DIY Recoil Interface Working

[rdagger]

My Do-it-yourself Gun Recoil Interface is up and running.  The circuit controls the gun's solenoid to produce recoil.  It can communicate with MAME or run independently to allow it to work with most gun games.

[Tiger-Heli]

Awesome!

[Tahnok]

Man that's cool! Maybe I will start my quest again for getting a solenoid into my little guncon2. So what games does this work for?

[Kremmit]

You build some cool stuff, man.  If you ever decide you'd like to sell a pair of these, holler at me.

[Witchboard]

Page saved on hard drive.     It's cool projects like these that end up going to a commercialized product and you never see the plans again!  Think rotating CP. 

[Dav]

Nice job.  I'm glad someone's using my hack. 

Dave

[rdagger]

So what games does this work for?

I added a button to the gun so you can switch the interface between 3 modes:

• Semi-automatic:  recoils once per trigger pull
• Fully-automatic: recoils continuously as long as you hold the trigger down
• Mame-controlled: recoils when the CAPS lock is activated; this currently only works with Dave's Terminator 2 hack

Using semi and fully modes you can play most gun games, and hopefully, there will be more CAPS lock hacks for games that have limited ammo or the guns that overheat.  Currently, I'm enjoying playing Crossbow in semi-automatic mode.   It's fun shooting up the medieval village up with an Uzi.

[Dav]

At one time I was thinking of a cheat.dat type system where it could pull values out of ram for any game to run the recoil, but I don't really do much with  mame anymore.  I haven't turned my mame cab on in probably 3 years.  I'm pretty much exclusively working with real hardware now.   Coincidentally I've been playing mostly the 440 shooters lately too.  Crackshot and Chiller mostly.

[Tiger-Heli]

hopefully, there will be more CAPS lock hacks for games that have limited ammo or the guns that overheat. 

What I think you are more likely to see is adaptations of the Light Signal Engine (LSE) and MikeQ's work with the LED-Wiz to enable an LED channel at certain game points, which you could use to send signals to your gun.  It's been hinted at in the LSE and LED-Wiz threads. . .

[Minwah]

You build some cool stuff, man.  If you ever decide you'd like to sell a pair of these, holler at me.

Ditto (well, I'd have one anyway).

Great stuff

[rdagger]

You build some cool stuff, man.  If you ever decide you'd like to sell a pair of these, holler at me.

Ditto (well, I'd have one anyway).

I think my current design would not be very marketable, because it is only designed to fit in an Operation Thunderbolt gun.  Also people would probably be reluctant to drill holes in their guns for the LED and mode switch.  The circuit also requires a very high quality regulated power supply (preferably over 20 volts).   I'm still searching through all my junk trying to get a better p/s.  The circuit also has to be calibrated to the p/s.

I'd have to redesign the circuit to reside in the cab.  I could make it support 2 guns with pots to calibrate fire rate and recoil timing.  There could be connectors to hook up an external mode switch and LED.  Also the microcontroller could be powered from a keyboard encoder with a secondary power supply just for the solenoids.  This would allow the circuit to work with a cheaper p/s assuming an IPAC can power the relay.  Or maybe I could replace the relay with an opto-coupler (I'm not sure if they make opto's that can handle over an amp).   I'd also probably have to get a more expensive microchip to support the additional inputs and an A/D converter.

If there was enough interest I'd consider it.  But for now, I'd be happy to offer advice on how to build it yourself.

[rdagger]

I found a great power supply to provide gun recoil at 24 volts.  I got it from an old broken Lexmark laser printer.  It can fire the solenoid at full power with amps to spare.   The quirks I was experiencing with the cheap laptop power supplies have vanished and the circuit now works flawlessly.  The p/s is almost too nice to use for recoil.  I could probably power a CNC router with it.  It also outputs 5 volts and I will probaby add a regulator so it can do 12 volts too for my marquee lighting.

I was lucky to rescue this printer from the garbage collector.  There are probably many of these 75 pound behemoth printers out there that cost more to fix than they are worth.   Lexmark may make POS printers, but their FDK p/s are high quality.

[rdagger]

I added a variable resistor to my recoil interface.  Now the fully automatic fire rate can be adjusted.
I also posted the AVR code.