Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: Numbski on December 12, 2006, 10:26:54 am

Title: Happ Optical on PC's...looking at documentation, solutions, etc.
Post by: Numbski on December 12, 2006, 10:26:54 am

Well, no one has made a peep about this since 2004, presumably because of cost and resolution restrictions (640x480 is the lowest it goes apparently):

http://www.r0r3.com/productsusbopticalgun.htm

I'm going to call them this morning and see if that price is still accurate or if the page is outdated...it is nearly 3 years old after all! :)

That said, given all of my work with the GunCon2 recently, I thought I might try my luck on the Happ Guns.  Here's the pdf Happ has on it:

http://www.happcontrols.com/images/pdf/opticalgun.pdf

It's a 4 conductor harness - +5v, Trigger Switch, Optic Signal, and Ground.

Now, I might be crazy, but doesn't that sound DEAD SIMPLE to interface with?  Wire it up to a serial port (USB if you want to get fancy about it), At very least the Trigger switch is a simple on/off on that pin.  The optic signal is the hardest, but somehow I'm not sure that's really so hard.  I wouldn't know for sure until I tried, but open socket and listen for what the gun sends, and decode it, similar to what I did for the GunCon2 (granted, others did it well before me, but didn't blog out every step...)

By chance does anyone have one of these guns handy and feel like experimenting a bit?  I might see if I can pick one up cheap from a local vendor, hopefully used.  I don't want to buy one full price just to tinker with.

Title: Re: Happ Optical on PC's...looking at documentation, solutions, etc.
Post by: CheffoJeffo on December 12, 2006, 10:53:27 am

It has been discussed since 2004, but you need to search from the main search page (i just noticed that I get different results from the Quick Search):

Search For r0r3 (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=search;params=YWR2YW5jZWR8J3wwfCJ8dG9waWN8J3w2MTAzMnwifHNob3dfY29tcGxldGV8J3wxfCJ8YnJkfCd8MXwifHN1YmplY3Rfb25seXwnfHwifHNvcnR8J3xyZWxldmFuY2V8Inxzb3J0X2RpcnwnfGRlc2N8InxzZWFyY2h8J3xyMHIz)

Cheers.

Title: Re: Happ Optical on PC's...looking at documentation, solutions, etc.
Post by: u_rebelscum on December 12, 2006, 10:09:59 pm

IIRC, the GunCon guns do the location calculating, right?  The arcade lightguns don't, they just send the pulse down the wire when they see the CRT tube rescanned.  All the calculating has to be done in the r0r3 (or the computer, or the arcade PCB).  I could go into more theoretical details on how the light gun works, but you probably already know most of it.  Do you need the formulas for calculating the location?