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Author Topic: Starting monitor rotation project  (Read 16100 times)

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raph

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Starting monitor rotation project
« on: August 20, 2015, 12:09:18 am »
I'm engaged in a project of upgrading my XTension cabinet. I tried a manually rotating monitor, but I found that it's just a bit too much hassle. :)

I am planning on using the servo method. The shopping list so far is

Monoprice 200X200mm Bracket Universal VESA Adapter -- to mount to the monitor and the shaft hub
 Micro Maestro 6-channel USB Servo Controller
 Hitec .500" Servo Shaft Hub
 1/2" Bore Flat Bearing Mount
Hitec 32645S HS-645MG High Torque 2BB Metal Gear Servo

My question, for those who have done this before -- how do you power the servo? I am not at all electrically adept. I was thinking a 6v wall wart power supply, but what amperage should I be looking for? I can do basic soldering...




raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #1 on: August 20, 2015, 02:53:56 pm »
I think I found the non-electrician's answer. ServoCity carries these:

Wall wart power supply: https://www.servocity.com/html/6v__3a_power_supply.html#.VdYh-JfVFiI
Adapter between power supply and servo battery terminal: https://www.servocity.com/html/dc_power_adaptors.html#.VdYiK5fVFiI

Alternatively, just the jack: https://www.servocity.com/html/dc_power_jacks___plugs.html#.VdYiG5fVFiI

BadMouth

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #2 on: August 20, 2015, 04:36:56 pm »
Seems pricey.

I'm curious about this too.  I have a micro maestro in my cab, but only currently using it to control a few LEDs using only USB power.
I looked for a spec on maximum current the servo draws under load, but didn't find it.


Be patient, this board isn't real active so you might not get a good response for a week.


raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #3 on: August 20, 2015, 05:11:08 pm »
Yeah -- I'm sure the power supply can be had for cheaper, now that we know the specs (presumably if ServoCity specifically sells that one, it's the right one).

I couldn't find any other sources for a matching adapter; I am guessing everyone rolls their own. A couple of the build threads I looked at here showed pics that seems to just be a power supply in this range, wires cut and soldered to a battery line and plug.

BadMouth

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #4 on: August 20, 2015, 08:01:03 pm »
When I ordered my stuff from Pololu I bought a batch of F-F jumper wires, then cut them in half and spliced them into other stuff.
That way I didn't have to crimp the ends.  I own a crimper, but sometimes prefer to just splice in pre-crimped wires.
Looking at what Pololu offers, they all seem to have the black plastic connector on the end.  Mine were bare connectors on the end and cheaper.


raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #5 on: August 20, 2015, 11:17:54 pm »
Ah, interesting.

I have a possible neat surprise coming for a marquee monitor, which may also be using a non-standard power solution; it arrives Saturday, whereupon I will know more about what I'll be doing for power across the cab...

DaOld Man

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #6 on: August 21, 2015, 01:09:50 am »
I was waiting for the guys who have used those servos to rotate to answer your question, but why cant you just use your computer power supply?

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #7 on: August 21, 2015, 01:38:31 am »
Well, I wasn't sure if it was right -- none of the build photos I saw seemed to do it that way, and like I said, I am not electrically adept. I currently have a regular cased computer in there, and might swap it out...

What would you do, splice a red wire for 5v?

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #8 on: August 21, 2015, 01:49:19 am »
Well, I wasn't sure if it was right -- none of the build photos I saw seemed to do it that way, and like I said, I am not electrically adept. I currently have a regular cased computer in there, and might swap it out...

What would you do, splice a red wire for 5v?

Yes, Red wire is +5VDC and the black wire beside it is ground. (Yellow wire is +12 VDC, if you need 12 volts for anything).
If it were me, Id buy one of those "Y" connectors that plug into your computers IDE power plug (white molex with 4 wires), then hack into it, that way if it dont work or you change your mind, just unplug it.
You could also leave a blank expansion slot cover out to allow the wires to exit the case. But I would wrap some tape around them right where they exit, to keep the metal edge from rubbing the wire, it could eventually wear through the rubber on the wire and could short out on down the road.

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #9 on: August 21, 2015, 02:25:32 am »
Yeah, thanks.

The marquee monitor that arrives on Saturday is actually a cut down LCD used in a slot machine, that I picked up on eBay. It has VGA and DVI in, and is coming with its own power supply and cables, so I might be able to grab the power from there instead... there's a shorter distance to travel from the marquee to the monitor than from the computer to the monitor, actually. I'll know more when it gets here, I haven't actually seen the harness yet.

