help with aimtrak guns

[loppydog]

Hi guys, I got a couple new aimtrak guns, and I am haing a bit of trouble.  My first problem is this....I mounted the PCB above the monitor and tested without my smoked glass, and I could calibrate from about 2 feet away and it was all good!  I put the glass back on and now calibration just "loops" until I get away from the cabinet about 6 feet or more.  Is there any reason the glass would affect the distance. I used the software that came with it and the "red dot" never goes dim or anything while calibrating, and the gun still works at shorter distances, but it just wont calibrate!

Second issue...after calibrating (from about 6 feet away ), the cursor on the desk top is pretty accurate.  When I fire up my NES emulator its pretty accurate.  But when I fire up MAME it is NOT accurate at all.  It seem like it is pretty good in the middle but when moved side to side and up and down it gets bad in a hurry.   I also noticed sometimes the cursor will not go to certain edges of the screen, like there is an invisible line at the bottom of the screen.  I know MAME games sometime have there own calibration, but I have tried them and I have tried other shooting games on MAME with the same results.  I am wondering if resloution affects calibration, or maybe the fact that I have a second monitor with an extended display.

My third issue...I am not sure my MAME configuration is correct because MAME appears to see everyone of my mouse devices as the same.  In other words my gun moves player 1 cursor, but so does my trackball and my joystick....and if I had my second aimtrak hooked up, I bet it would move player 1 as well.

Anyway sorry for this long winded post and I look forward to any suggestions.

[Nips916]

Bumping this thread.  I have the same sort of issue with the looping calibration and distance.  I,m not sure if it did that before I added the glass over my screen or not.  I am using a 27 inch lcd that is 16:9.  Not sure if that effects this or not.  Maybe andy has some ideas?

[AndyWarne]

The glass issue might be reflections. There is a Youtube video of the guns in operation in which the poster mentions he cannot get the gun to work with the room lights on. The problem is immediately obvious, in the video the room light (an ordinary light bulb) is clearly reflected in the glass.
The overall light level in the room should not matter as long as there are no point light sources reflected in the glass and visible to the gun. Fluorescent lights are no problem as they dont contain any infra-red.

Andy

[SlyJackal]

I am having tons of issues with it as well.  First off my monitor is slanted cause its in an arcade so to get the calibration working I need to stand back about 4-5 feet.  Secondly Time Crisis rom doesn't work its very choppy and from what I can see the aim is way off.  Plus how can you make it where pushing the button on side of gun will make you pop out since I don't have a pedal and even if I did make a pedal I couldn't reach it as i have to be too far back from the arcade.  Time Crisis two is missing files so it wont run and so is Area 51 too.  I tried using it on Duck Hunt on nintendo emulator with little luck as well.  I can get it to work if I change the trigger to a left mouse button press in the configuration of the light guns.  But I assume this wouldn't work for the Mame games.  I don't have my glass on yet either until I figure out if these light guns will work.  The nintendo emulator is FCEUX too.  Is there away to configure it to work in there when I play Duck Hunt?  So far I have been disappointed in this purchase as it was $170 for the 2 kits.  Not saying its not worth it yet but so far there is nothing working right.

jack

[AndyWarne]

Note that in the Mame setup guide here: http://www.ultimarc.com/AimTrak%20Setup%20Guide.pdf we recommend that the trigger is set to mouse left which is the best overall setting for almost all games. It might be worth reading through this guide.

Andy

[loppydog]

Thanks guys for the reply's.  Ok I figured my problem was the glass, so I went ahead and pulled the glass off.  I still have the same problem.  I went ahead and measure the absolute min distance I could get a calibration and it was 4 foot 4 inches. And even at that distance it might loop about 5-6 times before it takes!  My room is completly dark when I calibrate and I have checked to make sure all the "leds" are lit up through a camera.  I have not bothered trying to fix my other issues yet as this problem needs to be addresed first.  Again the strange thing is the gun works fine up until I get about 1 and a half feet away from the screen, so why in the world do I need to be almost 4 and a half feet away to calibrate.  At this point I wish I could just start changing the calibration numbers around until I hit the sweet spot.  Anyway, I am still happy I bought these devices because I can see the pontential they have and I know I will probably get everything sorted out eventually.  Thanks again guys!

BTW my screen is a 22" widescreen LCD if it matters

update:  I fired up MAMEUI without any frontend.  The Aimtraks seem to be working just fine this way.  It even fixed the way mame was handling my usb devices...they are showing up as seperate devices like they should.  Even my USB keyboard is showing up as a device(when I dont want it to ) Now if only I could figure out how to get it to work like this with command line MAME!  I can only think that it must be some kind of resolution issue.

