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twistedsymphony

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UPDATE 12/3/2019
if you're here looking for information on Sega IR Guns check out my in-depth article on the subject on my blog: http://solid-orange.com/1611



Below is the original project thread. Please keep this thread on topic about the Projector Based IR Gun setup.
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The Plan:
So I recently purchased and am now waiting for delivery on a complete Sega Type-II IR setup, Guns, hoses, Gun board, protection board, IR sensors, harnesses and filters. I've got a home theater in my basement with front-projector throwing onto a 108" screen. My plan is to extend the IR sensors harnesses and mount them around the screen such that I can run light gun games (NAOMI and Lindbergh) in a larger-than-arcade "Shooting gallery" setup.

Potential Problems:
I'm thinking that as long as I keep the proportions of the sensor spacing the same the larger screen and gun distance to the screen shouldn't be an issue (especially considering the room will be dark). I don't think the projector light will cause any problems as the sensors should be mounted outside of the projected area. Reflected light would be considerably less than what you'd get on a CRT or a rear-projector like the official arcade setups too. The only remaining concern I'd have is the added wire length, especially the wires to the guns. Assuming I keep the gun boards with the main board up under the projector screen. the gun wires are going to be extended a good 12-15ft or so. I know USB starts having problems over 15ft but I'd hope that the signal wires for the sensors in the guns can handle that distance. Initially I plan to wire it up to a NAOMI for HOTD II, Maze of Kings and Confidential Mission.

Future Enhancements:
One other thing I'd like to do is adapt the Type-II Gun board to a PC so that I can play emulated Light Gun games (Area 51, Police Trainer, etc.) in addition to the original arcade hardware. I know that the Type-II IR basically outputs gun position like an analog joystick but I'm wondering if I should try to run it into something like an Ultimarc A-PAC or if I should run it through a JVS I/O board and connect the JVS I/O to a PC with a JVS-PAC.

I welcome any thoughts and opinions on this. I'll of course update once I have some hardware in my hands and start playing around with it.

:D
 
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Got my parts in today!

Gun Sense Board and Gun Protect Board:
gun_board.jpg


IR Emitter Array:
ir_array.jpg


IR Guns:
ir_guns.jpg


So the gun sense board has a plug for the IR Emitters that connect in a daisy chain around the monitor, 5 long the bottom and 5 along the top. There's no special termination it just ends. Supposedly some setups use 12 sensors with an extra sensor on the left and right sides of the monitor. I believe the sensor count and position just has to be matched to the Gun Sense board version.
according to the HOTD2 manual the arrangement is like this with 1 being the closest to the Gun sense board:
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
[ monitor ]
| 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 10|

There are the two gun output connectors that are passed through the Gun Protect board before going on to the guns. Early games didn't have this board but supposedly Sega added it around the time of HOTD3 as they had a lot of issues with voltage spikes killing the sensors in the guns. So technically it's not required but probably something you should always use if possible.

Two harnesses I'll have to build:
Power: There's a 2 pin power connector it looks like a simple JST connector, the pins are as follows:
1 white - GND
2 red - +12V

Gun Sense board output: looks like a 9-pin JST connector on the gun sense side, the pins are as follows:
1 white/brown - RET
2 gray - P1 X-Axis
3 gray/red - P1 Y-Axis
4 orange - P2 X-Axis
5 orange/red - P2 Y-Axis
6 green - P1 Trigger
7 green/white - P2 Trigger
8 blue - P1 Frame Out
9 blue/white - P2 Frame Out

On the other side of the harness on the JST side goes to both the analog and digital connectors:


JVS Analog Connector:
5 white/brown - RET
3 gray - P1 X-Axis
9 gray/red - P1 Y-Axis
15 orange - P2 X-Axis
21 orange/red - P2 Y-Axis


JVS Digital Connector:
27 blue - P1 Frame Out
29 green - P1 Trigger
28 blue/white - P2 Frame Out
30 green/white - P2 Trigger

