Main > Lightguns
Sinden Lightgun Kickstarter date revealed!
Rockstead:
--- Quote from: Moksi on September 15, 2019, 02:27:46 am ---I will buy one for sure
Recoil is a must for me , accuracy pinpoint
I want to test it out on Those ALG games as i tried to disable the crosshair and with the aimtrak it didnt register those shots well
Other games it works well though
--- End quote ---
You should talk to Andy from Ultimarc in this thread http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=160837.new;topicseen#new
Andy has said the following in the below conversation regarding people playing without crosshairs, he comes off as being very responsive to customers and I would be very curious if he can solve this for you and what the problem was.
“Quote from: Rockstead on August 09, 2019, 07:20:42 am
Typically when I see an Aimtrak owner talk about the gun in a positive way, it’s because they are using crosshairs and now have a perception that it is accurate, while those without crosshairs seem to be the most frustrated.”
From Andy:
“We do not receive that type of feedback. Once calibrated owners are generally not frustrated at all as far as we hear.
There are sometimes hurdles in getting calibrated but all are simple to overcome by reading through the troubleshooting steps on our site.”
jubiladoatope:
--- Quote from: Titchgamer on September 12, 2019, 12:40:52 pm ---Andy has posted a official update today.
Its way to long for me to copy and paste on my phone but to summarise it:
Delivery has been put back until atleast November due to changes being required to the case mould.
He is hoping this one will be the last change and then he can go full production.
The button D pad (for lack of a better description) will be a actual + shape now instead of buttons.
He mentioned some problems with sourcing components but not a big problem as he is now bulk buying them in advance rather than waiting for the ones he has picked to go out of stock again.
He has now fully tested the recoil and is really happy with how much kick it has got considering it is powered by the USB.
He has also improved the firmware a little and now has up to 20 customiseable inputs which using the off screen feature similar to the aim trak.
Ie aiming off screen gives a shift key effect.
He is hoping to expand this by giving the ability to have a different shift effect depending on which side of the screen you aim off but thats future stuff.
Think that about sums it up.
--- End quote ---
Hi Titchgamer, could you please post the latest update?,thanks in advance ;D
Zebra:
I hope that we will eventually be offered a choice of shells and recoil style for these guns. Obviously the first priority for most is to get a gun controller that genuinely works well on flat screens. But, I also see it as an opportunity for them to fix some of the previous mistakes with home gun cons.
We can buy any number of arcade-like racing wheels with force feedback in a range of prices. Home light guns, on the other hand, never really caught up with the arcades. We are always told it would just be too expensive to make it realistic or arcade-quality. I would like the option of spending a little extra to get something better. The mini Uzi aimtrak thread of this site would be a good place to start.
I might even consider switching from my real light guns if there was an accurate full auto Sinden mini Uzi.
Titchgamer:
Latest update:
Hi Everyone
Some good movements with production to update with. I had a few more forwards and backwards with the shell but I'm pleased to say that I've submitted the final shell designs to the injection moulding company. The lead time for the mould and samples is 4 weeks so I'm expecting to have an injection moulded shell in time for next month's update. What I had to do was focus on the more tricky areas and just get a 3D print of those section, getting a full SLS shell for £300 was expensive and slow! Using high resolution SLA it was actually a more accurate print which helped with component fitting and I was really impressed with the quality. It doesn't even look like a 3D print, picture below:
In my last update I mentioned the concern of crucial components going out of stock and taking months to come back so I took action and I've ordered the components I felt were important and were difficult to substitute. This is exciting as it is the real start of production. So far I have:
5000 micro switches (the ones with a lever hinge on them), one for the trigger and one for the pump action. 1500 capacitors for the recoil. 1500 solenoids for the recoil. 1000 camera modules due to arrive this week and will order 1500 more cameras on successful delivery to me (this was an expensive outlay and I wanted to split the risk!).
This is what 1500 capacitors looks like:
The plan is to make 2000 lightguns for the Kickstarter backers including 1000 with recoil. With these components I'm making sure don't run out, I've used my own investment to buy extra. This way if I take additional orders for Kickstarter backers or future customers I won't find that I can't make the product at that time.
The PCBs have also had some forwards and backwards. The solenoid PCB prototype was completed as per the previous update but it required an additional change to the main PCB to work (a hardware communications chip instead of using software). So I was able to test it inside the shell for performance but not inside the shell using a game. This was because I need an updated main PCB with this chip which I don't have the production prototype of yet. We didn't want to submit the final PCBs until the shell was complete in case it needed modifications, which it did. Now the shell is confirmed it means we can get the final version of the PCB ordered too and actually move on with the production. I should have significant updates on the PCBs next time too.
