Fitting an AimTrak in a Sega Light Phaser gun -- now with video :P

[smalltownguy]

Ok, so my 79 cent light phaser arrived today (God bless eBay!)



Purpose of this thread will be to document my progress of retrofitting the light phaser with the AimTrak. First things first, let get this thing apart. There are 4 screws easily visible, but further inspection revealed that there was 1 screw hidden underneath a logo strip on the side.

A little heat from the wife's hair dryer...


Hit it with the trusty razor blade...(notice the plastic was never peeled off the labels -- BONUS  )


Voila, one nealtly removed logo strip, and now I can get my last screw.


Here are the 5 screw locations, circled in red. I had to pay special attention to where each one came from, because a few of them are shorter/longer than others.


Ahhh...the guts. Pretty standard setup inside; optics board, microswitch, etc. I like the fact that the microswitch looks to be compatible with my cherry switches, so I should be able to swap one in if need be. Notice the cylinder weights in the gun butt.


Looking at the complete setup, it appears that there is enough room to mount the PCB right behind the front lens and not have too many 'hooding' issues with the camera on the PCB. Just for kicks, I tried removing the original lens and dry fitted the pcb right near the edge of the opening:


It actually doesn't look too bad there. I might just take that approach, since the width of the barrel at that point is JUUUST tight enough to hold on to the board when I screw the gun halves together. No glue or mounting needed. I would like to try using the lens though, if only to protect it. We'll see.

more coming later....

[Ginsu Victim]

If the lens has any magnification, you can't use it.

[Xiaou2]

Too sad.   

 The Sega Master system has 2 of the best gun games of all time:

 Shooting Gallery
 3d Missile Defense

 If anything, one should grab a real SMS, these games, a 3d pair of glasses, the gun,
and keep it on a spare crt tv to pick up and play any time.

 In fact, Point Blanc, which came out much later... copies the SG concept.  Though, to me,
I still seem to enjoy SG more than the PB games.

[ammitz]

Nice documentation, looking forward to see more

[Vebbo]

Nice documentation, looking forward to seeing more

+1

[smalltownguy]

Okay, continuing on...

In a fit of brilliance, I chose to use adhesive backed weatherstripping to help secure my PCB in place. It's cushy, non-conductive, and best of all, it way lying around the house. I suspect if I didn't have it, I probably would have used double sided foam strips or maybe even velcro or blue tack. (like Andy says on his website)



Here's a closeup of the trigger harness connected, and my positioning the pcb in place.



Add a strip on the bottom, and she nice and snug:



Looking at the USB plug, I noticed that the original aperture that the gun housing allowed for the optics would not fit -- square plug in a round hole, so to speak. A few minutes with the utility knife fixed that. Sorry for the blurry picture.



Here's a complete shot of my wiring. Note: before closing things up, I did route the brown and yellow wires under the USB plug, they just snuck out while I was snapping the photo. There's plenty of room here for everything I needed to do. The quick connects for the trigger switch even fit nicely. I'd like to try to find a grommet for the exiting cable, though.



All set and ready to go!



Just a quick shot of the back of my monitor bezel, and the holes I drilled for the LED bar.



When I get home later tonight, I'll 'fire' it up  and start calibration. Once I get it the way I like, I'll get a video done.

[Ginsu Victim]

It looks to me as though the end of your gun is going to block the sensor's view. I just realized while looking at the Phaser that it might just be the wrong gun for this purpose. I hope it works, though. Good luck.

[smalltownguy]

It looks to me as though the end of your gun is going to block the sensor's view. I just realized while looking at the Phaser that it might just be the wrong gun for this purpose. I hope it works, though. Good luck.

Yeah, I'm a little concerned about that too. Luckily, I can move it forward/backward pretty much as much as I want to. I'm going to start testing it with the PCB where it is, and if I get too much trouble, I'll start nudging it forward until I get the full range of motion I need. I'd rather not have it sticking out if I can help it.