JVS digital connector also has outputs for the start buttons:
4 yellow - +5V
10 white - GND
17 lightblue - P1 Start
18 lightblue/white - P2 Start
51 pink - P1 Start Lamp
52 pink/white - P2 Start Lamp

According to the HOTD2 manual pins 1 and 3 on the digital connector should also be jumped: I'm not quite sure what that does.
It activates the I/O board and is necessary for any control panel harness.
1 - EX
3 - +5V


I've done some more research into connecting this to a PC it seems I have 3 options. Sadly the JVS-PAC doesn't support analog controls so that's out.

1. the U-HID adapter. This seems like the best option as it supports more than enough analog inputs and loads of digital inputs and can be configured to run as a pair of analog joysticks by the computer. I can also reconfigure the pins which might allow me to make it pin-compatible with JVS. Down side is it's nearly $80.

2. the Ultimarc A-PAC. This seems like the 2nd best option, it supports up to 4 analog inputs which is just enough for 2 light guns. it's relatively inexpensive at about $40 but it uses screw terminals which blows (IMO).

3. hacking up an Xbox 360 controller PCB and wiring up to the analog stick pins.

In all 3 of these scenarios I'll need to figure out what the voltage range is... seeing as the gun sense board has a 12V input I'm interested if the analog output is also in the 12V range or if it steps it down to 5V.

Questions:
Does anyone know the manufacturer and model number for the JVS analog and digital connectors?

Also does anyone have any insight into the function of the RET pin? Obviously on a proper JVS setup I'd just hook that up but it's unclear how that might work with PC integration.
 
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I can toss in that the 12 sensor games would be pre-HotD2/Lost World. Everything LW/HotD2 and newer uses 10.
 
I can toss in that the 12 sensor games would be pre-HotD2/Lost World. Everything LW/HotD2 and newer uses 10.
Lostworld I believe was the first game to use this setup. I think Ghost squad and other wide-screen games use 12 sensors, or at very least uses a different sensor pattern.
 
Here's the pinout for the Sega JVS I/O:

io_naomi_jvs.gif


It looks like pin 5 on the analog connector, which was labeled as "RET" on the HOTD2 schematic is just a ground for the analog.

The "EX" pin that is jumped to +5V is labeled "+EXV" here.

as for part numbers...
JVS Analog connector is a 26 pin JST RA
PN: RA-2611

JVS Digital connector is a 60 pin JST RA
PN: RA-6011

JST RA Pins supports 26-22 Gage Wire
PN: RA-SC1290

I believe the 9-pin output connector and the 2-pin power connector on the Gun Sense board are both JST XH series connectors. but I'll need to take some measurements to confirm.

EDIT: Gun Sense board and IR emitter matrix all use JST XH series connectors 6 pin for IR emittors, 9-pin for gun sense output and 2-pin fr gun sense power.

Housing PN (male 6-pin): XHP-6 x20
Housing PN (male 9-pin): XHP-9 x1
Housing PN (male 2-pin): XHP-2 x1
Pin PN(male 22ga): SXH-001T-P0.6 x131

I'll also need at least 30 FT of 22ga wire per color (white, orange, green blue, yellow, red) for the extended IR emitter matrix

FML 20+ connectors with 150+ pins to crimp. X/


I've also confirmed that the Analog Vcc is just tied to the +5V pins, The EX pin that gets tied to 5V is required for any connection as it is used to turn on the JVS I/O.
 
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Built my harnesses and got everything working on a test-bench.

12519131_1216653208398699_340788718_n.jpg


Video of it in action

The digital Pins (Trigger and screen out) in the HOTD2 manual were incorrect. They're different in the confidential mission manual but STILL incorrect from what I'm getting on my setup.

