Lichtknarre: Unmodified Wii remote as a sight accurate Lightgun using 2/4 LEDs

[Howard_Casto]

In terms of an Uzi shell I did find these things:

https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Blaster-Splatter-Outdoor-Shooting/dp/B09WJ9LDTD/ref=sr_1_293?crid=290R42HZFZF13&keywords=toy+uzi&qid=1672539856&sprefix=toy+uzi%2Caps%2C94&sr=8-293


Slightly more expensive and obviously hideous in color, but they are much sturdier, already have a gigantic barrel and run on what looks like a 2.6v usb rechargable lipo that could be re-purposed to power the wiimote.   The laser pointer and flip out stock are a nice bonus as well.   My only concern is how difficult it'd be to gut.   I'm sure they have more complex innards than a squirt gun.   

[RandyT]

This one looks similar, so it might give you an idea as to what you'd run into:

 

Nice find on the mongo solenoid.  That one looks formidable enough to give a good kick.  Just a couple of suggestions though.  Don't skimp on the power supply and go bigger than you think you will need, even for the smaller ones.  A lot of those cheap supplies don't even come close to what they are supposed to be rated for, and pop as soon as the current draw goes above about half.

And on the driver, a relay might not be the best choice.  In a gun, it's going to get cycled a lot and if those contacts spark at all, it won't be long before they get carbonized, burn up, or unrelated to that, the mechanical parts give out. 

So long as the solenoid pulls less than 5A and uses less than 24v (according to the specs) and you add a heatsink, this could work and it might even be smaller:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/134332298224

[BadMouth]

My leds and lenses came in today.   Hopefully I can get a test rig up and running tomorrow.

Sweet.

[Howard_Casto]

Heh, I'm out of wire of all things.   I'll go pick up some cheap speaker wire tomorrow at walmart.   I don't know if I'll get time to rig something up though. 

[Howard_Casto]

This one looks similar, so it might give you an idea as to what you'd run into:

 

Nice find on the mongo solenoid.  That one looks formidable enough to give a good kick.  Just a couple of suggestions though.  Don't skimp on the power supply and go bigger than you think you will need, even for the smaller ones.  A lot of those cheap supplies don't even come close to what they are supposed to be rated for, and pop as soon as the current draw goes above about half.

And on the driver, a relay might not be the best choice.  In a gun, it's going to get cycled a lot and if those contacts spark at all, it won't be long before they get carbonized, burn up, or unrelated to that, the mechanical parts give out. 

So long as the solenoid pulls less than 5A and uses less than 24v (according to the specs) and you add a heatsink, this could work and it might even be smaller:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/134332298224

Picked up some wire this evening but I was dog tired by the time I got home.  Oh well, it'll keep till later.  Actually the inside of that gun looks more ideal than I thought it'd be.   All the splatter parts seem to be housed inside its own inner shell and the cavity it leaves behind looks suspiciously wiimote shaped.  The barrel length it has would be almost perfect with a wide angle lense stuck to the front of the wiimote.  There are actually a lot of these splatter ball guns on Amazon for reasonable prices.... I feel like there are more than a few good options out there.   I've saw a few with an optional secondary handle that bolts where the sight is and that'd be good for some of the later games like aliens extermination which have a rocket/bomb button AND a second trigger on the front handle for a flame thrower.   Yeah a mosfet might be the way to go, I'm just unfamiliar with their usage when it comes to active high vs active low.  I wouldn't think it would make much difference considering what they do.   

[RandyT]

Looks like this one will give you some good info if you decide to go that way:



It looks like they were forward-looking enough to leave space when they designed the module, to allow it to bend forward so a heatsink can be added and not be super tall.  It may not heat up too much with short pulses, but some testing would certainly be necessary to make sure it can handle that momentary bit of high current over and over.  Might also be a good idea to add some holes over where it's mounted to let any heat escape.

That's the only thing about re-purposing shells without good dimensions...you have to decide whether you want to pay that much for a water bead blaster on the chance that it doesn't fit.  I guess you could always use it to chase raccoons out of your garbage cans

But I thought exactly the same thing when I saw it.  Nice and modular guts and it looks like a good candidate if it's wide enough.  If it is, then the plastic ribs won't be a big deal to trim out if need be. 

[Howard_Casto]

Eh I'm sure I could find 30 dollars worth of entertainment out of it and if for some reason it arrived and it didn't look like it would work amazon has an excellent return policy.   