The gun tip is only going to be about 3 feet away from the monitor, so we'll see how that works out.

On a side note, the USB cable for the LED bar is just BARELY long enough to reach down to my computer, which is currently sitting in the base of the cab. I've been putting off de-casing it and mounting the motherboard in proper fashion b/c I really haven't needed to yet. Now with this cable being pretty taut I'll need to address this issue soon.

I suppose I could always put a hub somewhere in the middle of the cab. Just haven't needed it yet since my motherboard has 6 USB ports, and my cab is relatively short (Rolling Thunder conversion). Perhaps Andy could look at adding about 12-18" to the cable; it would make life a bit easier...

[syph007]

Ya also I discovered having the pcb as low as possible in the barrel is best.

[Time Pilot]

I tried in the Sega Light Phasor as well.  I had to stand back further so the top of the barrel wouldn't block the camera's view of the LEDs (when pointed at the bottom of the screen).   Just got some Betson/Imperial light guns off ebay- might try to mod those this weekend.

-TP

[smalltownguy]

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, folks. I've been busy with kids.

I'm in the process of setting this up for use with Terminator 2. I have a PS2 mouse, trackball (minipac) and the AimTrak all hooked up at this point, so I know I have 3 mice. T2 calibration menu sees my PS2 mouse as gun1, and my trackball as gun2.  Moving my AimTrak does nothing. I tried unplugging my PS2 mouse, rebooting, and now my trackball has moved to gun1, but the AimTrak is still not being seen. The cursor tracks fine with the AimTrak in windows. Am I missing something?

My mame.ini settings:

#
# CORE INPUT OPTIONS
#
coin_lockout              1
ctrlr                     
mouse                       1
joystick                      1
lightgun                     1
multikeyboard            0
multimouse                1
steadykey                  0
offscreen_reload        0
joystick_map              auto
joystick_deadzone      0.3
joystick_saturation     0.85

[syph007]

I'm curious, have you tried switching in the mame.ini file, lightgun = lightgun to lightgun = mouse ?

[smalltownguy]

I'm curious, have you tried switching in the mame.ini file, lightgun = lightgun to lightgun = mouse ?

Yep, tried that. Didn't work. Somehow I think the magic might lie in making a change to the term2.cfg file. I'm pretty sure that's the only way I'll be able to get the proper behavior I want.

MKChamp posted a copy of his term2.cfg file in this thread but that was for MAME 106. Not sure if it still applies.

[smalltownguy]

Ok, so continuing on. I was able to get the gun configured properly in MAME in the positional gun games like Terminator 2 and Revolution X, etc. Enabling -lightgun AND -mouse in the mame.ini file did the trick for me.

Now that I had things working the way I wanted, I set out to getting a 2nd button installed on the gun to use the 'aux' pins on the PCB. I stole some wires from my old junk pile that had female pins on them, and they snapped into the 4 pin block that Andy supplied quite nicely.

My light phaser's back panel was missing when it arrived, so I needed to fabricate one from a spare piece of plastic. I used an old 5.25 drive bay cover I had lying around. After cutting the profile I needed, I drilled a hole to fit my button.

I had a few extra Atari volcano buttons, and the tiny cherry switches JUUUST fit in the available space. Here's a shot of my re-fabricated back panel, with the button fitted:



Yeah, I know, not the right color. Nothing a little sharpie action can't fix 

Here's the final button installation. Maybe someday I'll try and tap into the 5v line and light up the LED *heheh*





The final positioning of my PCB. I used an exacto knife to trim away some more of the circular aperture that used to hold in the lens to allow the PCB to sit lower in the barrel. This small (but important!) adjustment pretty much took care of my issues with the gun's top hood blocking the camera's view of the LED bar on my monitor. I can now use the gun from 18 inches away with no issues. You can see that the bottom has a slight gap -- the PCB is about 1mm wider than the barrel at that height. It's OK, though, it's providing good tension that will keep the PCB nice and tight.