In any case I've modified the pinouts I listed above to match what I'm actually getting out of my gun-sense board. Not sure if this is a variation in the boards or in the game but this works for me in Confidential Mission, Maze of the Kings and Death Crimson OX. Lupin the Shooting doesn't seem to work on my Net Dimm setup it boots straight to the service menu and wont enter game mode for some reason.

As for adapting this to a PC for use with MAME and other emulators, I've confirmed that the gun sense board output does indeed go between 0V and 5V. On the Y-axis 0V is at the bottom and 5V at the top, but for X axis 0V is on the right and 5V is on the left. I'm wondering if this is because they originally designed the board for use in a mirror cab where left and right reversed. In any case once I have an analog I/O for the PC to test with we'll see if the X-Axis can be inverted .
 
I've been working on this despite not having posted up much.

I got an AVR flashed with "MaxArcade" firmware to make it emulate joysticks with analog inputs (8 channels total) wiring up the Sega Gun I/O board was very simple. From the 9-pin output connector I tied the grounds together between the two devices then simply ran the analog output pins to the appropriate input pins, and tied the trigger and screen out signals to the appropriate button pins. I mapped the triggers to button 1 and the screen out signal to button 3. I did this because a lot of games use a button 2 for a greneade (or the foot-switch in Time Crisis) so I figured I'd leave button 2 open.

There's a dip-switch on the Gun I/O board for "29 <-> 50" the 29 setting will invert the X-Axis data, presumably for use with a mirror cab. Ironically I don't think it matters for NAOMI as it works fine on both as long as you calibrate... the "50" setting is really the proper setting for direct-view screen setups. this setting might be more important for Jurassic Park: the Lost World as I don't know how robust the calibration options are within that game. MAME has an option to invert analog axis as a per-game option. so using the 50 setting allows me to just leave it default instead of having to tweak this for every game.

there's also a "HOD <-> JUL" setting which haven't played around with but I'd assume is for switching between 10 and 12 LED boards since "House Of the Dead 2" and newer games used 10 and "JUrassic park: the Lost world" used 12...

Once in windows I needed to calibrate the "analog sticks", to do this I needed to disconnect the button wires because any joystick buttons move to the next step and a screen out triggers a button push which screws up the calibration by quitting out early.

In the MAME INI you need to set the joystick deadzone to 0 otherwise the center position will be "sticky". I've found that most games have little to no calibration option which sucks because without the tracking is non-linear. Most simply have you center the gun which will make it work well in the center but the tracking gets off the closer to the edges you get. you can adjust this by tweaking the "joystick saturation" value in the mame.ini. using a value of 0.83 worked pretty well for most games, I'm guessing because the visible screen takes up 83% of the tracking area within the LED array. I suspect this wont be so kind once I move up to a widescreen setup and my X and Y axis are no longer tracking at the same linear rate.

I'm thinking if I can figure out a way to use analog sticks as mouse pointers with their own calibration outside of MAME I'll have better luck, particularly with older games. This might be necessary anyway if I want to play Silent Hill Arcade as it only seems to accept mouse data. I haven't tried Far Cry Paradise yet; everyone says you need to use an Xbox 360 controller for the analogs but I'm hoping it will work with any analog controller and not the 360 specifically.

In any case here's a video of me playing Terminator 2 with the Sega gun setup in MAME:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BCEqJG2zGIV

I was able to play a few other games as well. Police Trainer played well but the lack of good calibration options made it difficult to play since that game relies heavily on precision.

I found my ancient laptop had trouble running Area 51 and Time Crisis I could play them but it was slow and choppy. The machine I'll be using for MAME once this is done is much more powerful thankfully.