BadMouth

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #10 on: August 21, 2015, 08:41:42 am »
I was waiting for the guys who have used those servos to rotate to answer your question

Same here.  Since the subforum isn't that active, I find myself only checking in on it maybe once a week unless I'm involved in a discussion.
Hopefully one of them will check in soon.

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #11 on: August 25, 2015, 06:25:28 pm »
All the parts are here, but I have hit a snag installing smartcom. I can't register comdlg32.ocx in Windows 10. It's in the right place.

Quote
RegSvr32

The module "c:\windows\system32\comdlg32.ocx" failed to load.

Make sure the binary is stored at the specified path or debug it to check for problems with the binary or dependent .DLL files.

The specified module could not be found.

DaOld Man

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #12 on: August 25, 2015, 09:37:29 pm »
Hmm that commdlg32.ocx is probably 32 bit and win10 probably 64 bit.
Try just placing the commdlg32.ocx file in same folder as smartcom, BTW, what is smartcom?

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #13 on: August 26, 2015, 01:22:46 am »
Isn't it your Mala plugin? I thought that was the way to get Mala to autorotate the monitor based on the game's orientation...

At any rate, I am on a business trip now, and it occurs to me -- oh, I bet I need to run regsrv32 as administrator. :banghead: I won't be able to get back to the project until Tuesday when I am back home. I did get as far as getting the servo to rotate using the Pololu software.

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #14 on: August 26, 2015, 09:33:51 am »
Oh, startcom. I thought that was what you were talking about, just had to be sure.
 ;)

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #15 on: August 26, 2015, 10:07:11 am »
I just tried startcom on my desktop, which has been upgraded to Win10 recently.
I had no trouble running the configurator to set up startcom however there does seem to be a problem with the saving of the ini file when you quit the configurator.
If no ini file exists, it is saving the default entries, but if you change the defaults to anything else, they are not being saved.
Im sure it has something to do with win10, maybe it ha something to do with permissions?
Anyway, if you have trouble like this, just open the startcom.ini file and edit it with notepad. (The ini file will be created with defaults on first run of the configurator.)
Please let me know if you have this problem, when I get some free time I will need to re-open this project and find out what is going on.
The reason I had no trouble running configurator may be due to this PC being upgraded from win7, and I probably already registered the comdlg32.ocx file.

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #16 on: August 26, 2015, 12:17:00 pm »
I will test it out when I get back home on Monday night and let you know what I find. Thanks for your help!

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #17 on: August 31, 2015, 03:15:32 pm »
I'm a little late to the party, but I just used an old 5V 2A wall wart I had lying around from something to power the servo in my Little Bastard.  I would have used the computer power supply, but I used a tablet so had none... well actually it has a 5V wall wart as well, but decided to not double them up.
My Projects:
MisSpent Youth a Vigolix bartop,  Little Bastard a rotating tablet/display bartop,
Pin-Dog a mini pin-cab on vpforums.org  Star Wars a wedgehead pincab on vpinball.com

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #18 on: September 03, 2015, 04:38:16 pm »
I have successfully mounted the hub shaft on a VESA adapter plate, and thence that the monitor; mounted the bearing to the back panel and put the shaft through it; routed out the back of the board and mounted the servo to the hub shaft and the board, and run batch files to move the monitor around.

In short: it kinda works! But...

- The servo buzzes quite loudly. Seems like it is fighting to keep the monitor level, I think I need to add a counterweight to it. If I park a screwdriver on the monitor edge, it balances perfectly, and goes silent. It also goes silent if I turn the servo off using the Pololu control software, but then instantly sags sideways slightly. :) Could also go to a bigger servo maybe?

- I am running a variant of BorgDog's batch file with not only my custom parameters but also the acceleration and speed lowered down. With the monitor weight, overshoot and bouncing when it reaches the target happen unless I have the accel set to just 1. At 1 and a speed of 20, it's quite smooth.

- Startcom calls the batch file. Seems to work in that launching Centipede versus Joust does indeed rotate the monitor. But I end up with Centipede (and Vectrex) upside-down even though counter-clockwise is correctly set as the turn direction. Doh. This was working correctly when I didn't use startcom and rotated by hand instead. I presume it's some combo of mala rotating, the emu's rotation, and startcom.

- I also ended up with MAME backgrounded when startcom runs. Because i am calling a bat file maybe? Changing startcom to "launch and wait" seems to have fixed this.

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #19 on: September 03, 2015, 07:56:41 pm »
Fixed the upside-down stuff. :)

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #20 on: September 03, 2015, 09:04:03 pm »
Fixed the upside-down stuff. :)

How? I have an idea but tell us how you did it. Might help someone else.
Did you have any problems saving the config file in startcom?

