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Minigun Supergun - An Open Source Supergun

That's where the new and upcoming MicroGun comes in. Full digital potentiometer control. One button to alter brightness and a readout on an OLED screen to let you know where you're at.

It's rather luxurious, I can't go back to any other way now. Having a blast using the prototype.
IMG_20200809_163222.jpg
 
That will be incredible! How many steps in the adjustment? From your photo it looks like maybe just a few so do you ever find you need more granular control? Sometimes the tiniest adjustment on the HAS seems to really dial in the perfect brightness and other times I have to make a huge adjustment when switching PCBs like for DoDonPachi DaiOuJou.
 
Frank_fjs said:
The full custom mode gives you full step by step control of each channel, 129 steps. 0 being off, 129 being full brightness.

IMG_20200809_162218.jpg
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Neat. I presume it uses one of those 3-channel digital potentiometers?
 
At this stage you can save and store one custom preset, which is retained indefinitely, even after power off etc.

The trick for me is to make it an easy to understand and fast to operate menu. So I've put all the info I could on the main menu screen, and two buttons cycle brightness up and down between 8 levels of brightness.

Level 1 being the darkest.
Level 8 being the brightest.

Cycle all the way down beyond level 1 and you enter the custom mode. Enter your settings whilst visualising the changes in realtime and exit. Custom brightness is stored and saved and presented onscreen.

From here you can cycle through the preconfigured brightness levels if needed and cycle up beyond level 8 to re-access your custom setting.

So perhaps easier to visualise it like this:

Level 0 - apply custom settings
Level 1 - dim
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4 - normal brightness
Level 5
Level 6
Level 7
Level 8 - brightest
Level 9 - custom brightness level

Level 4 will be where you leave it 90% of the time. Level 5 and 6 is great for boosting typically dim Irem hardware.
 
RGB said:
Frank_fjs said:
The full custom mode gives you full step by step control of each channel, 129 steps. 0 being off, 129 being full brightness.

IMG_20200809_162218.jpg
Click to expand...
Neat. I presume it uses one of those 3-channel digital potentiometers?
Click to expand...
Exactly this, though I'm using a 4 channel digital potentiometer. This is controlled via a custom SPI class I wrote in Arduino via an Atmega328 and visually displayed on an OLED screen.

It will all be open source I'm just in the process of refactoring the code to an MVC to make it more efficient and responsive.
 
FWIW on the HAS I find myself slightly tweaking the brightness a lot as I change PCBs and on the MicroGun I'd love to be able to:

a) save more custom brightness settings
and/or
b) define those 8 brightness levels
and/or
c) have the ability to easily make small or large steps up/down in brightness from the saved custom setting

Just some ideas.
 
You may find the default 8 brightness levels adequate.

Beauty of the digital pot is that it can be programmed absolutely any way one wishes. Perhaps even custom stored and named presets, such as NeoGeo, CPS2, Irem etc could be an idea.
 
Hi all,

Currently my Supergun is turning on without the switch turned to 'on'
Would this be an issue with the soldering of the SMD part that connects to the switch and should all legs of the SMD part beep when using a continuous check with the multimeter?
To fix this would one re-solder the SMD part?

First time making the molex power cable so I included that image too.
Using an arcade PSU, it only has inputs for power so I have crimped two cables to one connector

Still working on the Mini DIN to VGA so can't confirm game has analog signal yet

Appreciated,
 

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dan-esc said:
Currently my Supergun is turning on without the switch turned to 'on'
Click to expand...
That is not an on/off switch for the minigun. That is an on/off switch for the Low Pass Filter (LPF) of the video buffer chip. The minigun doesn't have an on/off switch. If you want an on/off switch you should add it to the power cord for your arcade power supply.

Also the minigun doesn't produce VGA video signals. So I'm not sure how you are planning on making a mini din to VGA cable.
 
@Frank_fjs

I have the older v2.1 of the minigun, I didn't have much use for button 5 until now (just upgraded to unibios on my mvs) so it's now select (which pauses the game on AES mode)

I was thinking i would run 2 wires from B5 of the kick harness to the closest side of the DPDT for button 4, but realized that wouldn't work since the dpdt still runs to only button 4 for the jamma edge.

So now I have a few questions,

on version 2.1 is the button 5 pin connected to anything (just worried about possibility of being connected to ground)?

Is the schematic for 2.1 still available somewhere?

I'm now thinking of running the button 5 from the bottom of the kick harness to a dpdt then to the pins.
Is there a better way of doing this? (maybe traces or test points I overlooked or am unaware of?)

thanks.
 
Button 5 on the jamma should be floating, no connection. The kick harness connector runs to the DB15.

Did you need access to this button? Your idea of hooking it up via a switch is fine. You could bypass the switch and wire it directly, which doesn't cause any real issues aside from one or two CPS2 games.
 
Finally got around to building my first minigun it was really easy to solder for a noob :thumbsup:

I have been reading up on different the types of SYNC but still confused on what is safe to use on my Framemeister XRGB Mini i built the mini din 9 version as i already had a spare cable on hand.

Do i have the correct cable and what should i set the jumper to 75ohm or TTL ?

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For framemeister (and OSSC and gscartSW) you'll want 75 ohm. TTL will be too high of voltage and could damage your devices.

Don't have a minigun, but in general that's the advice.
 
dart620 said:
Finally got around to building my first minigun it was really easy to solder for a noob :thumbsup:

I have been reading up on different the types of SYNC but still confused on what is safe to use on my Framemeister XRGB Mini i built the mini din 9 version as i already had a spare cable on hand.

Do i have the correct cable and what should i set the jumper to 75ohm or TTL ?

13133.jpg
Click to expand...
I use the minigun connected to my gscartsw and then from there to my framemeister. I use this cable from my minigun to my gscartsw
https://retro-access.com/collection...aflex-8-pin-mini-din-rgb-scart-cable-for-mods

Not sure about 9 pin, but the "
This cable contains no attenuating resistors, these will be in your mod." in the cable description should apply for your case as well I believe.
 
It gets confusing as RGC typically insert a resistor along the sync line inside their cables. Meaning it's not actually outputting TTL sync, therefore you may need to set the Minigun to TTL to compensate for the sync attenuation happening inside the scart cable.
 
Will this help determine if the cable is any good? if not happy to buy a suitable cable if any one has a few recommendations.

20201007_215536.jpg
 
That is a pretty poor quality cable. I suggest sourcing a new one.
 
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