slow radio system. What it does is it has to pull every pack individually via quite a slow radio and align it to the game, and then it transmits a broadcast game start, so all the packs then start up with the game settings. It actually checks every pack into the game first. And then when it hits start, all the packs individually time the 30 seconds to game start. This one, the mini-gizer. We call that a mini-gizer, by the way. So no, because that would be cheating. I mean, in all seriousness, there's tons of things you could do that you can have a laugh with as long as you're not taking it too seriously. Some of the little projects that I've created in the past included a thing called a Good Shot Heaven, as I called it. And it's a little transmitter that constantly gave you good shots every time you pulled the trigger. In respect to whether you hit anybody or not, and in certain games you get rewarded for that by getting supercharged so you could fire faster, and then hit the base. So there was a few little things like that, but never in a serious game. Pack maintenance and general repairs is probably my personal bugbear for visiting sites myself. I've visited an awful lot of arenas, and the quality of the equipment varies dramatically. And it really is down to maintenance. Because if you think about the fact that you've got wires running through this that are constantly being moved around, then what happens is they break. And if they break in certain ways, they have different effects. So you might lose the infrared cable, in which case you can't be shot in the front or back. Slight advantage, your gun's still available, though, but nothing else. So it makes it very unfair when you come across sites that don't maintain their packs. Some systems are more prone to it than others. This system has its own fair share of issues. But to be honest with you, we've engineered most of them out on our equipment now. So on that display board, it's not one of ours that we would normally use, but the wires on display board flex and come loose and short out and cause faults. Things like that. So there's definitely reliability. There's some systems, I'd say, are definitely a lot more reliable than others. I'd say probably laser force tends to be one of the most reliable that I've seen. Others can be quite variable. So, as far as the Wi-Fi goes, we're using WPA2. So I'm hopeful that nobody's going to hack that, providing I use a sensible long encryption key. It's always possible, and in theory somebody could go in there and try and pinch the network cable out of one of the access points. That sort of thing probably isn't unheard of, but to be honest with you, all they would get access to is the game computer's ports into the game system, which has security on it anyway. So they could pretend to be a pack and start playing games, perhaps. But I can't think what enjoyment they're particularly derived from that. Oh, so are you talking about just firing? Yes, the confirmation. Okay, so the pack who receives the signal, the shot signal, dies and sends the confirmation. It stores the hit data inside of it. So that's the data that goes into the scoring in the game computer. The hit confirmation that's returned is purely there as an additional bonus. And it's, as I said in some games, it rewards you by giving you supercharge and things like that. Sorry?  It kind of brings me on to one of the features that I would like to add with Wi-Fi, which is a nuke. So basically you pull the trigger and hold it and it kills everybody in the arena. Okay, anybody else? Okay, so normally the question is, what is bitbanging? So what normally happens with the hardware-based serial ports is that you give a byte of data or two to the serial port hardware and it goes away and does a transmission for you. You have no more involvement other than it comes back to you and says, I've done it. Bitbanging is where you're not using the hardware and the software is turning the pin on and off for each bit manually. So your software is actually driving each individual bit in and out of the processor. So it's quite labour-intensive in terms of CPU time, especially with these. They're running about 1.4 MHz. Okay, anybody else? Okay, so laser tag, obviously there's a lot of manufacturers out there. So the laser tag business on the manufacturing side is very competitive. The UK currently has laser... Darklight is a home manufacturer and there's Q2000 still manufacturers and Quasar still manufacturers. However, there's a bit of history that I didn't go into with Quasar, the actual business. So after the Irish bought the system and started selling it, they licensed it to a company in the USA who couldn't use the name Quasar because it was already trademarked. So they went in the name Qsar. So that's per this. And that company did really well initially and they actually bought the Irish company out. So they end up owning the whole rights everywhere. Unfortunately, there's a variety of stories of what went on, including various drug habits and sort of money going missing and failed ventures. They tried to develop a new generation and by the third attempt at making the new generation, it was a horrible failure. They actually had the... I think the Atlanta Olympics was they tried to push this new system into there and it didn't work. So it was dropped. As