A BYOAC Lightgun, are we up to it?

[shawnzilla]

Just for fun, I thought I would broach this topic again:

1) Could we, the BYOAC Community, come up with a design for a new pc lightgun?

    A) Design it (hardware)
    B) Write software for it
    C) Source the parts/labor
    D) Get enough people behind it, so that a production run would pay for itself?

2) Perhaps any profit made could go towards BYOAC interests, such as funding for future BYOAC projects, Rom rights acquisition, etc...

[shawnzilla]

Whoops, meant to post in the main forum... Peale, can you move this one over?

[Hoagie_one]

RAndy?

[Thenasty]

don't forget DOS SUPPORT 

[ripzone]

Yes, it would be pretty cool but I can't help in the drivers section.

If anybody wants help designing the product I have a few ideas.

[IntruderAlert]

Anyone ever try hacking the Act-Labs gun interface to use a real arcade gun?

[shawnzilla]

What are your ideas (unless you don't want to share them publicly)? I'm hoping we can all brainstorm and make this a reality.

Yes, it would be pretty cool but I can't help in the drivers section.

If anybody wants help designing the product I have a few ideas.

[Lilwolf]

Someone did... said they got great results.

I took mine apart to put it in a gun.. but moved before finishing it... and never got back to it.

Anyone ever try hacking the Act-Labs gun interface to use a real arcade gun?

[Lilwolf]

The question is how you would want to do it.

I dont' believe its worth going for a standard light gun solution but instead using leds and light sensors is the way to go. 

This way, you need a good a->d converter (Dave?) and a few light sensors... and some mapping of controls to convert them to screen locations.

looked into it in the past... but didn't have the time.  (also mentioned it in more detail in the last few weeks in other threads)

[Flinkly]

i think we could with our combined knowledge, but about 75 percent of projects never get off the ground around here.

if we did make one, we'd have to have a solenoid inside.  as for design, i think it should be nice and heavy, like a real gun, and looks like one too, kinda like the bio-gun offered over on liksang.  just my two cents.

also, to make it nice, we would have to incorporate a fire button, and a calibration button on the gun, like act labs.  i'm sure andy or randy could help us if we had some pcb stuff that we needed produced, but i'm not sure about gun shells.  but it shouldn't be too hard.

worste case scenario, we could try to reverse engineer the act labs gun...

[Voodooray]

As a newby could anybody explain how a light gun actually works please.
Feel free to say absulutely no way man, get out of here, what are you trying to pull, why i aught to......etc,etc.

Ta.

Voodoo Ray.
88 Acid Revival, Safe!

[ErikRuud]

How a Video Game Light Gun works

[RayB]

I made a light-pen for my Commodore 64 when I was a teen. It used a Radio Shack photosensor and software that I had to type in from a magazine. It was not a very good light-pen.

[ErikRuud]

A lot of those old 8-bit computers had ligt pen inputs on their joystick ports.  It was fairly easy to implement, because they generally only had one video mode to deal with.

I think that we need something along the lines of this ligt pen interface, but much cheaper.

It would be cool if it had inputs for standard arcade light guns and/or Guncon guns.

[Flinkly]

not to sound stupid, but what is a lightpen?  is it like a light gun, but not gun shaped?  sorry, i guess i'm just too young, or out of the tech loop on this one.  i'd like to have my own lightgun, even if we had to do it byoac style, but i think by the time we finished such a product, there would already be another out on the market that would fit our nitch better.  like that one that uses infrared diodes around the screen instead of whiting the screen out.  just my two cents...again.

[IntruderAlert]

i'd just like an interface that I could wire a real arcade gun to
sort of an i-pac or keywiz for guns

[sWampy]

A lot of those old 8-bit computers had ligt pen inputs on their joystick ports.  It was fairly easy to implement, because they generally only had one video mode to deal with.

I think that we need something along the lines of this ligt pen interface, but much cheaper.

It would be cool if it had inputs for standard arcade light guns and/or Guncon guns.

The light pen interface had to be right on the display, since they work by know by watching the monitor for the scan line to pass, they know what part of the screen they are drawing right now, so when they see the scan line, they know where it is pointed.  This doesn't work real well from a distance, hince the flash, to make the scan line bright enough to pick up.   You also have to tie into the video signal so you can know what part of the display the monitor is refreshing when, different monitors, different setup needed, vga/arcade/tv, 3 different interfaces. ;-/   

A better solution would be something like iToy, or some photo sensor array,  that looked for a something like a ir led on the end of a gun, to triangulate where the gun was pointed, where it would work with any monitor, any scan rate.

[ErikRuud]

Light pens work on the same basic principals as a light gun, but they are pen shaped and designed to be used right up against the monitor.

Because of the short range and tighter focus, they do not require the "White Flash" that many light guns use.

I used to have a Koala light pen for my Commodore 128 years ago.

[ErikRuud]

A better solution would be something like iToy, or some photo sensor array,  that looked for a something like a ir led on the end of a gun, to triangulate where the gun was pointed, where it would work with any monitor, any scan rate.

That is essentially what the RGT system from eRealGames is.  They may have a PC version out soon.  They expressed some interest in this thread

[Shape D.]

As a person with no other abilities to add to the assistance of building a light gun I would like to offer my assistance with playtesting. 

Seriously though if you build these make something manly. That was the only crappy thing about the act labs guns. It looked like something my wife would keep in her purse.