Thanks for the link btw, that's helpful. 

Anyway, I think the shell should be wide enough.   



If you skip to around 2:50 it shows a shot of a guy putting the battery pack in there and it fits with about a quarter of an inch on each side.   Since a wiimote is essentially the same width as a pair of AAs that should leave enough room and then some.  7.4 volts btw.... not sure what that would be useful for.   It should be ok length wise as well.   The trigger area is quite low on the build and even if I had to cut away some of the structure, I think there would still be enough room to keep it intact. 

Anyway I need to wire up a test rig this weekend and make sure I can get outputs working while using the software and I'll go from there.

[RandyT]

If you skip to around 2:50 it shows a shot of a guy putting the battery pack in there and it fits with about a quarter of an inch on each side.   Since a wiimote is essentially the same width as a pair of AAs that should leave enough room and then some.

If anything, I think it will either be perfect, or just shy of workable.  If you look about a minute later at the barrel view, you can see that the upper section is narrower than where the batteries sit.  Kinda getting the same vibe for the barrel diameter and the WA lens.
 

7.4 volts btw.... not sure what that would be useful for.   It should be ok length wise as well.   The trigger area is quite low on the build and even if I had to cut away some of the structure, I think there would still be enough room to keep it intact. 

I had a feeling they were AA type Li-Ions.  When fully charged, they will be as high as 8.2v.  I actually have some Li-Ions in that form-factor which are regulated down internally to the normal 1.5v per.  They last a nice long time, even with the internal circuitry taking up space.  Might be a good candidate for an internal (to the gun, not the battery ) regulator, if there's enough room for one.

[lilshawn]

I had a feeling they were AA type Li-Ions.  When fully charged, they will be as high as 8.2v.  I actually have some Li-Ions in that form-factor which are regulated down internally to the normal 1.5v per.  They last a nice long time, even with the internal circuitry taking up space.  Might be a good candidate for an internal regulator, if there's enough room for one.

that would be a 14500 battery. essentially a small version of an 18650. i have some small garden lights that use one of those instead of 2x AA batts.

[RandyT]

that would be a 14500 battery. essentially a small version of an 18650. i have some small garden lights that use one of those instead of 2x AA batts.

They have their place in very specific circumstances like those, where the device was designed specifically with them in mind.  But I've always wondered how many devices ended up in the landfill due to those things.  Even using one to replace two normal AA's stuffs about 40% more voltage into a device than it would be expecting when fully charged, which usually means opening the gates for magic smoke and tears to escape. 

I've heard tales that a standard silicon diode, in series with a schottky diode can be enough to bring the voltage of a standard 3.7v Li-Ion down into usable range.  This is based on a .6-.7v voltage drop of the silicon diode and the .3-.4 drop of the schottky.  But it's not the best way to do it, as there are some possibilities for it to not work as expected and cook what you are powering.  It also doesn't make a lot of sense now that very cheap and surprisingly decent regulators are easy to find.

[lilshawn]

I've heard tales that a standard silicon diode, in series with a schottky diode can be enough to bring the voltage of a standard 3.7v Li-Ion down into usable range.  This is based on a .6-.7v voltage drop of the silicon diode and the .3-.4 drop of the schottky.  But it's not the best way to do it, as there are some possibilities for it to not work as expected and cook what you are powering.  It also doesn't make a lot of sense now that very cheap and surprisingly decent regulators are easy to find.

ahh, the ol' dirty sanchez voltage regulation.

Dirty Sanchez: i want 12 volts
Car: here's 14 volts
Dirty Sanchez: here's diodes used improperly to drop that down to 12
Car: But, what about when i'm not running?!
Dirty Sanchez: not my problem.

[Howard_Casto]

So I did a bit more research on the nyko wand and it's "trans-port technology" tonight after I saw an article where they mentioned that rumble could also be passed along to a nyko nunchuck.   Turns out, nope it's just exposed pins like I originally thought.  Three contact areas are exposed below the standard wii expansion port for A, B and ground respectively.   So what about rumble?   Well, nyko got sneaky.

Observe this pic of their kama controller:




See those two contacts on what would normally be part of the ground plane on the connector?  Yeah that's rumble out.   

