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Pinscape Controller software V2

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#601 mjr

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 06:39 PM

I was playing VPX tables & thought about slightly increasing the gain from the default 100. "The Pinscape Controller, A How-To Guide" states to set the gain to 1000. That seemed like quite a bit increase from 100, so I tried 500 which moves the ball a lot when nudged.

 

100 is about right for VP 10.  The old guide is from the VP 9 era, and I don't think it mentions that VP 9 and VP 10 have about a 10:1 ratio in settings due to changes in their physics algorithms.  You can find some more modern and detailed information on this in the new guide:

 

http://mjrnet.org/pi...de.php?sid=tilt



#602 eMBee

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 06:47 PM

Hello MJR,

 

I'm having a strange thing when nudging during game

When i nudge a few time i looks like its working at first... then all of a sudden none of the buttons work (even my keyboard buttons don't do anything).

The game still keeps going (hearing music, DMD, ball in lane, can see and move my mouse,  but buttons or keyboard doesn't work.

When i push a button i can hear a slight pushing sound, but it does nothing.

The board leds keep blinking a slow green/yellow

 

I have configured the controller board for buttons and nudging.

 

Any ideas?



#603 mjr

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 07:06 PM

I'm having a strange thing when nudging during game

When i nudge a few time i looks like its working at first... then all of a sudden none of the buttons work (even my keyboard buttons don't do anything).

The game still keeps going (hearing music, DMD, ball in lane, can see and move my mouse,  but buttons or keyboard doesn't work.

When i push a button i can hear a slight pushing sound, but it does nothing.

The board leds keep blinking a slow green/yellow

 

The green/yellow flashes mean "all systems normal", so it sounds like things are okay as far as the KL25Z and USB connection. 

 

When you say the keyboard doesn't work, do you mean that your actual PC keyboard stops working as well?  If so, I'm guessing this has nothing to do with Pinscape and is something wrong in Windows or VP.  Pinscape shouldn't be able to affect your regular PC keyboard.

 

Could it be something like Sticky Keys in Windows?



#604 eMBee

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 07:18 PM

 

I'm having a strange thing when nudging during game

When i nudge a few time i looks like its working at first... then all of a sudden none of the buttons work (even my keyboard buttons don't do anything).

The game still keeps going (hearing music, DMD, ball in lane, can see and move my mouse,  but buttons or keyboard doesn't work.

When i push a button i can hear a slight pushing sound, but it does nothing.

The board leds keep blinking a slow green/yellow

 

The green/yellow flashes mean "all systems normal", so it sounds like things are okay as far as the KL25Z and USB connection. 

 

When you say the keyboard doesn't work, do you mean that your actual PC keyboard stops working as well?  If so, I'm guessing this has nothing to do with Pinscape and is something wrong in Windows or VP.  Pinscape shouldn't be able to affect your regular PC keyboard.

 

Could it be something like Sticky Keys in Windows?

 

 

Yeah, both controller buttons and my keyboard stops working. Its odd i know... can't find the solution at this point.

I will check if sticky keys are the problem.



#605 mjr

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 07:23 PM

Yeah, both controller buttons and my keyboard stops working. Its odd i know... can't find the solution at this point.

I will check if sticky keys are the problem.

 

If you don't turn up anything there, the next I'd try is taking VP out of the picture.  Just fire up Notepad so that there's something neutral to absorb keyboard input, and then start pounding away at the buttons and nudge as though you were playing a normal game.  See if you can trigger the problem that way.  If it freezes up again like that, then VP has nothing to do with it; if you can't trigger it after a lot of bashing on the buttons/nudge, the problem is probably with VP.



#606 eMBee

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 07:53 PM

 

Yeah, both controller buttons and my keyboard stops working. Its odd i know... can't find the solution at this point.

I will check if sticky keys are the problem.

 

If you don't turn up anything there, the next I'd try is taking VP out of the picture.  Just fire up Notepad so that there's something neutral to absorb keyboard input, and then start pounding away at the buttons and nudge as though you were playing a normal game.  See if you can trigger the problem that way.  If it freezes up again like that, then VP has nothing to do with it; if you can't trigger it after a lot of bashing on the buttons/nudge, the problem is probably with VP.

 

 

Yup... think i found it.

Thanks for the tip ... bashed my cab around in notepad... all was good.

Then i deleted VP and took the latest beta for a test. No problems so far... looking good!



#607 mjr

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 10:28 PM

Yup... think i found it.

Thanks for the tip ... bashed my cab around in notepad... all was good.

Then i deleted VP and took the latest beta for a test. No problems so far... looking good!

