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@winteriscoming That is very cool! How much does the whole board cost?

@rtw I didn't realise that 'lag' was such a big thing in this forum. I agree that obviously there will be some lag; but lag is introduced in every bit of hardware that does some sort of processing, including the original I/O boards. Good suggestion with the slow mo idea, I’d be interested to see how much of a delay the camera will pick up. A slow-mo camera generally records at 200 frames a second; I get around 2000 updates from the Wii Remote a second, and send those over the cable at 115200 baud, with the conversion running on a 1GHz microprocessor, so I'd guess I get at least 200 packet updates a second - but I can write code to test this if its an issue for people. I'd estimate the speed I get is compatible to the speed the original I/O boards originally ran at, and when playing I cannot notice any lag at all.

- Looks like gun games are the most wanted for the moment, so I'll focus my efforts on that.
- As a side note, is there anyone that has an original Ninja Assault cart? Would be lovely to get someone to test the code on that; might even encourage a dump of the game that would be playable without the more rare I/O board.
 
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This project would be awesome if it came through to a final product. From working in our arcade (Timewarp Arcade) I/O boards are a bane of our life. Sega Naomi I/O boards have a mind of their own and just commit suicide at any moment for us. Then they are hard to source, also prices are crazy and even if you get a good one it feels like your on a time limit. If we could whip out the JVS and replace with a RPi would be a god send and we happily donate and test for this project. Would this be running on a RPi 3 or RP0W? Also if by some mircale of god you figure out how to reverse eneginer a Namco System 246 JVS-RAYS-0 I/O (Vampire Night Deluxe) board I would buy you many crates of beer!

Best of Luck!

PS Also we have a Ninja Assault Deluxe cabinet but a faulty Naomi motherboard :)

Also we have the following machines we have in the arcade:

Crazy Taxi Upright
Virtua Tennis
Route 66 Upright
18 Wheeler Upright
Club Kart Deluxe
Capcom vs SNK - Naomi Deluxe Sit Down
We do also have various other carts and a few more universal cabinets
 
@LuKa It's being written to run on any Raspberry Pi or computer for that matter, and models 1, 2, 3 and 0 and 0W should work just fine. The reverse engineering isn't very hard and if I have the machine/game usually only takes me a few hours to get a script written. Once May is over, I'll have finished exams - and maybe we could organise a meeting at the arcade to see if we can get Ninja Assult I/O / the JVS-RAYS-0 I/O emulators working?

Plus would be super if someone could help and get Ninja Assault dumped properly, now that we might have a chance of playing it without the specific I/O!
 
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@LuKa It's being written to run on any Raspberry Pi or computer for that matter, and models 1, 2, 3 and 0 and 0W should work just fine. The reverse engineering isn't very hard and if I have the machine/game usually only takes me a few hours to get a script written. Once May is over, I'll have finished exams - and maybe we could organise a meeting at the arcade to see if we can get Ninja Assult I/O / the JVS-RAYS-0 I/O emulators working?

Plus would be super if someone could help and get Ninja Assault dumped properly, now that we might have a chance of playing it without the specific I/O!
Ah excellent, having it on pi0 would bring down the cost for the project nicely. With regards to meeting at the arcade, we can definitely arrange something. The arcade is in Bridgwater which is located in Somerset, South West UK. As mentioned the naomi motherboard for Ninja Assault is dead at the moment and we haven't been able to source one for a while. But still we could possibly whip one out from another cabinet. With regards to the Vampire Night DLX cabinet Rays I/O that is a rather complex I/O, it actually interfaces with a camera that watches the screen for the IR dots from the gun, when calculates the position of the shot. Its stupidly complicated for such a simple task on the game, it even uses a SH4 processor to figure out the position. I don't really know if that can be emulated but if it can then that would be incredible. With regards to dumping stuff for the community would that kill the original boards because things would have to extracted and copied to a PC.
 