a result, the company went to the wall in the late 90s. So the original manufacturer gone completely. The unusual thing about the Quasar business model was that the equipment was mass manufactured. They had literally thousands of packs still in stock. So there was a huge amount of equipment brought up by a few different organisations. One of those organisations was the UK distributor who carried on selling and supporting the sites in the UK. They then produced their own hardware, which actually was just this but with new plastics. And called it Quasar Elite. And that is still actively being sold today. I don't know if there's... I don't know what the future holds with them. They keep talking about a radio system. Were you yet to see it? Yes. It was the early ones were late 80s. I think some of the... the energiser boards copyright 1990. Correct. All the parts are still available. The only exception is I think the display drawer is only available in service mount now. That probably depends on the tech, to be honest with you. But the Quasar is probably what you'd call a shotgun. It's got quite a wide beam compared to some of the other systems like Darklight, which has a very, very tight beam. You have to be very accurate with that system. This system, as long as you generally shoot around the vest area, you'll probably get it. So it's quite a wide beam comparatively. The laser alignment, because of the way they're set, the infrared emitter has to be in one spot and can't move. So that's always there. The laser depends on the assembly they've used because we've made our own assemblies to put in there that have the laser pointing straight forwards. But some people might not be using lasers quite so well put together. So don't always rely on it. Anybody else? Yeah, so Laser Rush is my site. We're based in Whitstable in Kent. It's just one site, but there's a friend of mine who does all the tech work for me. Anybody else? Sorry, I can't hear. The real problem with that is I can make one board with quite a lot of simplicity. So the software inside that board is a very small pick chip which just negotiates which bit of data flows where. Literally it just organizes the flow. The Wi-Fi board purely is a serial port through to the game computer. So all I need to do is repurpose the code on the game computer to talk slightly differently through to the gun. And it will communicate quite happily. If I have to change it, then I have to change every single component. Because the whole system is based around 5V logic. And the receivers will be based around the old style receivers. And the honest truth is, I don't have the experience or the interest to go back and redesign the infrared decoder and things like that. So there's a lot of things that would have to be changed and it would actually be ahead of a lot more work overall. It is something I'd be interested in. But this is about getting something going quickly rather than... I went from idea to working prototype in about a month and a half. So it's all pretty quick. Anybody else? So you're talking about the actual venues themselves rather than laser tag manufacturing. OK. Well it's very difficult to compare because I've been involved with my site for about 5 years but when I took it on it was in a very poor shape. So the only hope was that it would go up. So from a business perspective on my site we've seen increases. Whether that's reflected elsewhere I don't know. What I do know is that comparatively speaking the UK is one of the cheapest places to play in compared to other countries I've been to. So in terms of money making it's probably not a huge money spinner. OK. So more game formats are possible. Switching teams unfortunately would involve changing the plastics and the LEDs on this system. I mean two sets of LEDs unfortunately would require new boards. So it's one of those things that yes I wish I could do that but that's kind of part of my let's redesign the whole system in a few years time. But yeah definitely more game modes. One of the key things is that the energizers can only store one set of game parameters. So there's no way of individually targeting the game type to the individual player. So say for example I want to give one particular player a particular role in the game I can't do that. I can only do it but one set for everyone. The advantage of Wi-Fi is that potentially I could send different settings to different guns on an individual basis and we can have role play. Yeah that's possible to do. Definitely possible to do. Do you remember where it was? I believe OK. I believe Hangar 51 utilises Q2000 which is definitely not radio based. Does it have a weapon selector button on it? Weapon selector button on it. In which case yes Q2000 it's not Wi-Fi based. Q2000 you can get power ups off different arena devices. That's all in for red based.  So what can happen is the pack Q2000 is based around this exact same hardware. They've redesigned the board but the actual technology is identical. They've just surface mounted as much as they can. And what they do is everything it receives it can retransmit. So if you stand underneath a base station it will transmit out the game settings then your pack relays it to everyone else and it just days it chains its way down. Any more? OK. Thank you very much then. I hope to shoot some of you later.