 

Great, glad you tracked it down!  Weird problem - maybe something got corrupted inside VP.



#608 mjr

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 10:55 PM

I did ohm to gnd l am thinking I have an esd problem in the room I have this laid out in.  The carpet the tv and pc is on is polyester and I bet thats what happened to the first Kl25z.  Config tool shows always on.

 

Static damage would be believable.  The GPIO pins on the KL25Z are wired straight through to the main CPU chip, so they're pretty delicate.

 

If you haven't already, it would be a really good idea in such a static-y environment to run a grounding wire inside your cab and connect all of the exposed exterior metal to it - side rails, lock bar, plunger housing, leg bolts, and coin door.  The "professional" way of doing that is with a braided copper grounding strap, but I'd think any decent gauge wire (maybe 18 AWG or thicker) would be adequate.  Connect one end to something earth-grounded in the power supply chain - the black wire in an ATX supply will work, or the (bare metal) housing of your ATX power supply, or the third prong (the round bottom prong) of a 120V outlet.  That should help keep the machine from building up a static charge itself, and also shunt any charge transfer to ground when you get yourself charge up on the carpet and put your hands on the machine.


As far as the stuck port goes, if that's the only thing that seems to be broken, you could just move that button's wiring to a free port and reconfigure the software. 



#609 JLPicard001

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Posted 15 June 2018 - 02:25 AM

I don't even have a cabinet built yet.  Everything is literately on the floor of our extra bedroom.  I am moving all this out to my workshop this week, and getting my plywood to start my build.  Once I can get this into a cabinet I should be ok as far as ESD goes.  I am not planning on a plunger, just buttons and not even any feedback for now.  Just get into a cabinet with all necessary buttons and maybe if I can manage to not fry the KL25Z any worse that losing one GPIO then I'll tackle feedback next. 

 

Thanks for all your help MJ!  Even with the setbacks I'm having a blast!



#610 STV

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Posted 15 June 2018 - 02:39 AM

Ground ground ground.   I had to do it in my cab.  Wintertime in dry Colorado I get a good zap each time I walk up to it.   I ran a loop of 12 solid and just bolted it to everything metal and connected it to the green coming out of the wall. 



#611 Lupin1968

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Posted 19 June 2018 - 07:42 PM

Contining my adventures setting up my cabinet finally got around to programing my KL25Z. First hardware/software that worked as designed out of the box (Less said for Windows the better), thanks for that.

 

Can you suggest best way to use Pinscape with both VP and TPA? As I assume need Xpadder or similar.



#612 JLPicard001

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Posted 19 June 2018 - 08:24 PM

There are three or four pins on the Kl25z labeled gnd, I assume those are all electrical earth gnds and not just a common? If they are earth gnd I want them on the same ground buss as the line power right? I plan on getting a metal buss just like that which is installed in a house breaker panel and tying all metal, external power supply, and input power earth gnd to this.

#613 mjr

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Posted 19 June 2018 - 09:26 PM

There are three or four pins on the Kl25z labeled gnd, I assume those are all electrical earth gnds and not just a common? If they are earth gnd I want them on the same ground buss as the line power right? I plan on getting a metal buss just like that which is installed in a house breaker panel and tying all metal, external power supply, and input power earth gnd to this.

 

This whole "ground" vs "common" thing is really confusing.  And it's a double-bluff kind of confusing...

 

In general, the "ground" in a DC logic circuit (like the KL25Z) isn't a true Earth ground.  The EEs use the term "ground" in a DC context to mean a zero-volts reference point, not an actual Earth ground.  So you're exactly right in suspecting that all of the "ground" pins on the KL25Z should really be labeled "common" instead.

 

However... ATX power supplies are required, by the official spec, to reference 0V DC to the Earth ground on the AC side.  If you get out your voltmeter and do a little continuity testing (with all of the power unplugged, of course!), you'll find that there's a hard connection between the ground prong on the AC plug and all of the black wires in all of the PC connectors.  And between all of those and the metal case as well.  If you open up the case and trace the circuitry, you'll find that the 0V DC side is hard-wired to the AC ground.  This is all intentional, by design, and required by the spec for anything parading itself as an ATX PSU.  So whenever you're in a PC context, "ground" and "common" and "0V DC" actually *do* turn out to be the same thing, despite the general rule above that it's not necessarily so.

 

And because the KL2Z connects to the PC via USB, it's automatically forced into that 0V DC == Earth ground scheme by the USB wiring.  One of the wires inside the USB cable is a 0V DC connection directly to the black wire from the power supply, so as soon as you plug the KL25Z into USB, you've established a hard connection between the KL25Z ground pins and the ATX power supply 0V DC, which in turn connects it to your AC ground prong via the internal ATX power supply wiring.