Honestly, I'm not sure how useful any of this info is.   The exposed A and B pins might, but to access the rumble you'd really need a nyko kama controller cable, and at that point you might as well just hack the wiimote since you'll be hacking the kama anyway.  It needs documented though as all the data on these controllers that used to be one the web seems to have disappeared.  I'm sure glad I've already wrote a test program that can read every wii accessory I could get my hands on so I'm not guessing on the protocols.   These wands are cheap enough so I'll probably pick up at least one to see what I can find out. 

[RandyT]

I was finally able to spend some time doing a proper test of the "fish-eye" lens.  And as long as I was making an adapter for the lens, I figured I might as well make the "Perfect Shot" more perfect for sight accurate use as well.  It's quite a bit better now than stock

Near as I can tell, the alignment of the lens is right on.  After calibration, things track nice and straight in the center of the screen and show similar curvature distortion on both the top and bottom, so that's a good sign.

So, does it work?  Well, it does...but not without a few caveats. The first one is the obvious distortion issue.  The lens will completely screw up the calibration and might make it difficult to use the wizards.  This is to be expected, as the lens will make the ratios look a little off.  Manual calibration isn't too difficult if that's what needs to be done.  If enough people use this kind of lens (and the author happens to be one of those people ) we may see some built-in correction at some point.

Toward the central area of the screen, I didn't notice much of an issue, if any.  The cursor seemed a bit jumpy, but I'll cover that later in. As far as accuracy goes, there really isn't much drift until you get toward the edges of the screen.  It's not huge, but it's likely enough to adversely affect performance for a really demanding title like Point Blank.  But VC and HOTD:R seemed to play perfectly fine. 

In fact, in the first scene of VC, I was able to hit 95% accuracy on the first test and where I missed I knew it was something I did.  And that brings me to a serious benefit of using the lens: Distance.  This add-on allowed me to be closer than half of the distance I would otherwise need to be at.  If I didn't know that these games were meant to have players this close to the screen, I'd have felt like I was cheating.  It makes that much of a difference.  My CRT is 37" diagonal, but there is a wide, angled bezel around the tube, so it's more like 43" based on where the LEDs needed to be.  Even with a screen that large, 24 to 30" seemed to be the sweet spot.  I haven't tested with anything smaller, but what I have seen leads me to believe that just over a foot would be doable on a typically sized 4:3 arcade monitor.

Now for what could be the biggest issue for some, at least those who have larger screens.  LED beacon brightness.  There's no such thing as 100% transmissive lens, and as the size gets smaller, and the lens system gets cheaper, the more that transmission gets reduced.  This means that there is a smaller zone the gun must be in to work, as too far away means not enough energy from the LEDs, but too close, and the pattern gets lost.  At first, I thought it was something which might be addressed by angling the LEDs, but even positioning the muzzle directly on-axis with one of them seemed to have no effect on the ability of the system to pick it up, past a certain distance, even with the sensitivity cranked to maximum.  I also noticed a bit more jitter from the cursor, likely due to the reduced brightness.  I was able to effectively make use of the "bad LED" and smoothing modes to minimize a lot of this, which normally isn't necessary without the lens.  I may completely remove the IR filter to see if this has any positive effect, but probably not right away.

At the end, it's a bit of a mixed bag.  If absolute accuracy is important to you, you may want to skip the lens, wait for the curvature corrections in the software or maybe try an intermediate power to see if it has less distortion.  But if you tend to play the standard fare and want more of a "real light gun" experience where distance is concerned, I would give it try.  I didn't find it so bad that I immediately removed it, so that probably says something.

*Edit*

Did a little more testing with a cell cam and the fish-eye.  I think the FE may have some even larger issues.  With a regular camera, there seems to be quite a bit of internal reflection and loss of focus at the edges, both of which could be causing some major problems.  I think I'm going to downshift and try out the less extreme wide-angle lens.  Some simple testing has showed that this has the potential to be nearly as as good distance-wise, but with less negatives.

[RandyT]

Part 2:

The standard wide-angle lens is much better.  Still gets closer by an arm's length, not jittery, better accuracy than the fish-eye and no apparent issues with the ability of the system to pick up the LEDs at greater distance.  It's also smaller, so that could help in some build-related situations.

There is still some curvature distortion at the corners, which will mean an occasional miss in those areas, but really not bad.  With it, I was able to get through the intermediate (yellow) ladder of Point Blank with one continue and still had 3 lives left at the end.  So definitely a decent option to get closer to the screen. 

