734 replies to this topic

[J3SteR]

Thanks again mjr. I got my Freescale board a week ago and it's installed on the bottom towards the front of my cab. Unfortunately I don't have my pc hardware yet to try it out. When I do, am I going to have to dig through this post to find the latest files needed? Think once you got everything sorted out you could make a new topic with everything needed and maybe the moderators could sticky it? One last thanks for all your work! This was always one of the things when I had my cab together back in 2011 that bugged me most. So happy you came up with this!

[Gilrock]

 

May I ask what is the proper way to calibrate the X and Y nudge axes?  I think that's why mine wasn't working well.  I went through the Windows calibration but what am I supposed to do just try to hit the table from both sides to determine the limits?  Earlier I saw you mention a config tool but I didn't see any program in the dropbox so wasn't sure what you are talking about.  After I did the Windows calibration it was flying across the table when i nudged it so I think this will work if I figure out how to best calibrate it.

 

Don't use the Windows calibration tool!  The nudge feature is self-calibrating.  The Windows calibration will only confuse things by changing the axis ranges to essentially random values, which is why you're getting the gigantic inputs in VP.  To delete the calibration you did: open the "Set up USB Game Controllers" control panel, double-click on Pinscape Controller, select the Settings tab at the top, and click Reset to default.

 

Yeah I know how to do that but that's how I had it to begin with.  It was pretty much useless. I just reset the calibration and I'm back to where I was.  I appreciate the effort but as is the code isn't gonna cut it for me.

[mjr]

Thanks again mjr. I got my Freescale board a week ago and it's installed on the bottom towards the front of my cab. Unfortunately I don't have my pc hardware yet to try it out. When I do, am I going to have to dig through this post to find the latest files needed? Think once you got everything sorted out you could make a new topic with everything needed and maybe the moderators could sticky it? One last thanks for all your work! This was always one of the things when I had my cab together back in 2011 that bugged me most. So happy you came up with this!

 

The place to find everything is the mbed project page: http://mbed.org/user...ape_Controller/.  That'll always have the latest version of all the pieces. 

Yeah I know how to do that but that's how I had it to begin with.  It was pretty much useless. I just reset the calibration and I'm back to where I was.  I appreciate the effort but as is the code isn't gonna cut it for me.

 

Sorry it's not working for you - I'm sure it's not going to be to everyone's taste, though, since it does tone down the nudging quite a lot vs the normal VP handling.  I think it makes it play more like a real table (if you try nudging a real table, it takes quite a lot of force to see any visible effect on the ball's trajectory), but if you're accustomed to classic VP behavior it'll probably feel way too weak.  Of course it's hard to know if it's a matter of your expectations or a technical problem - maybe you could post a video showing what you're seeing with the modified version, and also show the standard version of VP reacting more the way you're expecting, if that's possible.

[parabolic]

Yeah I know how to do that but that's how I had it to begin with.  It was pretty much useless. I just reset the calibration and I'm back to where I was.  I appreciate the effort but as is the code isn't gonna cut it for me.

 

 

Really? I understand that you may be having issues and frustrated - but why post it like that? Posts like this is why people that are developing for these projects (for free I may add) are abandoning the projects and support. MJR has come up with a really good solution (for not much money) to whats commercially out there. Have you tried the plunger? Its pretty damn flawless. This is still in the early stages and hes constantly tweaking on it. If you dont like it or its beyond your comprehension to make work - please don't make derogatory posts like that. That's the best way to make developers abandon projects.

[Gilrock]

 

Yeah I know how to do that but that's how I had it to begin with.  It was pretty much useless. I just reset the calibration and I'm back to where I was.  I appreciate the effort but as is the code isn't gonna cut it for me.

 

 

Really? I understand that you may be having issues and frustrated - but why post it like that? Posts like this is why people that are developing for these projects (for free I may add) are abandoning the projects and support. MJR has come up with a really good solution (for not much money) to whats commercially out there. Have you tried the plunger? Its pretty damn flawless. This is still in the early stages and hes constantly tweaking on it. If you dont like it or its beyond your comprehension to make work - please don't make derogatory posts like that. That's the best way to make developers abandon projects.