[SlyJackal]

I just want to say when I say I'm disappointed in the purchase its not at Andy's fault.  Alot of it is finding roms that use the light gun that works.  None seem to.  They either skip or have missing files.  So don't take that to mean that his product doesn't work.  I haven't messed with it enough to know for sure.  I did have a small problem with having to be back to far but also my screen is slanted a bit much.  But I'm more frustrated that games I bought this light gun for, mainly Time Crisis 1 & 2 and Area 51 just doesn't work right at all and not cause of the gun.  So most of my disappointment is there.  I hope to have the gun going soon as I read this setup guide Andy provided me with and then I will give a better review of the gun.  Also how best to setup the footswitch for Time Crisis can I set it to be the button on the gun?  Thanks and thanks Andy.  

[CheffoJeffo]

does anyone have a working Time Crisis 1 & 2 rom and ARea 51 or know how I can get it to work? 

Second part of that question is OK. First part is a no-no.

[loppydog]

as far as getting the footswitch to work I would think the best way would be to wire up some of the extra button connections on the aimtrak device, so you can just press a button on the gun.  If that is not an option, if you are using an ipac, you could buy a real footswitch and wire it directly to your ipac, Then just assign in MAME.  I have area 51 working, but I think it takes a really fast PC.  You will need to locate the rom along with area51.chd, put them in the same location and point mame to the directory (I hope its OK to mention this stuff....if not I can edit it).  If I were you I would use MAMEUI to just get things working, then when you have that going try to get it up and running with a front end.

[SlyJackal]

Thanks for the info and my apologies on the post I edited out that part if anything else needs edited just delete the whole post.  The gun I have has 2 buttons on it already can I assign it to that?  Just curious and yes I have an ipac and considered making a footswitch but right now I have to be too far from the cab which may change once I get my aimtrack configured better.  My pc is 300ghz 1GB ram I would think it would run area51.  Thanks loopydog and all for your help.

[loppydog]

I am not sure how you have your buttons connected, but one way to see if it will work is to go into mame and launch time crisis then hit TAB and go to "input this game" and try to change the "footswitch" button to your button on the gun.  As far as your PC specs go, I doubt that PC would run these types of games.....but it's worth trying.  I am assuming its a single core processor.  Are you able to use the gun at a closer distance??  Because I am calibrating way off the marks, so when I get to the proper shooting distance (2-3 feet) it is calibrated better.  It is a "workaround", but it will do until I get mine fixed.

[AndyWarne]

Thanks guys for the reply's.  Ok I figured my problem was the glass, so I went ahead and pulled the glass off.  I still have the same problem.  I went ahead and measure the absolute min distance I could get a calibration and it was 4 foot 4 inches. And even at that distance it might loop about 5-6 times before it takes!  My room is completly dark when I calibrate and I have checked to make sure all the "leds" are lit up through a camera.  I have not bothered trying to fix my other issues yet as this problem needs to be addresed first. 

The "sensor view" tab in the config utility is designed to troubleshoot this type of calibration problem. Can you run this and calibrate with it running. If, at any of the three aiming points, the red dot of off screen, or has turned orange, then this step of the calibration will not pass.
There are a number of suggestions in the guide as to the reasons for this. The most common I have come across when people are using their own guns is the PCB not mounted straight along the gun axis.
If you can drop me an email we can troubleshoot this.
Andy

[loppydog]

Thanks Andy for the reply.  I have used the red dot as a guide.  It never turns orange or goes near the edge of the screen.  I don't get any orange or erradic movement until I get about a foot and a half away. It sure looks like it should calibrate.  As far as my unit being "in line" with the gun, I think it is pretty close, but I need to take it apart again in the next couple of days, and I'll take some pics.  I have considered taking a video of the problem as well, but it might be kinda dark.  I will drop you an email with this info as well.

Now, I made some progress with the other issues.  I was pretty sure the ONLY accuracy problems were with MAME.  So I think it is safe to assume that it is a MAME problem.  Like I said in a previous post, MAMEUI seems to work great.  So my next step was to try Command line MAME directly from the website....that one seems to work great as well.  I dont know if anyone here know about the issues with Auto Hot Key and MAME, but basically as far as I know you have to compile MAME with "force direct input" for them to work together.  For my cab AHK is an important part of the system, I cannot just eliminate my scripts without causing problems.  It would appear the by forcing direct input it screws up the accuracy of the lightguns as well as causing all pointing devices to look like the same device....just like disabling multiple mice I would assume.

If anyone has dealt with AHK and MAME I would like to hear your experiences.  Thanks!

[AndyWarne]

There is another check in the calibration routine which checks that the dot is not too far in from the edge. This would be caused by being too far from the screen. I could remove this check in the firmware but calibrating too far away would reduce accuracy. There are some checks we can do using the raw data display window, via email.