[Howard_Casto]

This is just an idea off the top of my head but wouldn't the easiest way to implement a fix for the distortion be a distortion lookup table?  I think the wiimote uses a 1024 by 1024 "image", so have a 1024 by 1024 array and with each ir coordinate look up that array coordinate to get a pre-calculated correction of where that point really is sans-distortion.   I'm sure the distortion amount is documented for various lens specs and if not, it'd be possible to take two pictures on a tripod, one with an unmolested image (proboably of a grid) and then one using the clip-on lens to determine where each point in the grid lines end up after the lens.   

I'm not sure how viable that method is but, in my mind, it would require the least amount of processing time, so it'd reduce lag as opposed to correcting on the fly.   

[RandyT]

This is just an idea off the top of my head but wouldn't the easiest way to implement a fix for the distortion be a distortion lookup table?  I think the wiimote uses a 1024 by 1024 "image", so have a 1024 by 1024 array and with each ir coordinate look up that array coordinate to get a pre-calculated correction of where that point really is sans-distortion.   I'm sure the distortion amount is documented for various lens specs and if not, it'd be possible to take two pictures on a tripod, one with an unmolested image (proboably of a grid) and then one using the clip-on lens to determine where each point in the grid lines end up after the lens.

This is sort of how lens correction works for VR.  The lens distortion is profiled, and an inverse shape is created upon which the image is mapped.  This neutralizes the curve, but the lower resolution where there is image compression from the distortion, is not changed. 

A good graphics card is required to do this for VR, but in this case, we're just looking at up to 4 data points.  So yes, I think that is a viable approach.   A lower resolution data table of X and Y offsets within a zone may be able to get it close enough, without needing to map every pixel.  I can almost see imaginary concentric circles, getting tighter as they reach the edge, to create the zones.

*Edit*  Better yet, just profile the lens and feed that information to OpenCV and let it figure it out with the "undistort" function

[Howard_Casto]

So I had a few minutes and I played around with the software and mamehooker to see how well they get along.  Everything seems to work ok!   Obviously, you'll have to turn off the rumble feature in lichtknarre but rumble and leds can be controlled fully by mamehooker which means any external program should be able to control them as well.  I can't do a full test yet (haven't built my led harness) but I fired up both terminator 2 and rev x, the two games that pulse gun recoil faster than any other, and the humble wiimote seems to keep up just fine.   So with that confirmed, a totally wireless pistol at least, seem feasible. 

Keeping that in mind I might be willing to experiment with the hardware side of things a little.   So in terms of a battery and step-down solution, what do you guys think would work to keep... let's say a 5 volt solenoid and wiimote powered for a reasonably long gameplay session?   I'm just looking for ideas.  I think a pistol with recoil that you can turn off or switch back to the rumble motor to save power might be a pretty nice bit of hardware.

In other news I couldn't resist, and the price started to go up, so I bought one of those uzis.   It's supposed to come in thursday.  I still need to buy the sacrificial wiimotes, mosfets, power supply and solenoids but one thing at a time.   

[RandyT]

Good news on the Mamehooker stuff working!

On the battery pack, you'll probably need to do some testing with a meter or a bench supply and do some math. 

Basically, the formula (I think...double check my work):

(3600 / [Solenoid Pulse Time in Seconds]) / (Voltage x [Average Solenoid Current Over Pulse Duration])

will give you a rough idea as to number of actuations to expect per Watt-Hour.  For example;

If the solenoid operates from 5v and consumes 2 amps on average when actuated, and the pulse duration is .5 seconds, the formula would look like this:

(3600 /.5) / (5 x 2) =720 actuations per Watt-Hour

So, you would need to decide how many times you want to be able to fire per session, and plug in accurate numbers for the power used by your solenoid.  Of course, it would be less than that as heat starts to kick in, so you probably would want to go a little larger than the answer you come up with.  Then do the same with the remote and add that to the equation, accounting for losses from whatever regulation method you decide on.

*Edit* 

Also make sure that whatever battery you choose is able to deliver the instantaneous current levels you require on a repeated basis.  Some Li-Ions will heat up and can do bad things if you try pulling more than what they are rated to deliver.  And I would also be sure to correctly install a snubbing diode on the solenoid to deal with the collapsing magnetic field, otherwise any electronics on the same supply as the solenoid could be short-lived.

[Howard_Casto]

Sounds like I've got homework this weekend.   I'm wondering if it'd be more efficient if the wiimote used a separate battery pack from the solenoid to eliminate the need for power regulation.   I've got to think stepping it down would wear on the power reserves a little.   