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #21 on: September 04, 2015, 01:15:33 am »
Swapped autorol to 0 and autoror to 1, is all. Same with the Vectrex emu, changed it from 90 to 270. Dunno why what worked before doesn't now.

Managed to get the buzz to stop when the monitor is horizontal, but vertical it still does it. And if it overshoots even a little, it buzzes. I am pretty sure that the issue is that the load is just too high for the 645MG. I may go hit a hobby shop and see if they have something a bit beefier.

BadMouth

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #22 on: September 04, 2015, 10:33:34 am »
Another thing to keep in mind with Mala....

Mala generates the gamelist from mame.xml
You can change the rotation value in mame.xml, but after that you must refresh the all games list in Mala.
Changes don't carry over to the smaller Mala gamelists.
To update those, delete the game from the smaller list and then add it back from the all games list.

This is useful for stuff that is listed incorrectly or the stacked monitor games like punch-out where it's nice to display both horizontal screens on a vertically oriented monitor.

Another note:  All the vertical games I have for emulators that don't allow you to change orientation require the monitor to be rotated left for vertical and right for horizontal.
These include the Naomi shmups I'm running on Makaron emulator (lower requirements than demul), and the Taito Type X games.
Most games in MAME go this direction too, but not all of them.  It's easy enough to flip them in MAME though.

Not sure about the servo still grinding.  :)

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #23 on: September 05, 2015, 01:17:25 am »
So, servo grinding was due to binding caused by excessive load on the shaft. This was because by tightening the servo against the back of the panel, I had effectively pushed the shaft further out from the front of the panel, causing too much torque as the monitor moved away from the panel and thus the bearing. It meant the servo mechanism was carrying some of the weight.

I basically slid the whole assembly further back, so now the majority of the shaft is actually behind the bearing; this keeps the link between the hub shaft and the servo straight, and the weight is borne on the bearing and the panel. The servo is actually much more loosely attached now, but doesn't budge sideways anyway. The buzzing pretty much went away, though I can see that as the servo gets out of true, it can return. I still probably need to try to get the monitor into perfect equilibrium to solve it completely, but I do have it now at zero buzz when horizontal, and usually none in vertical but sometimes I need to tap the monitor slightly.

The bouncing when the monitor reached the edge of its travel was also worrying me, indicating that likely the servo wasn't powerful enough for the load. I talked with the folks at my local RC shop, and they said the buzzing wasn't because of torque limitations but the bouncing and jerkiness sometimes was a sign that I needed more torque, so I came home with a better servo. Much quieter in standard operation, to boot. Much pricier than the $20 I paid for the 645 though...  :-\

So... as of now, it all works. Next steps are probably to figure out what to do with the bezel (black with a circular clear center? Double layer?). Since I de-bezeled the monitor, it's very visible, with its bright silver edge around the LCD. I also need to do some cosmetic stuff to really polish up the marquee monitor. Even a right angle video cable is a bit tight, so I need to cut space in the top. I also need a bit of veneer to cover up how the bottom edge of the marquee monitor shows when you look upwards under the marquee.

I forgot to share a video... this is before the new servo: https://twitter.com/raphkoster/status/639673996103946240 You can just barely see the marquee monitor in action there with Centipede at the beginning.

BadMouth, Mala also has the handy "redo metadata in all game lists" button (I forget the exact name) under Game Lists. That fixed a whole bunch of games that were rotated in MAME but that the monitor didn't rotate automatically for.

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #24 on: September 05, 2015, 02:35:17 pm »
Oh! I forgot to say that the answer to startcom and the .ocx file turned out to be:

- registering it manually in Win10 just kept saying the file was corrupt.
- doing so from an admin-level command prompt didn't make any difference.
- running startcom with a copy in the folder gave an error sayng that the .ocx wasn't registered.
- leaving a copy in the startcom folder and running startcom as administrator did the trick, and the ini was created!

Question: I still have some manual rotation buttons. Is there a way to make startcom trigger with those, or do I need to do a bit more AHK work?

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #25 on: September 05, 2015, 03:33:13 pm »
Unfortunately, since startcom gets it's commands from Mala, I dont think there is anyway to do this.
I can research it a bit to see if Mala will pass button presses, but dont think it will.

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #26 on: September 05, 2015, 08:48:39 pm »
I think I can do an AHK script to intercept the keystrokes, call the rotation, and then pass the keystroke through anyway so that Mala rotates.

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #27 on: September 11, 2015, 02:39:20 am »
I still get some buzzing, mostly because the weight on the monitor is not evenly distributed, so as it rotates, it tends to sag slightly to one side. The servo notices and fights it. Am currently dealing with it by attaching weights to the back of the monitor to try to get it balanced. I seem to recall one of the other projects had a similar issue...