 

I'm not upset at all.  I've praised his effort twice in this thread.  But as it stands it appears unusable for me and sorry if I didn't find the most polite way to say it...I tried.  If no one ever reports having issues then the author will never know.  I haven't tried the plunger yet I wanted to get the nudge working since I've never had nudge in my cabinet before.  But the amount of force it takes to make it useful is causing my backbox to sound like I'm shaking it too hard.  I'm a professional embedded software developer myself so I know the amount of work put into this project.  I'm perfectly capable of writing the code for this board if I want so that's why I didn't mind buying it.

[jkimbrell]

yes, post a video showing your VP key settings and the device in use on the accelerometer test table.  You could also try deleting the registry key for the modified version of VP then relaunching the app which will recreate that key with defaults.  You'll have to re-setup your video and key settings. 

 

Another small but importatn detail; you MUST swap the X and Y axis in the VP keys menu. If you aren't using a plunger with this, also set the Z axis to disabled.

[parabolic]

yes, post a video showing your VP key settings and the device in use on the accelerometer test table.  You could also try deleting the registry key for the modified version of VP then relaunching the app which will recreate that key with defaults.  You'll have to re-setup your video and key settings. 

 

Another small but importatn detail; you MUST swap the X and Y axis in the VP keys menu. If you aren't using a plunger with this, also set the Z axis to disabled.

Swap the X and Y axis?? Never heard of that.... Im running it "stock" with the connectors on the board facing towards the backglass...seems fine to me..

[mjr]

Another small but importatn detail; you MUST swap the X and Y axis in the VP keys menu. 

 

If you're using the latest version from the mbed repository, you actually don't need to swap X and Y any more - I changed that a couple of builds ago to make it easier to set up. 

 

Gilrock, one other thing I wanted to suggest: have you tried using the Freecsale board with the *original* version of VP?  The controller software on the board itself doesn't do anything fancy - it just reports the raw acceleration readings from the on-board accelerometer, which is quite sensitive.  If you use the original unmodified version of VP 9.9, you'll get the raw acceleration data without any filtering.  The filtering I added that cancels the residual velocities is all in the modified version of VP.  That might be the part that's making the nudging too dampened for your taste.  In the official VP code (which hasn't been released as regular .exe yet), toxie made the filtering a checkbox option in the Keys dialog, but in my modified build I just enabled it without an option, since the "option" is to run that version vs the regular version.

 

Also, I imagine you've already done this, but if not, you should confirm that the accelerometer is actually working by bringing up the Windows "Set up USB game controllers" control panel and making sure the little crosshairs in the joystick position display is jiggling around in response to cabinet nudges.  The accelerometer is sensitive/noisy enough that it jitters a bit when you're not nudging anything, but you should see a clear response when you touch the cabinet, and the response should be proportional to how hard you nudge it.  The full scale is +/- 1g on each axis.  A fairly hard nudge will elicit maybe 1/4 g response.  If you unbolt the Freescale board and tilt it 90 degrees around its horizontal axes, you should be able to see full axis deflection (as the acceleration due to Earth's gravity is by some amazing coincidence almost exactly 1g).  If those tests don't behave as expected, you might just have a hardware problem - I think these boards are pretty reliable, so I doubt that's what's going on, but it's worth double-checking.

[jkimbrell]

disregard my post on swapping the X and Y axis..  I was kind of early to the party and haven't updated by board with the latest code.... carry-on, everyone... 

Edited by jkimbrell, 26 August 2014 - 08:31 PM.

[rammo]

MJR, thanks for this piece of gold coding.

 

After testing all my tables it has breathed some life into my cab whilst i await vp10.  Only issue i have is now launching it from a frontend for some reason..... i tried renaming the file, launching directly with original filename, recreating my DB's in pinballx but it gets stuck on loading screen for somereason.  I could only think the registry is the culprit given it has its own DX9 location for your .exe's.  Heard of any other issues like this or have any suggestions?