Plus would be super if someone could help and get Ninja Assault dumped properly, now that we might have a chance of playing it without the specific I/O!
What is wrong with the existing dump in MAME ?
 
@rtw I didn't realise there was a dump of it online; theres so much stuf written on forums its hard to work out whats there and what not! Do you know if it works properly via netbooting, or if it will ever work?

@LuKa That sounds perfect - I'll send you a personal message in a few weeks when I have some time, I can always bring a spare Naomi board over if thats required etc. And looks like the game is already dumped so won't be needed, but normally I think most games can be dumped without even having to remove the chips.

!! Project Update !!

I've finally finished the first revision of the project which you can download, however have been doing most of the editing and writing without having the actual board or Naomi in front of me, so quite a lot of it is guess work and there may be some issues. I'll work out all the bugs and improve the software when I'm back home in a few weeks.

Wiki Link: https://github.com/bobbydilley/JVSEmulator/wiki

The wiki includes:

- How to download and run the software
- How to create the cable

There are two usable modules, which allow you to play Maze Of Kings with a mouse, or Virtua Athlete with your keyboard. I've tested them using Raspian Linux on a Raspberry Pi, from the desktop. You may need to change the screen resolution on the IRGun python module for it to work properly - please message me if you need help doing it.

I'd be really interested to see how people get it with it, so please don't hesitate to message me with any problems etc. or how your getting on!
 
Back in the day I dumped the carts: NJA1 NJA2 and NJ4 (regions)

Ninja Assault has one more issue which puts a damper on the excitement. There is an issue with the brightness and this is tied to the BIOS version.


Here is the list of BIOS versions tested:

NAOMI1:
21576D - OK
21576E - OK
21576G - BAD


NAOMI2:
23605 - OK
23605A - OK
23605B - OK
23605C - BAD
 
-- Little Update --

I realised today that the WiKi on how to make the cable was wrong, and I had instructed to plug the wrong wires into the wrong screw terminals. I have now updated it with what I believe to be right but will confirm its correct once I've got the cable in front of me. I'd suggest not to attempt to plug the cable in unless you know what your doing, and understand the wiring until i've confirmed!
 
What is the status of this project? Has anyone tried it and how well does it work? This is a great concept and want to see it through to something that truly allows USB guns and steering wheels to work with the Sega JVS hardware. Thanks!
 
Quick update:

I’m back home now with my Naomi and have more time to work on it.

The gun emulator part of it works well with reloading and I can successfully play The Maze Of The Kings, Confidential Mission and The House Of The Dead 2.

I’m currently helping someone with a Ninja Assult cart to set it up, so we can see if it works on that.

I was wondering if anyone had managed to NetBoot Lupin The Shooting, as I can’t for the life of me manage to NetBoot it - just get a black screen.

Currently should work with an Aimtrak for a single player if anyone wants to try, and I’ll add second player support soon.

Going to take a slight detour to get it running with the driving games starting with Crazy Taxi tonight!
 
This is awesome news! Great job! I know there is a wiki link for how to install the software, however, i am not really versed in python script. Does anyone plan to post an image of a working setup that can be loaded and work "plug and play" with a Raspberry Pi that is already setup to net boot Naomi? I am assuming this works in conjunction with a Pi that is already setup to net boot? Any chance this will also work with Chihiro and Lindbergh?
I can't wait for the driving games to be added - any idea of what USB driving peripherals it will work with?
Thanks.
 
@arcadeWC The plan is to eventually add it to the Naomi netbooting pi image, but I want to get it all working before I do that.
And yep should work with everything that uses the JVS spec so Lindbergh and Chihiro will work fine, I just have to tweak it for each game.

All USB Peripherals work in a similar way, so any that you want really - I want to make some sort of setup script so it asks you to turn the wheel to the left and right and press the pedals and it will learn but I’m a bit off that yet.
 
I've had an idea but need some help!