In the meantime I've filmed a video showing the recoil solenoid in action in the prototype shell. So what is being demonstrated is the near final prototype shell with the production solenoid in and it is being powered by the production capacitor. HOWEVER the capacitor is being powered by an external power supply and not the USB and it is not using the recoil PCB, it is just responding to the physical trigger switch. The strength of the recoil will be the same in the production version although the re-fire rate/strength (how soon it can re-fire / how powerful the re-fire is) may be different. In the video I didn't use offscreen reload as it fires the recoil with this setup which is annoying. The recoil PCB will have full control over when it should fire and will link to the game software being used. Therefore it won't fire when you don't want it to. I'm using the side button to reload which is the quieter click you can hear after the recoil. I'm playing a personal favourite the original arcade House Of The Dead in the Model2 emulator. I guess the video doesn't really show too much because you can't see the recoil as it's more a touch thing than a visible thing but it was great fun playing and the solenoid does give an excellent recoil effect :-)
project video thumbnail PLAY
So you may have seen in gaming news recently that Sega has commissioned a Polish company to remake the first 2 House Of The Dead games. It's not clear exactly what the plans are but I can assure you if it comes to PC then the Sinden Lightgun will support it. This is great news for the wider scope of the project where the aim is to contribute to the restoration of the Lightgun genre. Of course Sinden Lightgun backers can already play the original Arcade and Console versions of House Of The Dead 1/2/3/4 and Overkill. Here is a new video playing House Of The Dead Overkill from Steam on PC. It's an excellent game and very fun to play, the dialog throughout is really funny.
Other good Lightgun progress is that Transformers Human Alliance is now playable on Teknoparrot free version. I had a play the other night and it is excellent. Fantastic graphics and good gameplay. I'm going to do a video very soon, I would like a crosshair removal patch if possible so fingers crossed for that. Most Arcade games now are released for positional guns on a stand so the crosshair is shown as a default which is less fun when using a proper Lightgun so they need a patch to remove it.
Ahead of launch I've also been progressing Lightgun support on the Pi. I've preliminary added Lightgun support to lr-pcsx-rearmed although my merge hasn't been accepted yet and I've fixed a Lightgun bug in RetroArch. There are still some general issues with Pi Lightgun support I'm looking at. The great news is that when everything is sorted, pretty much support will be available for all the systems and with the Pi 4 we will get some amazing performance including full speed House Of The Dead 2 Arcade! On top of the systems on the Pi I've shown in my previous videos we will also get SNES, Master System, Megadrive/Genesis, SegaCD/MegaCD and Dreamcast. This pretty much completes the set with one exception Saturn. The emulator doesn't yet support Lightguns and also only time will tell if the Pi 4 can properly manage Saturn at a playable speed. If I don't get all the merges done for launch you will still be able to point your Pi to download any software changes required from my github. I'm doing my best to make it as easy as possible to get things running on the Pi.
A lot of people do ask when am I doing the backer survey. So the issue is that you can only do a backer survey once on Kickstarter. So as I need this to get the delivery details, I need to leave that to the last minute to make sure I get the most accurate delivery information I can when I dispatch. However very soon I'm hoping to do a survey-monkey to get some feedback on a few things included colour preferences, interest in upgrades, interest in a holster and also some general numbers about what systems people are planning to play on so I can prioritise the software. It's not going to be a backers official choice this is more about costing how many I need of each colour in general etc so thank you to everyone in advance that fills that in.
So what does this all mean for delivery. I said in my last update that it would be November at the earliest, I think November is now when the full production model should come together with all the remaining production parts coming in bulk in December. This means starting shipping in December is possible but actually getting all 2000 dispatched is unlikely so I think it is better for me to say that backers won't receive them till January and if they come for Christmas then that is a positive. Obviously I'm disappointed, I know this is common with Kickstarters but I wanted to be the exception that actually delivered on time. Due to my inexperience I'm forced to do a lot of the milestones sequentially to avoid making an expensive mistake. This means every blocker delays the whole critical path and it's hard to push ahead at any point unless I'm completely happy with the production quality. In this next month when I actually order the remaining components that should give a more solid idea of the dispatch time as I will be dealing with facts. All I can do is keep moving forwards, being honest and as before just reassure you that budget and quality are still perfectly on track and it is just the time that is taking a hit at the moment.
Sometimes in my updates I switch between me/I and we. So just to let you know about the team, I'm running the project solo but I have a mechanical engineer who is helping me with the shell design and a electronics specialist helping me with the PCB. They are both really talented guys so I'm grateful to have them helping with the project. I guess moving forwards on top of that I will now be working more closely with the injection moulding company and the PCB production company.
As always thank you so much for your continued support.
Best regards
Andy
pbj:
It would be very cool if he gets all this working well with a Pi 4.
:cheers:
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