I also crimped all of the extended harnesses needed for the projector sized LED array.
12728711_1690020351277563_969315671_n.jpg

about 250ft of wire and 120 crimps.
 
about 250ft of wire and 120 crimps.
Ouch. that must have taken a while. Looking good though, keep us posted. I might be doing something similar in the future.
I was fretting having to do it for a while and finally just sat down and suffered through it. I'm anxious to get it up and running on the projector but before I can do that I need to build a frame to mount all of the LEDs around the screen. I want to buy some black anodized C-channel aluminum. I've got a drill press so making the holes for mounting all the sensors and lenses shouldn't be a problem and I figure I can design and 3D print corner brackets that will snap in place. Unfortunately I'm having trouble sourcing aluminum channel in the right size.


I forgot to mention earlier but I do have a Lindbergh Yellow on the way so hopefully I can get some HOTD4 and few other more modern games up and running :)
 
That is going to be one sweet setup you are going to have. Nothing like shooting basically life sized zombies.
 
home depot, lowes and tractor supply were all a bust for finding the aluminum channel I need to build the frame for the LED array.

on the recommendation of a welder friend of mine I ended up order it from http://www.onlinemetals.com $65 shipped for 26ft of aluminum channel... not too bad. should be here next week.

I also hooked up all of my extended harnesses to the test LED array I have just to make sure it's all wired correctly and that there was no signal degradation with all those long runs of wire... So far everything seems to work great.

I triple checked all of my harnesses because I didn't want to mis-wire anything and burn out a component (something I have a bad habit of doing). and I realized that while all the LED array connectors are wired exactly the same the one connector that plugs into the I/O board is backward from the rest... no idea why they decided to do that but I'm glad I caught it and was able to change my harness before hooking it up.
 
Good thing you caught the wiring issue at the I/O board.

Home Depot/Lowes is usually a bust. I have bought hollowed aluminum rods from Onlinemetals before decent price and quick ship.

Dont forget to post video of your setup working when you can.
 
I also crimped all of the extended harnesses needed for the projector sized LED array.
12728711_1690020351277563_969315671_n.jpg

about 250ft of wire and 120 crimps.
Glad I'm not the only one considering doing a full wall Time Crisis 4 setup....
 
I've got all the electronics working it's just a matter of building the frame for the sensors, I've been avoiding it because it's been frigid outside recently and I have to go out to the garage to use my drill press.

I did design a corner bracket for the aluminum channel and did a test print last night. it will need a little bit of tweaking but looks great so far.

I also picked up a pair of Time Crisis foot pedals. though I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do for a control panel/pedestal.
 
A few of my friends hounding me about this project recently plus Derek2k asking me questions about gun hardware led me to spending some time on this over the long weekend.


Since the last update:


I had marked out the holes for the custom sensor bars ages ago but I didn't have anything to drill the big "Slots" for the sensor windows. I had ordered an end mill and it took so long to arrive I was knee deep in other projects and never came back around.

In any case I've got 1/8" thick aluminum material and I needed to create a 20mmx30mm "slot" for the sensor window to match what they have on the original cabinets. This is not at all easy to do, especially in such thick material.

i have a drill press and asking around some machinist friends suggested I buy a 3/4" end-mill and just cut straight down with it so I don't put any lateral pressure on the bearings in my drill press. This sounded like a good plan so I ordered a set of end mills on Amazon... when they arrived they didn't include a 3/4" one though <_< It was my own fault for not reading the description close enough. So then I ordered just a 3/4" end mill on eBay. those bastards are expensive (some of them several hundred dollars) so I bought a cheap one from China (still about $40) It arrived after several weeks and I just shelved it.

Last Weekend:

Part of the reason I was putting off this part of the project is because my drill press has never been properly mounted to my work bench and I needed to swing it out off the edge of the bench in order to fit these long bars or move it to the floor and do this whole project there. So I started by buying some big bolts and hard-mounting my drill press the workbench.

I then rigged up some card-board boxes to hold up the long end so of the aluminum channel so I wasn't fighting gravity the whole time. I started off easy and got to work drilling all of the small holes for the PCB mounting screws.