[rdagger]

I'm not a big fan of the light gun because of screen flicker but I am very interested in the E-real Games Gun.

[Lilwolf]

If something is done here... we need to come up with what would be acceptable and what is not.

I would only want to see it work if it would

1) fit inside of a real arcade gun.

2) work with an arcade monitor as a top priority.

[IntruderAlert]

you left out the ELVIS T.V. gun...

[quarterback]

you left out the ELVIS T.V. gun...

LOL

[spiffyshoes]

I'm not a big fan of the light gun because of screen flicker but I am very interested in the E-real Games Gun.

[sWampy]

if a ps2 and a $30 camera can figure out where your hands are, surely a 3 Ghz pc could with minimal cpu load.

[sWampy]

This might be a good start http://charlie.dgrc.crc.ca/cgi-bin/Sylvie/Blog/casarch.pl?2004/04/13/4.txt

[ErikRuud]

Rdagger and SpiffyShoes,

Look at some of the earlier posts!

I already posted the information about the eRealGames RGT system.  My post was at 11:17:23am.

They are considering a PC version.  I posted the link to the other thread as well.

[ErikRuud]

LittleWolf,

I don't think you need to go to lasers, IR emitters will probably work better.

For multiple guns, you would just have the emitters pulse at  different frequencies.  DTMF is often used with IR systems in robots that communicate via IR.  As far as I know, many TV remotes are based on IR DTMF.

IR triangulation is possible.

Here is one simple example.
http://www.electronicsforu.com/efylinux/circuit/feb2003/DTMF%20Proximity%20Detector.pdf

[Lilwolf]

Yeah...

[ErikRuud]

No you do not need seperate detectors for each frequency. That is what the DTMF is for.  DTMF is most commonly used as telephone "touch tones" DTMF uses combinations of two tones combined to create unique codes.  This can be used with IR signals as well, allowing unique identifying codes to sent and received within the same wavelength of light.

Look at these microrobots.
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/ants/

These guys can keep track of 16 different robots at a time.  They do not have 16 receivers on each robot.  They have four each, but that is just to give 360 degree coverage.

[shawnzilla]

As far as the actual gun mold, maybe we should talk to the guy who makes the Tron Repro Sticks (specialtyplastics).

Just based on my experience in getting the translucent buttons made, plastic molding (especially custom jobs) is very expensive. Another route to go, might be to use emachineshop.

What does everyone think about the importance/practicality of incorporating a solenoid?

[sWampy]

The cheapest solution would be some off the shelf toy gun rigged with an ir led that stayed lit all the time, and went off when you pulled the trigger, maybe flashed a pattern if you hit the reload button if you wanted to get that fancy, a $30 usb webcam, and some software like this http://charlie.dgrc.crc.ca/cgi-bin/Sylvie/Blog/casarch.pl?2004/04/13/4.txt or this http://www.edenspeace.com/eyebuddy/mousehead/getting_started.htm

[ErikRuud]

Hereis another one for camera tracking!

http://www.perceptual-vision.com/Nouse/download.html

This one tracks your nose, and watches for eye blinks as a click.

They even have a game for it!

If they can track a nose and blinking eyes, it shouldn't be too hard to track a gun with LED's on it.

[ErikRuud]

Here is another interesting project.

http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~matz/HGI/HandVu.html

It's looking like a BYO RGT is possible.

Oops, I duplicated the link from above.  I have now corrected it.

[Thenasty]

could someone E-mail or PM when this is FINISH  TIA

[SoundDoc]

I know its kinda on the edge of wrong n' stuff...

But to ease the development, in the ways of mame, would it not be advantageous to read out the 512K ROM on a act labs gun, since they no longer produce it, to preserve it for future generations? The same way ROM images are being saved for Mame? (and just happen to possibly learn from it some good practices in gun tracking detection?)

I don't mean steal their programming, which is wrong, but I have pulled a ROM image from one working gun, and burned it into a new ROM to repair a broken gun before, and gleaming a bit of insight on how one of the best guns works couldn't hurt in the development of a new system.

I think that IR triangulation, and/or lasers are quite adventurous, but may not be practical taking into account the accuracy that most gamers want, that's why almost all gun systems in use have been "flicker" or beam position based, its the easiest, and most accurate way of telling exactly where the gun is aimed.
To get away from the "blinding flash" you could shorten the flicker duration to only one cycle, and possibly try only detecting it on one gun, blue perhaps, so the flicker isn't so annoying, or maybe even just raise the overall gamma to ensure their aren't any black areas in the picture, which the gun can't pick up.

Just some more ideas...

SD

[IntruderAlert]

Hereis another one for camera tracking!

http://www.perceptual-vision.com/Nouse/download.html

This one tracks your nose, and watches for eye blinks as a click.

They even have a game for it!

If they can track a nose and blinking eyes, it shouldn't be too hard to track a gun with LED's on it.

Here is another interesting project.
http://www.perceptual-vision.com/Nouse/download.html

It's looking like a BYO RGT is possible.

Those two projects look mighty similar 

[sWampy]

I can't believe the only open source webcam/tracking software I can find is that visual basic stuff.  I can get to the source, to some, from a project I worked on a couple of years back, but I'll have to see about sanitizing it/declassifing it, so I can bring it out of the vault.  There has to be some open stuff already out there though.

[Hoagie_one]

i can offer nothing to help except a promice to buy a pair of guns if they reach production