Questions for anyone with solenoid gun recoils

[charlieram]

Hi, over in the automated projects thread I have been making a mamehooker controlled parallel port interface for my aimtraks, The idea is to use mames outputs for the true recoil features and hopefully model2 and supermodels in the future, so that when the bullet count reaches zero the recoil is no longer triggered and also for automatic weapons. This is where my problem lies and also where my question arises, How fast can I expect the solenoid to activate and deactivate before it is ready to fire again? I have tried terminator 2 in mame but the solenoid does not respond fast enough until your energy is almost gone and the fire rate slows down, What does the real game use? I do know that the fire rate for that game is pretty fast so am I just expecting too much from the solenoid? I also tried putting a delay in mamehooker for the recoil which worked quite well apart from when you take your finger off the trigger, the solenoid keeps firing until what i asume is the buffered shots are done.

[DaOld Man]

Could you kill the solenoid circuit when the trigger is not depressed? Or am I way out in the weeds on this?

[charlieram]

Could you kill the solenoid circuit when the trigger is not depressed? Or am I way out in the weeds on this?

Do you mean to stop the buffered shots? If so then I don't know, I will have to ask Howard how to do that in Mame Hooker, I do know that I can trigger outputs by monitoring key presses but I'm not sure if I can override the cued commands. It will definitely have to be killed in software though because the solenoid circuit is totally independent to the trigger circuit.

[BadMouth]

What solenoids are you using?

I have a happ gun that I experiment with, but I'm just using the output from the Aim-Trak at the moment.
When I was figuring out how to wire up the solenoid to the transistor, I flicked a wire back and forth across the leg and it fired as fast as I could flick.
Perhaps your spring isn't as strong or the solenoid has a longer stroke, therefore it takes longer?

How much current can your 24v supply handle?  If it's underpowered, I could see that being an issue.

[charlieram]

I am using the Aimtrak solenoids and I have two 24v 5amp psu's, When i pull the trigger manually the solenoids do keep up but on Terminator 2, which I was using for testing the automatic mode, the solenoids don't release in time before the next pulse resulting in a very weak pulsing effect. I also tried connecting the aimtrak recoil module to the parallel port just to see if it was my circuit causing the issue but I get the same results so it's either the parallel port, Mame hooker or the solenoid that cant keep up but as I have said the terminator 2 outputs do repeat very fast so maybe I am just hoping for too much, anyone know of another mame game with outputs hooked up and with an automatic weapon that I can try?

What solenoids are you using?
Perhaps your spring isn't as strong or the solenoid has a longer stroke, therefore it takes longer?

Hmmm, I wonder If I could use a stronger spring on the solenoid to speed up the return?

[BadMouth]

Moving the striking point closer to the body of the solenoid might allow for more rapid firing, but might reduce the amount of force.
If the solenoid gets up to full speed long before the end of the stroke though, there might not be much difference.
There may be a happy medium where you're getting faster firing and not giving up much.
That might be a better idea than a stronger spring.

Another idea is to have the solenoid hit something in both directions,  but that would probably screw up the effect for other games.

Just throwing ideas out there.

[charlieram]

Maybe a Video will help explain, I'm not sure if anyone knows how Terminator 2s recoil system works? I don't but when you first pull and hold the trigger the energy bar is max and your shots are faster but if you keep holding the trigger in, eventually your energy gets lower and as a result the shots are slower until you release the trigger to recharge the gun energy, this is shown in the following video. One thing I did notice is the coil gets pretty hot and takes a while to cool down again but I think this is because the solenoid is pretty much on constantly until the fire rate slows down, So after watching the video do you think the fire rate is just too fast for a conventional solenoid recoil or is there anything to try such as changing he spring because it looks a pretty weak spring to me?


Dammit, How do I embed a video?!? Nevermind