My uzi came in.  For only 30 bucks I'm rather amazed at how nice it is.   The plastic isn't arcade quality or anything, but it is very sturdy.  The trigger is a nice microswitch and it feels really smooth.   It's a little on the small side compared to a T2 gun or anything like that, but I think for something you'll be holding up your hand it's about right as anything else would get heavy.  There are rails on the top and bottom of the gun and I plan to make use of the bottom one for a removable grip for those rare games like aliens extermination that have three fire buttons.  The size is about perfect to house a wiimote with the upper chamber having just barely enough room width and height wise. There might be enough space for some foam to hold it snuggly or perhaps some 3d printed rails like the ones inside the nyko perfect shot.   I'll most likely have to remove the barrel though and replace it with something shorter.  Not by much though.  The thing came with like 50,000 balls so I'm going to try and go through them all before I tear it apart.   

[Howard_Casto]

Ugh... never start a project around Chinese new year.   All the solenoids on fleabay and aliexpress won't arrive until mid-February.   I managed to find a decent 6v one at harfington.com.

https://www.harfington.com/products/p-1002575

Since I'm using the gel blasters as shells anyway, the plan is to take the 7.5v battery pack from those and use it to power these solenoids in the pistols.  7.5v should be within the tolerances of the solenoids, especially since they'll never be on for more than a split second at a time. The wiimote itself will power from a separate power pack.  I really don't have a clue how many times one would fire in the typical non-machine gun, light gun game so I guess this is a try it and find out deal.   

As for the machine gun solenoids, I'm looking for an alternative that I can actually get delivered before the month is out.   I'll have to scour through some arcade manuals to figure out the values.  It'd be nice to find 12v alternatives as well.  24v would make it difficult to find a cheap battery pack but 12v should be doable. 

The beauty of those values is that they can both be powered with an old pc power supply.   12v obviously but if I recall 7v can be accessed via a combination of the 12, 5, and gnd lines of a pc power connector.  Can't remember the wiring but I can look it up.   

[RandyT]

I really don't have a clue how many times one would fire in the typical non-machine gun, light gun game so I guess this is a try it and find out deal.   

Based on a typical playthrough of VC2, it wouldn't be difficult to fire off a couple thousand shots or more during the course of the entire game.  The faster, "splatter shooters" like HOTD, I imagine could be even higher.  For a ball-park reference, a couple of 18650 Li-Ions rated at a real 2500ma, wired in series for ~8v when fully charged, would get you around 20whrs.

The 14500 types, however, are reported to have a MAXIMUM real capacity of around 750ma for the best of them, which means the ones in your gun are probably around 500ma.  So, a rough guess would put those at about 4whrs, or most likely, not enough to get through even one play-through of VC2.

To get the juice you need for a decent solenoid, I would probably consider a hybrid "wireless" approach.  i.e. something like a fanny-pack battery, with a short plug-in wire to supply the power to the gun.  That way, the battery could be pretty large, and you would still be untethered to any fixed appliances.

Other than that, I think a couple of good 18650's would be the bare minimum useful configuration, with 4 in a 2S2P configuration being much better.   But this would require a pretty good-sized gun shell to accommodate.

*edit* This would be awesome, but expensive... and heavy (4.5lbs), considering it uses a Lead-Acid battery

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah if I've gotta wear some idiotic backpack I might as well just go back to a tether.  I don't think the solenoid needs to be particularly powerful on pistol guns.... the ones in the arcade aren't very strong.   

[lilshawn]

3d print yourself some "magazines" with lithium batteries in them. chop a hole in the handle of your gun and BAM! RELOAD!

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah I'm not worried about it.   Wireless would be great but I'm not opposed to wired.   I'm just playing around with what we can do to kind of help others if they want to go this route.   I'm in a holding pattern atm.   My mosfet boards came in but I'm still waiting on the solenoids.  Probably need to go ahead and order the big boys from aliexpress as well since I couldn't find a comparable alternative.   