 

So, to summarize:  DC "ground" in general doesn't mean Earth ground, but when an ATX power supply is in the picture, it does.

 

To put yet another surprise reversal on this, you still shouldn't use the KL25Z ground pins as your Earth grounds for the purposes of safety grounding.  Wire your safety/ESD ground directly to the AC power plug ground, or as close as you can comfortably get (modulo your tolerance for stripping wires from AC power cables and that sort of thing).  The static discharges that we want to protect everything from can be very high voltage, like hundreds of volts.  (They're low amperage/low power, but high voltage.)  You don't want those voltage levels anywhere near the KL25Z or your PC motherboard or anything else with a transistor or IC chip in it, since those little silicon parts tend to be sensitive to voltage potentials (which is what makes ESD such a hazard to semiconductors in the first place).  For your external metal grounding, you want to route all of that charge physically away from the electronics.  Yes, it all ends up connecting together when it hits the insides of the ATX power supply, but there are capacitors in there that will help block surges from flowing back into the logic wiring.


So in other words, don't connect the KL25Z grounds to the grounding strap for the external metal.  



#614 hlr53

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 11:05 AM

I still use a static wrist strap and mat when handling any type of PCB board, whether I need to or not. A habit I picked up being a Honeywell tech rep for 24 years (now retired). In the old days many boards would fry instantly from ESD.


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#615 mjr

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 05:15 PM

I still use a static wrist strap and mat when handling any type of PCB board, whether I need to or not. A habit I picked up being a Honeywell tech rep for 24 years (now retired). In the old days many boards would fry instantly from ESD.

 

Yeah, static protection during handling is a whole separate subject worth paying attention to.  For that one, there's actually already a chapter in the new build guide: 

 

http://mjrnet.org/pi...id=staticSafety

 

Give your industry experience, please let me know if you have anything to add or correct there.



#616 Lupin1968

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 06:29 PM

Updating this post.

"Can you suggest best way to use Pinscape with both VP and TPA? As I assume need Xpadder or similar."

 

SHOULD I need anything else to use KL25Z + Pinscape with both VP and TPA? as both do nothing when KL25Z + Pinscape connected.

But using Xpadder I can see responds from KL25Z, and if I program keys WASD for TPA it workd fine.

 

Also noticed on install and changing setup for Pinscape with Firefox (Current verison for Windows 7) get notes to update MS Internet Explorer. Does web interface work with Firefox? Seems too.



#617 mjr

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 07:13 PM

Also noticed on install and changing setup for Pinscape with Firefox (Current verison for Windows 7) get notes to update MS Internet Explorer. Does web interface work with Firefox? Seems too.

 

The reason for the notes about IE is that the config tool depends on some of the DLL components of IE, and requires a certain minimum IE version to be installed.

 

Firefox doesn't matter one way or the other.  The config tool doesn't use it in any way, so it won't do any harm to have it installed, but by the same token it's not a substitute for the IE DLL components.  It's fine if you're using Firefox or Chrome or any other browser as your primary browser, but you still need the IE system components installed for the config tool to use.



#618 Sebinouse

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Posted 22 June 2018 - 11:15 AM

Hey MJR,

 

First of all, Thanks a lots for your Pinscape software ... it's just amazing to see what a 12€ ARM board can do with it !

 

In my Pincab I use the keyboard interface to control buttons, the joystick interface to control nudge/plunger and the I/O interface to control toys (via DOF/DOFLinx)

 

I also uses a X360CE interface/emulator to get nudge on The Pinball Arcade. As you may be aware a new Cabinet mode has just been released by Arcooda/Farsight and it is just amazing (especially the BAM effect in 3D with Kinect V2).

Although ONE thing is missing : FEEDBACKS. I managed to get Flippers/Solenoids with DOFLinx ... but that's all.

 

I was wondering if there was a way to map FeedBack in the joystick interface so we can use them to control vibration motor for instance.

 

captur20.png



#619 mjr

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Posted 23 June 2018 - 05:17 AM

I was wondering if there was a way to map FeedBack in the joystick interface so we can use them to control vibration motor for instance.

 

I'm afraid it's probably not possible.  You'd have to somehow map the joystick feedback commands to LedWiz or Pinscape protocol commands, which I have to assume is way beyond the scope of what the Xbox controller emulator can do.  But if someone knows a way to do it, it would be great to hear about.



#620 Sebinouse

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Posted 23 June 2018 - 03:09 PM

Thank for your answer ... I'll keep an eye on it and report here if I find something useful ! 







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