Main > Lightguns
Lichtknarre: Unmodified Wii remote as a sight accurate Lightgun using 2/4 LEDs
Fusselkroete:
Hi, this tool can also help you to configure the axis in the emulator.
You can find it for example under P1 > more Settings > Movement execution tool. This tool will than work for p1 as long it stays open. You can use the equivalents for the other players aswell.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Iqqrd5z-YkHZMC3wM-BR5rOcH67aZPtk/view?usp=sharing
RandyT:
I could be wrong, but think the author just found us. Probably due to the new traffic ;D
BadMouth:
I'll repeat a bit of my last post to pack more relevant info into this one.
LEDs are 850nm 3w with built a in 140 degree lens. When they are powered, there is a bit of red visible to the naked eye. It is subtle and not distracting, but 940nm ones would probably work just as well and have no visible light. I like that I can see that they are on.
These are the ones I used: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08XQDLS8L?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1
I am not saying they are the best for the job. I primarily bought them because I could get them quickly.
They were ran in series 6.5 volts and 300mA. This is less than half of the rated current, but it keeps them cool enough to not use heatsinks.
This is the buck converter/current limiter I am using: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07G446KHJ?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
(Not sure if it is a good one or not. It took a while to get the voltage adjustment working.)
For the sake of completeness, I am using an Asus USBBT500 bluetooth dongle. I am sure there are cheaper ones that will work.
This video was helpful in my understanding of how to set the LEDs up:
I just wired them in series in a loop (+ in then - to +, - to +, etc ). (That is a thermocouple taped to the first one to measure temps)
It could just be that I'm inexperienced with it, but I found the calibration screen difficult to do holding the gun by hand so I ended up holding it with a phone mount on a tripod.
With the gun stationary, I could move the LEDs to get the correct numbers on the screen. The side ones ended up needing to be moved inward closer to the edge of the screen while the top one needed moved off the top of the monitor. I am sure this will be easier once I wrap my mind around everything, but it felt a bit overhelming trying to get it right at first. I am sure I will be able to explain it better after doing it again on my cab.
Once the LED locations were calibrated I tested the gun as a mouse. It was drifting a bit toward the edges. I played around with the offset calibration to correct this.
I thought the offset calibration wizard was going to be helpful as it has you get close enough to only see two LEDs, but in the end I didn't find it useful and preferred to play around entering my own numbers. Basically playing the high low game until I found the value where the mouse pointer was dead on with the gun sights near the edges of the screen.
So gun calibrated I launch MAME and learned how much I've forgotten. No fake mouse input in MAME. So I switch to the vjoy plugin and it doesn't work because I don't have vjoy installed on this PC. So after getting vjoy and MAME square away, the first thing I notice is that the on-screen crosshairs in MAME trail pretty bad. It doesn't cost me to miss any shots, but not ideal I guess. Luckily there is a setting for this in Lichtknarre. Under "More Settings" next to each player is a "Step" setting. I double it and the trailing is pretty much gone. Not sure at what expense, but the games were perfectly playable without crosshairs at the stock setting.
In mame with vjoy, the offset near the edges still seemed a bit off. I am pretty sure it could be adjusted or corrected in the games original service menu, but I didn't want to get into that yet. Using the sights on the gun, the shots were close enough to count as a hit in all the games I tried, but it still felt like it could use some tuning.
I guess I should be more positive here: Yes, it works well enough that you can use the gun sights and turn off the on-screen crosshairs..and from a distance I would expect to play light gun games at. The gun was around 40" from a 27" monitor. At least that is my experience with these Walther replica Wii guns. ;D
Vjoy is an extra layer that affects the testing, so I moved on to Demul where I could just use it as a mouse.
I started off with House of the Dead 2's service menu. After playing some HOTD2 and Maze of Kings, I moved on to Sport Shooting USA.
This is the game to test guns on! I took my time to dial in the calibration in the game's original service menu.
How well do they work? Watch the video below. I am aiming using only the gun's sights from 40 inches away. You can see that the shot doesn't always correspond to the mouse pointer. That is the game's original arcade calibration at work. For the second round of shooting, I managed to get some decent footage from behind the gun. The next to the last shot misses and you can see that I had the gun turned. When I straighten it, the shot lands. EDIT: I also want to mention that the camera on my phone messed with the wii camera despite having the light disabled. It would make the crosshairs jump to random places. I put tape over the LED on the phone and the crosshairs became stable.
So in summary:
It meets my standards for accuracy and distance from the cabinet.
I will be installing this on my cab.
I will have some tuning to do to use the vjoy plugin.
Setup and calibration feels a bit klunky and stressful, but I am sure we can improve it once we understand it better.
Front-end integration is probably not going to happen, but I wouldn't rule it out completely.
