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Modern Cheap Plunger/nudge/button Setup


hauntfreaks

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I built my first cab 7 months ago... and from day one of my project I was in search of a plunger system without feeling ass raped...

I had just built a mame machine using the Xin Mo Arcade controller ($20) so I thought this might be a good choice to control the buttons and tried mercury switches for nudge and an optical mouse for the plunger.... after a week or so of testing... I came to the conclusion this was NOT the answer.... I also looked into game controllers, but just seemed to hacky for me....

 

then I came across a post on VPF by member MJR... he had came up with a solution that sounded great, and reasonably priced... it uses a freescale KL25Z dev board with a 3 axis accelerometer ($15), MJR wrote some open source code so the KL25Z would control 16 buttons, X/Y Nudging and an analog plunger.... the plunger he came up with was an optical CCD that turned light into voltage.... this part is $37 + shipping.... this is what is in my personal cab and works flawlessly.... but for some reason I have tried to use the CCD in another cab and can not get it to work... all the other systems parts work like the buttons and nudging.... just not the CCD plunger....

 

ok so all that being said I needed another opinion, so I seen another member Lemming adjusted the open source code to accept a linear slide potentiometer ($5 from china)..... I found one on ebay then made a piece that connected the plunger to the pot lever... and voila it worked perfect

so for as little as $20 you can have a "real" working non-hacky plunger/nudge/button controller setup....

 

16710510376_786c078173_c.jpg 16550263729_f7d2b092c1_c.jpg

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I viewed it.

I read your stuff on VPF as well...

how does the slide pot compare to the CCD?

I'm using a magnetopot and a ps3 controller...but if that hardware is easily hackable for a slide pot and it's comparable to the CCD plungers then it's certainly worth a try.

Can you spin your plunger, too?

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I viewed it.

I read your stuff on VPF as well...

how does the slide pot compare to the CCD?

I'm using a magnetopot and a ps3 controller...but if that hardware is easily hackable for a slide pot and it's comparable to the CCD plungers then it's certainly worth a try.

Can you spin your plunger, too?

 

lol... its really weird... its shows that no one has viewed this post.... thought it was just odd....LOL   and i know other dudes said they looked at it...

 

I feel the CCD is the better setup, there is no contact at all with the sensor... but it much cheaper to use the pot... and MJR has included the use of a POT in his latest pinscape code.... you just comment out CCD and uncomment POT

 

I'm also going to test the magnetopot that Rascal told me about... I just got it today.... 

16618649330_f1c02a2b4a_c.jpg

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That's the one I have...the 4" one

I hooked it up directly in place of one of the joystick potentiometers on a ps3 sixaxis controller and just used the PS3 controller app on my PC. Works decent enough, but I haven't tried other plunger setups so can't compare.

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I don't know what kind of magnet it is, it's a pretty low power one I had laying around. I looked at some nice ones, that had holes in the center that could be placed on the end of a plunger rod (like you have the plastic piece on yours)

 

One like this would be good I think (without measuring the diameter of the plunger rod)

 

http://www.magnet4less.com/product_info.php?cPath=13&products_id=1204

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