I also notice that stuff like a machine reboot or disconnecting power will make the servo reset rather vigorously, enough to throw it a little out of true. Apparently setting the max speed in the driver doesn't cover the restart case.  :badmood:

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #28 on: February 15, 2017, 11:47:50 pm »
An update for you all: this is now working well, after a year of neglect and some redesign!

I ended up needing to redo the actual mount for the servo to eliminate binding. I also had to modify the software I was using to control the servo.

Here is the batch file I ended up with:

Code: [Select]
if "%1"=="90" goto vert

:horiz
d:\Utilities\Pololu\Maestro\bin\usccmd.exe --servo 0,3456
start /wait d:\Utilities\Pololu\Maestro\bin\usccmd.exe --accel 0,0
start /wait d:\Utilities\Pololu\Maestro\bin\usccmd.exe --speed 0,30
d:\Utilities\Pololu\Maestro\bin\usccmd.exe --servo 0,7680
goto end

:vert
d:\Utilities\Pololu\Maestro\bin\usccmd.exe --servo 0,7680
start /wait d:\Utilities\Pololu\Maestro\bin\usccmd.exe --accel 0,0
start /wait d:\Utilities\Pololu\Maestro\bin\usccmd.exe --speed 0,30
d:\Utilities\Pololu\Maestro\bin\usccmd.exe --servo 0,3456

:end
timeout /t 2 /nobreak
d:\Utilities\Pololu\Maestro\bin\usccmd.exe --servo 0,0

exit

This code turns the servo off entirely between rotations. The servo therefore loses its memory of where it was; that's why it issues the command to take it to where it already is first. Given its current location, the speed and acceleration commands are then possible, because it apparently uses the distance between the two servo positions to calculate the movement curve on the fly. If you don't set the servo to current position after turning it off, speed and acceleration will instead be at maximum, and this will throw the monitor really hard, causing bounce at the far end of travel, likely torque damage to the servo, and probably loosening the mount.

I have a magnet at the far end of travel and a homemade latch to hold the monitor in the right vertical position; on the horizontal I just use a small rubber bumper disc, because the weight of the monitor wants to turn that way anyway. These are both hit by a physical stop I built onto the back of the bumper plate. I tried a magnet latch there and it was actually too strong! I do have some weaker magnets, so may try this again at some point.

Given the much better mount with no binding, I was able to make this work with my original HiTec 645MG servo. Which is good, because the other servo I got needed 7.4V and could draw spikes of 8A, way over what my 6V/3A wallwart could supply.

Once I get some photos uploaded, I will post the full details of the mount for the servo.

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #29 on: February 18, 2017, 08:09:14 am »
Glad you got those nagging problems worked out Raph!!!

I see people on here having a lot of trouble with the servos and having to jump through some hoops to get it to work.
Makes me wonder if they are really worth all that work, when DC motors will do the job apparently a lot easier. I do see where servos are good when space is limited, due to the small size of the motor.

Oh well, whats life without challenges?

Good work raph, and thanks for sharing your trials and what you learned.
Now whats your next project?

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #30 on: February 19, 2017, 03:43:45 am »
Well, my next project was actually a lengthy post with photos and parts list for the servo approach, so that everyone would have that as a resource. :) I actually wrote it all out last night, and then the forum logged me out when I hit post, and I lost it!

I think that most of the issues I and others had with servos came, in the end from making the surrounding hardware build, more than the servo itself.

Here is a video of the final result btw:

https://twitter.com/raphkoster/status/833219354116321281

After this, next steps are a redo of the CP rather than use the stock Tankstick... I'd like to have LED buttons that light up per game; bezel art; and control panel art. And I need to route out some space on the top panel so that it will actually close over that marquee monitor.

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #31 on: February 19, 2017, 11:29:36 am »
Great job raph!
I read your write-up, excellent! And we appreciate you wanting to share your trials and discoveries with everyone else.

Yeah, I think all of us old timers have been bit by the "my post got deleted" fiasco. I think this site logs you out after a while of no activity, so that happens when you make a long writeup.
Trust me, I have felt like throwing the computer out in the yard more than once because of that! It would be nice if it asked you if you wanted to save before it logged you out.
I have found the best way to avoid this is that before you post, highlight everything you wrote, right click and copy.
Then if you get logged out you can start a new post and just paste.

Again, great work and good writeup. I watched your video too, nice quick rotation.
Looking forward to your next project. (Or is this one complete now?)

raph

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Re: Starting monitor rotation project
« Reply #32 on: February 19, 2017, 03:46:09 pm »
No, I have plenty more mods to keep doing to this cab. :) thanks for stickying the post!