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| Building TILT detectors for Visual Pinball? |
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| Darkstalker:
"so make 3 seperate bobs - that are only limited to one direction each. imagine this... a steel marble sits in a plastic tube. the tube is slightly angled upwords... and at the end, has contact points - or a switch." That is more or less the concept behind a mercury switch, but instead of a ball it is a bead of mercury in a glass reed switch with two diodes inside. Here's an explanation with pictures on an unrelated topic: http://www.shed.com/articles/TN.switches.html The problem with this is, they detect tilt (Angles, not pinball) so you would have to lean the cabinet over for them to work. As I said, even heavy shaking of the cabinet wouldn't generate enough lean to close the circuts, or all three would be going off with the amount you would have to turn the sensitivity down. I did think of a mechanical switch type that MIGHT work, but I think you would have to engineer something to do it unless someone knows of something like this already. Basically, think of it as a contact plate with a spring loaded mallet on an arm with the contact on the end. The spring would keep the arm in and the contacts open. Mounting this on the left and right of the inside of the cabinet, when you smack the cabinet it would cause the mallet to swing open and close the contacts. The spring would have to be strong enough to prevent chatter (bouncing), but weak enough that you can get the arm to move without too much effort. Here's a really crappy picture I made that will hopefully make more sense: |
| patrickl:
I just saw a accellerometer PCB with a serial output. The PIC converts the ADXL data to serial codes. With a bit of knowledge of PIC coding I guess you could change that to switch the 3 nudge switches. The whole thing comes for $45 or $50 assembled. Maybe if you ask them they can even do a version custom for Visual Pinball machines. I'd pay $50 for that. |
| Soulcon:
How about if you substitute your normal Wheel and caster system under your cabinet with Spring loaded shock absorbers? Ofcourse they would have to be heavy duty to support the arcade and still allow play, but now you could utilize your Mercury switchs or the less exspensive Balll and tube system? Just a thought that I think would protect your Arcade and of course an overreacting tilter? ;) -Soul |
| RayB:
Honestly, this is all too much for a rather small feature. Does the video pinball even handle nudging very well? (I mean, does it handle it well enough that you'd even use it?) I know I wouldn't want to rock a cabinet with a monitor and other precious parts in it (hard drive). How about just using slam detectors like they have on coin doors. Mount one on each side, and one in the front. You could tilt by hitting the side of your cab rather than actually rocking it... |
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