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Original Design: The WDP Angel LCD was, in it's time, one of the most advanced paintball markers on the market. WDP was the primary manufacturer and designers like Ken Rice were probably responsible for many of the design features that I sought to mimic. The Angel was highly popular among professional paintball athletes in the NPPL and PSP as well as weekend warriors, like myself.

The above animation is quite old and has been kicking around the web for over a decade, but it does show all the parts in the Angel LCD working in symphony. The trigger is pulled by the user, a signal is sent to a PIC microcontroller, located in the handle/frame, which interprets the input and sends an output signal with the correct voltage and amperage to the SMC solenoid housed in the body of the marker (blue component, upper left of the picture). The solenoid controls the flow of regulated air to the markers pneumatic air ram. The ram moves a spun brass hammer back and forth; when in the forward most position the main pressure valve is opened for fractions of a second allowing the primary air chamber to vent upward into the marker's bolt. The hammer and bolt are linked and when the bolt is in the forward most position, the paintball is fired down the barrel and hopefully to some unsuspecting player from the opposing team.

Most paintball markers at this time were very rudimentary in design. The Angel stood from the crowd because it was the only paintball marker to utilize an electronic circuit board to control the firing sequence. It boasted an LCD readout that seemed very advanced for the time. The LCD screen was backlit with a bluish-green glow and displayed user settings like valve dwell time, firing mode, rate of fire, the ambient temperature, a trip cycle, and many more settings which I am surely forgetting.

In the 10+ years since the Amgel LCD has been released several of the OEM boards have begun faulting. Most of the time this is a result of an aging surface mount temperature sensor which communicated with the PIC microcontroller over I2C. There are tutorials on the web which demonstrate how to replace the sensor, but there are other issues with the original board which make it unsuitable for continued service, such as: Reliance on an antiquated nickel metal hydride battery and charger (most modern markers use alkaline 9V batteries), lack of modern firing modes, an antiquated LCD interface, and most importantly the lack of an anti-chop system (all modern boards support break-beam or reflective eyes).

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