I'm currently trying to improve the light gun tracking of a Wii Remote for use with the JVSE project. A standard Wii setup has one bar at the top emitting 2 points of infrared light. A standard arcade setup has multiple IR LEDS around the entire screen.

I have read up that the wii setup is called Biangulation as it uses 2 leds to determine its point, and the arcade setup is called Triangulation as it requires at minimum 3 leds to track the correct point.

I was wondering if anyone on here understood the math involved to work out where the light gun / wii remote was aiming based on the tracking of IR leds? The wii remote can track 4 IR LEDS at once, and so I'm hoping a system similar to the arcade setup could be achieved giving a much more accurate and enjoyable experience.

If you understand the math involved, please either reply here on send me a PM and we can discuss!

Thanks,

Bobby
 
@winteriscoming That is very cool! How much does the whole board cost?
I must have missed this question. The BOM is pretty low. I had a few boards made by pcbway, which is very affordable for small runs, and bought a small bulk of the individual parts to be able to populate several boards. I'm not sure on exact cost for populating a single board, and it's been a while since I looked at pricing, but costs are probably about $25, not including the Arduino and screen which can add another $20. My issue is that I don't think it's worth the money I'd be able to charge to manufacture and sell them en mass, so I turned the project over to others (*cough* @Darksoft *cough*) who have more interest in improving it and managing production. I enjoy developing stuff like this, but ultimately have almost no motivation to distribute and support it.

I commend your open source approach. I considered going open source, but ultimately don't like the idea of someone else trying to profit off of it.
 
Thats a pretty good price - would you have to solder everything on the board yourself? Thats always the off putting part for me!

Thank you - Ive looked at lots of other projects such as MegaJVS when writing it and so it wouldn't be fair to close source it really. Plus I'd always like to keep arcade machines a hobby, and try and stay away from the business end of it!
 
Thats a pretty good price - would you have to solder everything on the board yourself? Thats always the off putting part for me!
Yeah, the cost is just for raw components. I did design it with through-hole components, but no way anyone is going to pay me as much as my day job to solder them up and make it worth spending my free time trying to sell them.
Thank you - Ive looked at lots of other projects such as MegaJVS when writing it and so it wouldn't be fair to close source it really. Plus I'd always like to keep arcade machines a hobby, and try and stay away from the business end of it!
I learn a lot from other projects and the great info that others way more capable than myself have openly shared. In the MEGA JVS thread I definitely tried to be open with my discoveries of JVS theory/implementation, so hopefully that's helpful to anyone interested. I've openly shared code on other projects, but at some point I thought better of doing that on MEGA JVS.

Anyway, your current project has some pretty different goals than mine, and I actually think yours is more of what most people around here want. Mine's more of a dedicated replacement for a Sega Type 1, which I made with the intention of going in a cabinet and helping manage actual arcade controls. Your project is more about using other controls, translated to JVS for use likely outside of a cab. I mainly have driving cabs, so I'd totally make use of your project for other types of games. :thumbsup:

I'm curious, having recently gotten into Retropie for emulation, area there some existing controller libraries you could make use of? Retropie has taken every usb controller I've thrown at it. I'm wondering if you could make use of some kind of generic master controller mapping like Retropie does where you've got the generic controls mapped up to JVS and then you can configure any controller you plug in and map it to the generic. Like when you plug a controller into Retropie, you can go through an interface and press whatever button it says to map it up.
 
Project Update:

Unfortunately a negative update this time, I tried running it on a Raspberry Pi 1st gen today for the first time (had been developing on my mac, but target platform was obviously a Pi) and annoyingly it just doesn't work.

I'm thinking that the PI can't process + reply fast enough and so its a speed issue. I will try on a better Pi2 or Pi3 later to see if that helps, or failing that attempt to make the code and linux distro more efficient.

So if anyone tries this on a Pi1 and it doesn't work, thats to be expected for now!
 
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