An opportunity presented itself recently and I had to bite. I have acquired a used Zone Nexus system!
I will begin with the story of
how this came about and then go into why I wanted it in the first place.
When I saw a post about a “for
parts” lot of Nexus packs being offered for what I considered an incredibly
reasonable price I got chills of déjà vu as it felt very similar to the
Infusion opportunity I missed out on a few months back. I decided if I really
wanted to make a move this time I had better not wait. My confidence was higher
this time because I recognized the name of the seller as a gentleman whom I had
previously interviewed who is also the head of a different laser tag
manufacturing company. I searched my email addresses for his contact info and
we made on arrangement that same night for me to connect with him as he was
passing through my part of the country on route to doing another laser tag
installation the very next week. Perfect! When I met up with him we loaded up my
car with 15 packs, a full charging rack, the radio receiver and a big box of
spare parts.
Now, this is only half the
battle because you’ll note I did not mention a computer. Acquiring a proper
Zone license and software will be a follow up step if I want this to work
correctly, but in the short term I am happy to just get the bulk of the
equipment in hand so I can play around with it.
The next day I connected on
Zoom with General Nicolas a.k.a. Glendale a.k.a. my Nexus Guru. We had an
unboxing event as I had not actually had time to unpack anything from the night
before since I didn’t get home until 1AM. I appreciate Nick’s knowledge and
advice because, as I have mentioned many times, I am not a “techie” person.
However, through his coaching me over Zoom I have learned a tremendous amount
and have gained enough confidence to be able to open up one of these packs and
at least check around for some of the basics that he has taught me. Thank you
for that Glendale!
My first step was to try and get organized. Although my purchase came with a charging rack, this is not really practical for me to use at home. I am not trying to run a business, I am just a hobbyist messing around with these at my house, so I lugged the two big boxes containing the rack components up to my attic just to get them out of the way while I sorted through the remaining relevant pieces.
I built my own temporary rack
out of PVC pipe that I had laying around, just to get the vests organized.
Following Nick’s suggestion, I
began by numbering every pack, every phaser and every battery so that I could
take a proper inventory of what I had. I had no illusions that this was going
to be a simple “flip of a switch” process. I knew that the person I bought them
from had taken them on trade “sight unseen” and no representations were made
about whether any or all would be in working condition to start with. However,
I am an optimist who loves a craft project! So I spent the next couple of days
checking everything out.
Nick was surprised to learn
that I had never tinkered around with the insides of one of these packs before,
but really, when would I have ever had a need to? All I do is go to play with
the gear at centers that take care of it all because that is their business. I
have no business here whatsoever, so for me the novelty of acquiring this gear
is very similar to a kid getting his first used car and learning how to change
the oil. There’s something special about the process, but it is in no way a
substitute for my love of going to an arena and playing my favorite game using
properly maintained equipment. That’s why to me this is simply an experiment, a
project and a learning experience. :)
After charging the batteries and finding out which packs were in the best shape I started up a demo game. Things I take for granted when I go out to play (like someone else programming the teams or color choice for the packs) took on a different significance as I did it for myself for the first time.
And with some modest success I
was ready to take things a bit further, so I packed up several of the best vests
and took them for a proper test where Jackal, Fox and Brendan
were happy to help me out because of the novelty and nostalgia of what I was
bringing through the door.
We had a successful test run!
I am satisfied that this
experiment is working out. As I mentioned, the next step if I was being serious with this would be to acquire
the proper license in order to operate these packs fully and the way they are
intended to work with the radio receiver. So this project is far from complete,
but I am delighted that as a hobbyist I have had an opportunity to play around
with getting this started at all. What a girl won’t go through just to play
some laser tag!
Comments
or Questions?
Contact: Tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com
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