Wiring question about Alien Extermination guns.

[Howard_Casto]

I know I'm super late to the party here, but I've decided to buy the alien extermination guns from aliexpress and run them on a pedestal.  Assuming I can find the time the idea is I would add the games/emulators slowly, a batch at a time and record a video for each, walking you all through the process.  I've watched videos on these guns and there seems to be issues with certain games and emulators.  Since I have some coding experience the hope is I can find better solutions for these games than using joy2key and the keypress mamehooker function.  Anyway, enough of that.....

So I've got a gun on order and it's on it's way on the slow boat from China.  The wiring of these guns isn't super clear.   The picture on the product page has the wires labeled like so:

Black = Ground
Red = 24v (recoil)
Yellow = 12v (leds)

Green = Vibrate

It's the green wire that is throwing me off.  I don't see a mention of it anywhere and I don't know if that is a manual trigger of the solenoid or a redundant wire or what.   Any insight would be great. 

[bandicoot]

green wire isn't connected
Happy to see you got one of this

[Howard_Casto]

Cool that works for me.  Yeah it was finding the time to work on it more than anything.  Mamehooker probably needs an update with official support for these guys. I have some ideas on making things easier.

Back on topic I wonder what it’s connected to. I mean green is usually ground but on ac power.  As long as I don’t need it that’s fine I guess.   

[oddeye45]

The green wire is for a pedal (if you choose to connect one). I didn't do this as I have it connected to my cab that has 24 buttons on it but it may be of use for some. When you get yours I am going to be keen to see if you can figure out the coding for getting the ammo counter to work via Mamehooker as, when I do it, both digits display the same number.

[Howard_Casto]

hmm... I wouldn't use it as a pedal since I'll be using real light guns for those games, but an extra button might be nice to hook up the start button.   Put it on freeplay and everything would be self contained. 

Dights should be easily fixed once I get mine... if they ever ship the dang thing.  Frikkin aliexpress. 

[baritonomarchetto]

I think the pedal (extra button) is in the need for some game. In example Time Crisis (IIRC) use the extra button to cover behind objects. Using the pedal increase the immersion, I think

[Howard_Casto]

Time crisis isn't a positional gun game, it's a light gun game.  I'm not going to run light gun games on my positional gun rig.   Afaik there aren't any positional gun games that use a pedal but I'm not familiar with a lot of the newer ones, so correct me if I'm wrong.   

[bandicoot]

Spacegun have a pedal ^^

[Howard_Casto]

I had to look that one up.  That's a deep cut. Ok so we've got one.   

[baritonomarchetto]

I know the difference between positional and light gun dude. Light gun games can be played with ease onto a positional rig, why keep them out?

[Howard_Casto]

To put it simply they don't feel right and with respect they don't play with ease.  Whipping a heavy old positional gun halfway across the screen in a split second isn't as easy as pointing a light gun.   The targets for the two types of games are designed with that in mind so while, yes, you can technically play games like virtual cop on a fixed gun you probably aren't going to have as much fun. 


The gun came in today and I've already integrated it into mamehooker officially.  I've added some quality-of-life improvements like a buffer for the two 7 segment digits and the ability to set one at a time, the recoil function having a value so one can just use "agr 1 %s%" instead of dealing with value breaks and the null command.  Also I don't know if the community is aware of this, but setting the numeric digits to "A" (hex value) will turn them off, so the new functions have support for this. 

On the hardware side of things my pots are wired backwards.   Some games have the ability to invert this, but since they all can't do it I think I better wire them up right to avoid future headaches.  Unless I'm missing something that green wire we discussed before doesn't seem to be hooked up to the fourth input although control panel shows 4 buttons.   I traced the wire back to the pcb and it's hooked to the same header as the 24v lines.  Maybe it does have something to do with vibration???

Anyway I probably need to start a fresh thread so I can add development notes.  Thanks for the help guys, I appreciate it.   

[Howard_Casto]

Ok one more thing before I leave the thread.   A handful of games use the same electronics as these guns so I started looking in the manuals.   Far Cry actually has two coils in each gun and some of those unpopulated areas on header involve that.  They also show the wiring harness attached to these guns and the green wire is a secondary ground to prevent static discharge. 

All of that being said, that means we have an extra output to play with.   One could add an extra coil, or flash leds (with some resistors of course) ect. 

[baritonomarchetto]

Ok, let me show you something, or I will look like the one who spokes with no art. Here is a positional gun project I worked on some time ago:

https://www.instructables.com/SNK-Positional-Gun-Arcade-Assembly-Retrofit/

You can bet I know what I am saying when I tell you to keep lightgun games into the equation

[Howard_Casto]

I don't understand why you are insisting I do something I don't want to do.  It's great if that's how you want to play so you go do that, but I'm not going to.   I'm going to use light guns for light gun games, but thanks for the info.   

[baritonomarchetto]

Don't get me wrong Howard: it was only a suggestion from a forum fella to another
You are free to do what you want! 

[SuperMagoAlex]

The gun came in today and I've already integrated it into mamehooker officially.  I've added some quality-of-life improvements like a buffer for the two 7 segment digits and the ability to set one at a time, the recoil function having a value so one can just use "agr 1 %s%" instead of dealing with value breaks and the null command.  Also I don't know if the community is aware of this, but setting the numeric digits to "A" (hex value) will turn them off, so the new functions have support for this. 

Hi Howard,
I've just received my two guns and I'm building the pedestal, have you already released the new version of Mamehooker that integrates these guns?
Thanks! 

[Howard_Casto]

Not yet, stay tuned.