[Howard_Casto]

So I opened up the uzi today just to see what I'd be working with.  I compared it to a generic wiimote I had lying around with the black plastic removed from the front so I could see exactly where the sensor lands.  There are some vertical slats in the area where the wiimote would go but they are thin, and you can probably remove them with a hobby knife without much effort.   The cavity itself is exactly as wide as a wiimote, I mean exactly.  Like if you closed it it'd keep the wiimote from moving but wouldn't bulge the plastic exactly.   The height of that upper cavity is almost exactly as high as a wiimote as well with maybe an 1/8th of an inch or so wiggle room.   The length of the wiimote goes from the front of the shell to just past the upper middle screw.  I think that screw post could be kept in place by nipping away at the wiimote shell, but I think the one in front towards the barrel would have to be removed.   The shell has 7 screws holding it together as well as the barrel, so I think it'd still close well without it.  So all in all everything looks good. 

The only problem is the barrel.    If installed as described, I don't think the sensor lines up with the barrel perfectly in the vertical orientation.   Regardless of that the barrel is too long even with lenses in place so it'll have to be shortened.  So, either I de-case the wiimote to get more vertical wiggle room, or I cut the barrel off the front and reposition it.   Neither of which seems particularly difficult. The strap holder behind the barrel tip would cover up any ugliness from moving the barrel or if I go the decase route I could cut a slit in those vertical slats, and it'd hold the wiimote pcb in place.  All of this is going by the knock-offs position though.   I have a nyko wand and the real deal coming in this weekend.  I'll remove the front plastic from them to make sure they all have the same vertical alignment.   

[Howard_Casto]

I pulled out one of the mosfet modules to test it via 4 AAs (6 volts).   It fired the gearbox that came with the gun via the 7.5v battery pack just fine, which makes sense of course.   I guess I'm just waiting on parts.   

I'll probably wire up my led harness this weekend.  At least I can test my stock wiimotes to get an idea of distance and how the lenses are going to help in that regard.   

[BadMouth]

I'll probably wire up my led harness this weekend.  At least I can test my stock wiimotes to get an idea of distance and how the lenses are going to help in that regard.

Woohoo!

Getting the placement and offsets perfected is a PITA, but you only need to do it once.

I hope you are as impressed with the accuracy and distance as I am.

[Howard_Casto]

So my test wiimotes came in.   The nintendo branded one naturally works just fine.   I can't get the nyko one to sync.   I think the issue lies in the length of time it takes a wiimote to sync on the pc.   With a real wiimote you can continue to hold down 1 and 2 and the wiimote will keep trying to sync (it usually repeats the cycle at least once) but with the nyko wand you only get one sync attempt.   If anyone knows a solution let me know.  It's a same since these are usually cheaper and the exposed pins make them easier to hack

[RandyT]

Try right clicking on the little Bluetooth icon in your taskbar area to get the sub-menu, and then select "Join a Personal Area Network".   Then add the device from the screen which opens up.  It might work better and it won't ask for a passcode.

[BadMouth]

So my test wiimotes came in.   The nintendo branded one naturally works just fine.   I can't get the nyko one to sync.   I think the issue lies in the length of time it takes a wiimote to sync on the pc.   With a real wiimote you can continue to hold down 1 and 2 and the wiimote will keep trying to sync (it usually repeats the cycle at least once) but with the nyko wand you only get one sync attempt.   If anyone knows a solution let me know.  It's a same since these are usually cheaper and the exposed pins make them easier to hack

Pressing and releasing the buttons on my third party guns seemed to work a lot better than holding them down.
Not sure if it's relevant, but worth a try.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah tried both suggestions and they didn't work.   I'm already on to the next problem.  It turns out the wiimote doesn't use the full 3 volts to power the rumble motor.   Since the mosfet modules need at least 3v to work (actually 3.3v but 3v should be within tolerances) it'll light up but the signal isn't strong enough to trigger the higher voltage.   Other than using an external avr to trigger the module I can't think of a way to make this work.   I'm open to suggestions. 

[Howard_Casto]

So on a more positive note:

The uzi shell is about perfect.  As you can see from the pics the wiimote fits with minimal cutting.  The black thing in the front is actually the lens, so yeah that is about perfect as well.  The plan is to hack the barrel off and just have the wide-angle lens as the barrel since they are so similar in length and width.   The only hiccup is that little rectangular indent on the side of the shell without the wiimote in it.   The Shell still closes but it throws the left and right alignment of the wiimote off a bit.   I'll just remove some plastic from the shell.   The hole from the barrel is just the least bit too large to screw the lens into so what I might do is epoxy a piece of plastic on the inside and drill a new, smaller hole so it'll screw in.   

[Howard_Casto]

Btw open the images in a new tab.   The forum is screwing the aspect ratio up again.

