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Building TILT detectors for Visual Pinball?

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sofakng:

Anybody know how to build a full set of tilt detectors for Visual Pinball?

I've seen a tutorial (maybe from here?) that used a vibration detector from Radio Shack but that didn't detect direction of tilt or anything like.

After looking on vpforums.com I've seen one guy who made front AND side tilt detectors so if you hit your control panel to the left it would tilt left, etc.  However that was over a year ago and you must pay to post on vpforums.com so I can't even ask the guy how he did it...

Did anybody here make anything like this?  I'd be VERY interested in building something like this but I have no clue where to even start...


NoOne=NBA=:

I don't have any links for you, but a bunch of mercury switches, set for different directions and placed in the bottom of the CP area, should do it.

I used some in a controller I built for my Atari 2600 years ago, and they worked pretty well.

You will probably need some kind of adjustable plate for them to ride on, so that you can get them biased properly though.

RayB:

IME, tilt detection is simpler than you think.

Real pinball machines don't care what direction you are moving the machine (why would it matter?) All that matters is knowing that the machine is being rocked.

To detect this, they use a "plum bob" mechanism. It's really simple. All it is is a metal rod, with a weight at the end of it. This hangs down through a piece of metal that has a hole in it (maybe an inch in diameter, or less).

The hanging rod has power to it, just like a button does, and the ground is attached to the metal piece with the hole. By rocking the machine this causes the plum bob to swing. If it swings hard enough to touch the edge of the hole, then that completes the circuit (just like press a button causes contact of two metal parts, thereby causing electricty to flow through).

The heavier the weight of the plum bob, the harder it is to cause a tilt.

So there you go. Shouldn't be hard to just make one of these up out of all sorts of parts.

Or you could order one from Happ:
http://www.happcontrols.com/index.html?http://www.happcontrols.com/amusement/pinball/pinball.htm!


mp2526:

I may be wrong as I haven't looked at Visual Pinball, but I assumed he was talking about not detecting tilt as in how a real pinball would, but rather virtually pumping the table by detecting real shaking of the cabinet.

NoOne=NBA=:

I think he is wanting "nudge" control here.

An alternate method I've used on some of the pinball controllers I've built is to add an additional button on each side.
You can set them up so that each button is like hitting the machine on that side, and hitting BOTH buttons together is like hitting it from the front.

That setup worked especially great on the Atari 2600 Video Pinball game, where you could actually steer the ball using the nudge function.

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