Once that was done it was time to try drilling the slotted holes.
... and the 3/4" end mill wouldn't fit in the chuck of my drill press :( there goes that $40 tool. So I decided to try the 1/2" end mill from the original end-mill set that I bought thinking maybe I could make a whole bunch of cuts instead of 2. This fit and started off pretty clean but since there's no point to center it like a drill bit it started wobbling violently and I had to shut it down... so that was useless, at least I learned why you can't use an end mill in a drill press.

So plan C at this point I went for a 3/4" forstner bit. I use these for drilling lexan and wood panels and they work great. I'd heard of people using them in sheet metal in a pinch at the risk of wearing out the bit too fast. but I figured I could replace the bit if I needed to... this had no effect. the centering point in the middle just wouldn't cut into the aluminum so I was SOL there.

At this point any hope of making a slot instead of a hole with what I have available for tools is gone. the largest "normal" drill bit I have is 1/2" so I head off to Tractor Supply to see if I can find something bigger. I managed to find a 3/4" high speed steel bit with a reduced shank (so it will fit in my press) that claims it will drill anything but stainless and "space age alloys" and offered a money back satisfaction guarantee for $16.

13532041_905431736270213_540449941_n.jpg


This thing worked a treat... and while I don't have slots for the sensor window I'm thinking it should be big enough to work... if not I might see if I can find someone local with a vertical mill to elongate the holes... or failing that get a side-cutting bit and make the holes ugly with a Dremel... but I hope it doesn't come to that.

Next Step:
So the next step is figuring out how I want to mount this to my projector screen. and doing a dry test to see how well the sensors work at distance and if the holes need to be increased and if I can run it with the tinted IR filters or without. once it's been proved out then it's a matter of making it all look pretty.


Also...
At some point I want to add recoil since that makes gun games much more fun IMO. the best recoil system IMO is the Time Crisis guns. and I discovered that not only are time crisis guns on YAJ much cheaper but in Japan they came in black instead of pink and baby blue... so I bought some
12446340_1806072106280268_1851220354_n.jpg


I think they look pretty bad-ass personally but I've yet to see if there is enough room to properly retrofit the Sega IR sensors into these housings. This will wait until the rest of the setup is "done" and fully working.

I've also started brainstorming some kind of pedestal as I'll need something to hold all the electronics and bolt the guns to.
 
Guns look awesome :thumbup:

I am following what you are doing closely since I am working on doing my own setup.

Thanks for all the info and pics.
 
I probably need to get those connectors and pins to extend the IR matrix wires, can you post what connectors they are and what gauge wire you used please.
 
I probably need to get those connectors and pins to extend the IR matrix wires, can you post what connectors they are and what gauge wire you used please.
I used 22 ga wire as it's the thickest that the connectors will support and I wanted to make sure there was a strong signal for such a long run.

I have all the pin and housing part numbers for everything I used above:
Gun Sense board and IR emitter matrix all use JST XH series connectors 6 pin for IR emittors, 9-pin for gun sense output and 2-pin for gun sense power.

Housing PN (male 6-pin): XHP-6 x20
Housing PN (male 9-pin): XHP-9 x1
Housing PN (male 2-pin): XHP-2 x1
Pin PN(male 22ga): SXH-001T-P0.6 x131
They're all JST XH series. I believe I ordered them all directly from JST. You'll need something like 120 pins to redo the whole 10-node LED matrix. ... get ready for hand cramps lol. I got 100ft wire spools in each color from mcm electronics... wire lengths add up fast.
 
They don't pop up all the time but when they do they seem to sell between $15 and $30. I bought 4 of them since they were all in various stages of disrepair so I figure I'll have enough parts for 2 good ones... compare that to the $120-$200 I see the blue and pink ones going for on eBay and it was a no-brainer to buy just to play around with .

the kick back on these requires a 24V power source so I'll need to pick up a 24V PSU and then figure out a driver circuit. My biggest concern with the wiring is the high voltage wire for the kick back messing with the tracking...
 
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