 

Thanks again for your efforts

[mjr]

After testing all my tables it has breathed some life into my cab whilst i await vp10.  Only issue i have is now launching it from a frontend for some reason..... i tried renaming the file, launching directly with original filename, recreating my DB's in pinballx but it gets stuck on loading screen for somereason.  I could only think the registry is the culprit given it has its own DX9 location for your .exe's.  Heard of any other issues like this or have any suggestions?

 

Strange - I can't think of any reason the different registry key would do this.  

 

Which front end are you using?  I'm using PinballX with the modified .exe and it's working fine.  The only thing I can think of off-hand is that you have a launcher set up to watch for a particular process name to start so that it can set window focus or something like that, and it's never seeing the right process start up because of the renamed .exe file.  Any chance it's something alone those lines?

[rammo]

 

Which front end are you using?  I'm using PinballX with the modified .exe and it's working fine.  The only thing I can think of off-hand is that you have a launcher set up to watch for a particular process name to start so that it can set window focus or something like that, and it's never seeing the right process start up because of the renamed .exe file.  Any chance it's something alone those lines?

 

I am using pinballx, just copied your coded .exe straight into my visual pinball folder and renamed it.  Launch a table and it sits at a loading screen, have to press escape twice and it goes back to main menu.  Tried command line and batching your exe and all works fine.  Just thought i might ask first before going down the route of re-installing pinballx.  No launchers or anything just straight standard config....

Edited by rammo, 27 August 2014 - 07:11 AM.

[rammo]

Solved it, ended up being digital certificate error on .exe, had to untick and select run anyway, all good now

[cyril92]

Thank you MjR, 

 

I haven't begun my personnal pincab yet (I will post my WIP soon I hope), but I have read a lot about it, and just made my keyboard hacking.

Plunger and nudging was my last problem, and thanks to you, I have my answer

 

IMO, it is definitely the best solution.

 

Cyril.

[Gilrock]

I made a video yesterday but ran into issues getting it processed and uploaded but I can describe what I see in the controller settings.  In Windows test mode for the controller I do have jitter when sitting steady state.  When I knock or shove the machine a little the plus sign moves but the distance it moves is very minimal.  I'd be curious to see what yours looks like.  The distance it moves is not greater than the width of the plus sign unless I smack the heck out of it I can get a little more distance.  I tried it with VP990 and that was actually closer to how I expect it to work.  I sure don't think I'm getting excessive nudge movement in VP990.  When using the filtered nudge exe I have trouble getting the ball to move enough to create any seperation from the flipper when cradled.  So in the VP990 version I get a really small amount of seperation.

 

So what I'm really wondering is if the settings your using with the auto-calibration may be good for some cabinets but not others because everyone is going to have different frequency responses when the cabinet is hit.  I noticed even when I nudge in only the X direction there was almost as much movement of the plus sign in the Y direction.  The movement is so small its not easy to tell which direction I was hitting.  Now if I do the calibration for the controller I get much better movement but then it messes it up for the program.  I guess as more users start to try this out we'll find out if it's just me or a larger issue.  But for now it looks like I can just use the normal VP990 version.

[jkimbrell]

Gilrock,  where in your cab is the freescale mounted?  There may be less perceptible movement when nudging the cab if the board is mounted towards the middle/center of the cab.  My board is mounted towards the front of the cab.

[mjr]

I made a video yesterday but ran into issues getting it processed and uploaded but I can describe what I see in the controller settings.  In Windows test mode for the controller I do have jitter when sitting steady state.  When I knock or shove the machine a little the plus sign moves but the distance it moves is very minimal.  I'd be curious to see what yours looks like.  The distance it moves is not greater than the width of the plus sign unless I smack the heck out of it I can get a little more distance.  I tried it with VP990 and that was actually closer to how I expect it to work.  I sure don't think I'm getting excessive nudge movement in VP990.  When using the filtered nudge exe I have trouble getting the ball to move enough to create any seperation from the flipper when cradled.  So in the VP990 version I get a really small amount of seperation.