If I get some extra time tonight, I'll shoot a video of the gun in action. Otherwise I'll get it done in the next day or two.

I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out. Sega's Master System was my absolute FAVORITE console when I was a kid, so it's pretty cool that I can use this gun again.

[Neverending Project]

I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out. Sega's Master System was my absolute FAVORITE console when I was a kid, so it's pretty cool that I can use this gun again.

That's the stuff BYOAC is all about, right there. Nice job.
 

[smalltownguy]

Ok, so I had a chance to get the webcam set up today to shoot a quick video of my setup in action. Sorry I only showed just a tiny part of one game, but I'll post some videos of some of my other favorites as I get time. Terminator 2 has always been on of my favorites, so I started with that.

Trust me, any time I missed something -- be it robot or human -- it was my own crappy aim, not the calibration. Not to mention I was holding it off to the side with one hand, to allow room for the camera... 

My 2nd video will most likely be a target game (probably Hogan's Alley for NES)  and I'll position myself right behind the camera with my hands extended so you can see the gun in the frame. Hopefully that will provide a bit more perspective as the guns tracking and firing accuracy.

[smalltownguy]

I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out. Sega's Master System was my absolute FAVORITE console when I was a kid, so it's pretty cool that I can use this gun again.

That's the stuff BYOAC is all about, right there. Nice job.
 

Thanks, NP! High praise coming from you. I appreciate it. 

[Ginsu Victim]

Holy ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---! Where's the monitor on that cab? Is there one hiding in that bezel?!?

 

[smalltownguy]

Yeah, I know. It's a 17" de-cased computer monitor. Not much room to work with in that Rolling Thunder cab, it's a squat form factor with an angled back. I really didn't feel like taking the sawzall to it or much else. That's the biggest CRT monitor I could get in there without running the risk of damaging the neckboard when I put the back on. Of course, now that I don't really NEEEED a CRT any more (thanks AimTrak!) I suppose I could start looking for a 21" 4:3 LCD. It'll fit.

What you DON'T see in the video is the 29" TV on the floor next to the cab. It's a behemoth.

Holy ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---! Where's the monitor on that cab? Is there one hiding in that bezel?!?

 

Oh yeah, one other thing -- the speakers in this cab are actually between my control panel and my monitor glass. That's the very large black area you see between the CP and my bezel. It's a big mesh speaker grille, behind which are my 2 speakers.

[smalltownguy]

Okay, I had a chance to play with some of my other emulators with the AimTrak. My NES emulator is Nesopia. I had already taken time months ago to ensure that my settings were all correct with respect to a gamepad input, but I hadn't ever paid any attention to lightgun / mouse settings.

Right out of the gate, the AimTrak was recognized in both Hogan's Alley and Duck Hunt. Shooting ducks has always been pretty easy, but the clay shooting game in Duck Hunt has always been challenging for me, especially since my aim pretty much sucks.

I'm happy to say though that the AimTrak made it pretty easy for me to play these NES games. After a few seconds, my grip relaxed a bit on the gun, and I was able to hit targets with enough accuracy to progress past several rounds in clay shooting.

I apologize for the video not being close enough for you to accurately see the the cursor tracking while I'm shooting, but I was more interested in showing how a normal, non-marksman like me can use the AimTrak and have reasonable success.

My first round of clay targets I hit 6 of 10, and the 2nd round I hit 8 of 10. Considering my tiny screen (17" CRT monitor -- see above ribbing I've taken   I feel that once I move up to my 27" TV in my 2nd cab build, this will work very well.

One note: reading RandyT's review this morning made me remember that when I installed the LED bar in my bezel I forgot to bend the LED's so they were angled towards my gun. That pretty much solved my tracking issues on the bottom 1/4 of the screen. I now get no 'hooding' issues with my light phaser. I guess it's just more support for the old adage of 'read the @##^%^ manual, eh? 

[ammitz]

Good to se a video clip of the aimtrack in function.

Waiting by the door for my own to arrive