[ZTylerDurden717]

I'll be the guinea pig and test 4 point on a 65" from 7 feet away using a set of 4-3 cluster lower power LED strip sold from some gun4ir vendor.  Chinese new year and lots of 10 qty for the high power solution would cost the same and will take until March on snail mail.  Gun4IR vendor promotes it as high power and high angle but they look like regular ol' bread board LEDs.

Best case scenario, they work fine without using Lichtknarre's "bad LED mode" (too high of latency imo) and folks without much DIY can easily get into the light gun space.  Worst case, I sell the strip at half on ebay and wire the LEDs later on.

Side note: the LED strip has a clone on Aliexpress $20 bucks cheaper which makes it even more appealing for prebuilt materials.

[ZTylerDurden717]

Separately--a ---smurfing--- tripod to calibrate a light gun? You gen-Xer's already getting the shakes? 

[RandyT]

Separately--a ---smurfing--- tripod to calibrate a light gun? You gen-Xer's already getting the shakes? 

You don't know the half of it.....but you will

I won't speak for BadMouth, but I think the issue may have been that the Walther gun perhaps has a different lens, probably with a bit of wide angle enhancement.  I can tell you from experience that the wide-angle lenses can make using the built-in calibration wizard more challenging, sometimes allowing only a tiny window with the gun at a specific angle where the software is satisfied and will allow the user to continue.  The software was designed with the simple stock remote in mind, so anything extra/different is outside of what it is expecting.  I also found that the numbers weren't really close with an add-on lens, so hand tweaking is probably easier and more accurate in that case.

I was curious about those LED assemblies as well.  But I think it's going to be tough to beat the modules BadMouth dug up, especially for large displays.  A pre-wired solution using these would be the ideal solution.  They seem to be usable at 10' or better (without an add-on lens) and we aren't even using them at full output.

[BadMouth]

Separately--a ---smurfing--- tripod to calibrate a light gun? You gen-Xer's already getting the shakes? 

Not yet, but I'm heading downhill pretty fast.
I wanted them calibrated as good as possible to remove that as a factor when judging the accuracy.
They were indeed a PITA to keep aligned. 
I also wanted it calibrated as close as possible to the monitor which meant both side LEDs are right on the edge of both being viewable.


I am glad another person is giving it a try.   
I'd really like to see someone get it all set up with 2 players, Troubleshooter/Demulshooter, & integrated into a front end to show that it works.
I was on that path, but am currently sidetracked by an emergency kitchen remodel.
(If I don't dedicate 100%  of my free time to it, it will drag on forever.)

[Howard_Casto]

Well that's the plan for me, I wanted to start a thread once I get the hardware sorted and just post configs as I go.   Like yourself I'm having a hard time finding free time.   I never did get my sensor bar soldered last weekend.  Btw you are soldering that up in a series right?  That'd make it roughly four AAs.  I think I'll use battery power until I get my power supply situation mapped out.  The mini solenoids for the pistols came in.   They are kind of puny but I'll still give them a shot.  As for those mosfets, apparently the most popular module on ebay doesn't actually do what it claims.  I finally found a reddit article where it states that while 3.3v will trigger the high side it only does so at about 25% and it takes a full 10 volts to get it fully open.   So I'll order new kit this weekend along with my 24v solenoids for the uzis and a power supply beefy enough to run all this mess.   

[Howard_Casto]

Ok so I'm about to order another round of parts so I got the old multi-meter out to confirm some things.   The rumble motor on the wiimote indeed puts out 3.3 volts, and since that's logic level most mosfets should work with it, just not the crappy one I bought.   The leds, while still on the board seem to draw around 2.7 volts.   My guess is there's a resistor somewhere stepping that down, but honestly, I can't think of what you'd want to use it for besides powering leds.   I intend to use the led outputs on the uzi's to light up the bomb/rocket button, the flame thrower button, and the red and green leds found on terminator 2 guns for target lock and civilian lock respectively.  I actually just tested some random leds I had in my parts drawer and they light up just fine without any voltage adjustment.  I'll take some readings of those crappy mosfets tomorrow to see how much power they are turning on just for curiosities' sake.

[BadMouth]

Yes, LEDs wired in series.  Basically just made a one conductor loop around the monitor.  Even at that low power, I'd be leary of running them without a resistor or current limiting device.

While I am satisfied with how well Lichtknarre worked in my testing, I do wish you'd get it up and running to experience it for yourself before ordering more gun parts.