It took a while to get both guns connected, but when I relaunched the program and pressed the sync button on them, they both immediately paired.
On these guns, it seems that I only have to press the sync button, not hold it down. I think holding it down before was actually preventing them from pairing.
If you have wii guns, it is definitely worth it.
EDIT: Randy, please add the author's github to the first post: https://github.com/Geekonarium/LichtknarrePlugin
Maybe one of the talented people at BYOAC will take an interest in helping develop it.
RandyT:
Plugin page link added to the original post.
Very nice writeup. But a couple of comments/questions.
(Edit: Just re-read your post and it wasn't clear whether the supply was 6.5v or whether that is what you had it adjusted to through the buck converter. If the latter, you can disregard the next paragraph. Probably still worth reading, as a 6.5v power supply might be a viable alternate approach and I have no idea what you are feeding the converter.)
The first is: Is the buck converter even necessary with 4 of those LEDs in series and the 6.5v power supply, assuming that is what you are using? Based on my shoddy calculations (so take them with a grain of salt), if each of the LEDs are being driven at 1.6v (roughly 1/4 of the available voltage) with a draw of 300ma, only 30mw of power would need to be dissipated by a .33ohm resistor, so even a 1/4 watt resistor would be overkill. I think the difficulties you are having with the buck converter is that it is a step-down converter, and there may not be enough differential between input and output for it to work well. Hell, with a decent 6.5v regulated supply, I'd just hook the 4 of them in series, without a resistor or anything, just to see what happens. But that's me, so check the numbers and make your own decisions.
And as usual with the Chinese datasheets, the data they provide seems to be contradictory...at least for the two longer wavelength IR parts. The graph shows a voltage range of 1.8 to 2.2, while the ratings chart states 1.6 to 2.0. If I were to guess, they just copied the graphs from the 740nm parts, so they aren't correct for the other IR parts. The actual curves probably won't differ too much, so you can probably just drop them down a couple of points on the voltage scale to get a ball-park and stick to the 1.6v to 1.8v rating.
About your setup. Visually, and based on the position of the blobs, I think your LED positioning was at least initially incorrect. As I stated earlier about the calibration explanation, assuming your monitor image fits perfectly to the frame, my gut feeling is that the LED's need to be an equal distance from the edge on all 4 sides, and at the positions indicated by the positioning calibration lines image you posted earlier. From your photo, the top and bottom LEDs are outside the frame, and the left and right are inside, with one of them appearing to be closer to the screen edge than the other. Those lines connecting them should be a nice, straight cross pattern, and I believe that what it may be showing you is the positioning error. Even though you got it to work, I think the position of the LEDs made it a lot harder than it should have been. Again, just an observation, I wasn't there.
And one final comment is the speakers. Maybe it's not a problem, but with the wide angle of the LEDs, I have to believe that at some angles, you are going to get reflections off the sides of the speakers which will impact the accuracy of the system. Depending on how the code is written, this can affect not only stability of the cursor, but possibly also tracking speed, as some of the jittery values caused by this could be seen to be "out-of-reasonable-range" and discarded as error, causing the system to be waiting for something more reasonable to arrive to be averaged into the position data. To get a good test, I would think that at minimum, the screen should be brought out past the front of those speakers.
It might also be interesting to try with an OG Wii remote, as the camera in the gun, as nice (and rare) as that gun is, may be inferior to the ones used in the OEM Wii remotes. If it's the one with the sub-board with a bunch of components around the camera and a couple of black blobs on the back, then it's probably the same as the Chinese "knock-off" Wii remotes, which reportedly aren't very good. :(
Ok, I'm done for now :lol
Edit: Ok, one more thing...the reason your phone was interfering was likely due to the auto-focus. Probably an IR range finder/lidar thing sending out pulses when the camera is on. If you can turn off auto-focus, it might stop doing that :)
BadMouth:
I am stepping down from 12 volts. My cab has a 12v power supply in it for the monitor rotation that I plan to tap into. They will eventually be turned on and off via software. I also might need to up the current to make them brighter behind the smoked plexi on the cab.
The package the LEDs came in said 1.5-1.8V .700mA (which I assume is 700mA, so who knows if these are correct.)
I started with the LEDs an equal distance from the edge of the screen. Where they are now is where they ended up through the calibration process. It's all about their relationship to each other so all four could be moved down, but the sides would still be right on the edge of the screen while the top and bottom aren't. Getting it this good was not easy. You will see, lol. Hopefully the cab will come out better since I have some experience now.
The speakers are behind the front edge of the monitor. Pretty sure what you are seeing is lens flares. I was wondering if they were as bad for the Wii camera.
This was just a temporary taped on setup to see if it worked well enough to bother with. It does.
EDIT: ahhhh.....the autofocus. Makes perfect sense.
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