 

So what I'm really wondering is if the settings your using with the auto-calibration may be good for some cabinets but not others because everyone is going to have different frequency responses when the cabinet is hit.  I noticed even when I nudge in only the X direction there was almost as much movement of the plus sign in the Y direction.  The movement is so small its not easy to tell which direction I was hitting.  Now if I do the calibration for the controller I get much better movement but then it messes it up for the program.  I guess as more users start to try this out we'll find out if it's just me or a larger issue.  But for now it looks like I can just use the normal VP990 version.

 

If you can figure out the video posting, I think that might save a lot of guesswork.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must weigh in at a few million at least.

 

The auto calibration in my Freescale software is for setting the zero point, not the range.  The range of +/- 1g is essentially a feature of the accelerometer's physical design.  The zero point corrects for any slight tilt (deviation from perfectly horizontal) in the mounting position of the board.  It doesn't affect the range.  

 

The several layers of calibration going on here are a bit confusing.  But they really all amount to the same thing.  The only thing the Windows control panel calibration does is multiply the raw numbers coming off of the accelerometer by a scaling factor.  That makes the numbers larger, which gives you a bigger effect in VP.  But VP itself is already multiplying those numbers by another scaling factor of its own.  That's the number you set in the "Gain" box in the Keyboard preferences dialog.  There's no reason you should need Windows and VP both multiplying the readings - you should be able to do it all from the Gain setting.

 

I know you said earlier that you can't get the "Gain" numbers to do anything.  But you also said you *can* get the Windows calibration box to have a big effect.  Something doesn't add up there.  The two do exactly the same thing.  They just multiply the raw reading by another number to make a bigger number.  If you can get the Windows calibration to have an effect, you absolutely should be able find a number to type into the VP "Gain" box that has EXACTLY THE SAME EFFECT.  They're both doing exactly the same thing - multiplying the raw reading by another number.  But with the VP "Gain" box you get to just choose the number to multiply by, whereas with the Windows control panel it's all hidden.

Edited by mjr, 27 August 2014 - 08:23 PM.

[Gilrock]

Ok here's the video I did.  My son is taking the video so you can hear me telling him what to do.  Just let me know if the amount of movement I'm getting in the test screen seems too small.  I do get the ball to move in the game but I'm hitting the machine fairly hard to do it.  You can hear the backbox shaking when I get the ball to create some seperation.

https://www.youtube....h?v=YYoIvZfWL7o

Gilrock,  where in your cab is the freescale mounted?  There may be less perceptible movement when nudging the cab if the board is mounted towards the middle/center of the cab.  My board is mounted towards the front of the cab.

Yeah I forgot to answer this.  I've got it mounted on the inside bottom of the cabinet about 8" from the front and 4" from the right side.

Edited by Gilrock, 28 August 2014 - 12:11 AM.

[parabolic]

Well I got mine all mounted and set up - man it plays so well!! I have been having to tweak most of the tables for the machanical plunger to make them work, but Its well worth it!! And the nudge works just fine for me - I can trap a ball with a flipper and nudge the table and bounce the ball off the flipper! So realistic - Thanks MJR! for the money and the time its a great investment!

[sliderpoint]

Gilrock,  I just got mine setup and I can say that your amount of movement shown in game controllers is about the same as mine.  However your properties window looks totally different than mine.  You show x and y rotation bars inaddition to the x/y crosshairs.  You also have buttons that I didn't have either.

 

I did a fresh build from MBED and I now have 32 buttons but I still don't have the X/Z Rotation bars like you show.  Are you using the KL25Z board?

 

My gains are about 150% to get reasonable nudging power on the patched 9.9 build of VP and only about 15% on the Physmod build.  

 

Maybe rebuild a new .bin from the MBED project and reload the file onto the board.

 

-Mike