From Member YHR:
I have added IR battle sytems to my tanks, all the parts were scrounged from old Lazer Challenge systems. As I was searching the net I stumbled on to this site

DIY Laser Tag Systems

This is a very exciting product and I have been talking to the developer about catering to the tank crowd.

For $80 you get an IR sound board that blows away the competition. THe ability to copy WAV. files to the sound module means that you can add any wav. file you can get your hands on. Wav files from computer games or websites can be programmed to be played at specifc event sequences. Programmable game play, as well has ammo strength and armor strength is all within the grasp of this card. This will absolutely blow away the Tamiya system with a range of features that are amazing. Have a read on this electronic card and what it is being used for in the Lazer tag field, and then use your imagination to transfer those abilities to RC tanks. I think ,like me, you will be very interested in what this could be used for.

If enough interest is shown, a version could be built that caters to the RC tank crowd. I.e preprogrammed tank sounds, and other tank game features specifically to meet our needs. There needs to be an interface with the drive motors, but I believe this would be fairly simple to do. I suggested a relay switch option that would cut power to the tank motors once the damage points accumulated to be fatal. If this relay was a DPDT, the power from ESC to the motors could be rerouted to a fuse that would ignite a Estes rocket/smoke pot device. A hatch would be blown by a short rocket blast straight up in the air, then the secondary burn ,usually used to pop open a parachute, could then be used to ignite wadding soaked in smoke oil. A fatal hit would then trigger this contraption that would give you an awesome effect. Just picture it. A hatch being blown open by a jet blast followed with billowing smoke. I want one.

I encourage you to follow the link and read what this little board can do, then let your imagination run wild. It is also a good IR parts source. As the board currently stands you would have to invest in a PIC programmer to make the neccesary changes, but if enough interest was generated I image tank sounds could replace the hand held arms fire that currently is being programmed into it.