jasonsmith Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 I gotta say guys, I'm very close to throwing this whole kit out the window. I've actually had it disabled for the past few weeks as it's such a pain in the arse. The main issue I have is that it goes out of calibration so fast. I need to keep the deadzone high because the ball will start jumping around. Sometimes the nudging ends up being in one direction. The best run I ever had with it is about two weeks where I loved it. I just can't keep it working. I'm only using FP, no VP as of yet. I have used DXTweak to try and calibrate it further which does help, but it just doesn't last. I initially had it hooked up to the PC USB port which it was discovered that the voltages weren't that stable, connecting it to a USB hub fixed a few issues. I have it mounted on the center line of the cab, in the proper direction about 12" from the front, it is mounted securely. Not sure if there's a different location that would work better but the plunger sata cable isn't that long. I turn off my cab every night, not sure if a fresh reboot throws the calibration out or not either. All I know is my cab was a "Budget" build and I would have loved to spent that money on something else or not at all. As of now it's a useless piece of hardware taking up space in my cab, the plunger looks pretty but that's it. If anyone has any bright ideas it would be great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasonsmith Posted January 6, 2013 Author Share Posted January 6, 2013 Well I emailed them and chatted with David. He stated that it loses it's calibration as soon as it turns off, which in my opinion is absurd, I'm not leaving my cab running 24hrs a day, I asked him if there was a way to deal with that but he ignored the question. Also he asked if the board was level to the floor (house) or if at an angle to the cab floor. Since I have it mounted to the cab floor it wouldn't be level. I however don't think this would effect left and right nudges, forward and backwards probably. I'll adjust it and see what happens but I'm not confident of a solution. This was my second email to them, the first being shortly after I got it, that email though was ignored as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ViriiGuy Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 Basically, they suck. Use the plunger, throw the Motion card away and get a different solution. A lot of folks use the Microsoft Sidewinder controller. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Content Provider DeeGor Posted January 6, 2013 Content Provider Share Posted January 6, 2013 Hi Jason, Sadly you have fallen trap to the plunger as many of us have. As you have stated, the nanotech nudge board is utter crap. I tried for several hours to get mine working only to end in frustration. Your best bet is to do what Viriiguy said. Turn the deadzone up to 100% and use another nudge solution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasonsmith Posted January 6, 2013 Author Share Posted January 6, 2013 With a bit of sadness I must agree with you guys. My patience for this piece of junk wore out a long time ago. What a bummer though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Westworld Posted January 7, 2013 Share Posted January 7, 2013 I never used it with Future Pinball (as it does not work with a german system), but I am really happy to have it with Visual Pinball. The plunger works great, I don't want to miss it. The nudge works so la la. Calibration is stable, I did it about 3 times to find useable values. since that I never touched it again. I can get the ball drift to the left or right, can give it a push if it is close to drop in the wrong area, etc. It is not really perfect, but also not bad. Before installing it in the cabinet I read a lot and saw many unhappy people. I got the feeling that the mounting position is very important. Many have put it in the bottom of the cabinet, often in the middle. If you nudge your cabinet, you have your hands at the flipper buttons, so you nudge there, not at the bottom. Following a tip I have installed it upside down below the apron, so at the very top of the cabinet, directly at the front. It is Windows 7, 64 bit, Mot-Ion directly connected to mainboard (new board, purchased last summer). With vp 914 (which includes full support to adjust nudge and buttons) I'm really happy that I purchased it. Getting it through german custom was much more difficult than calibration... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasonsmith Posted January 7, 2013 Author Share Posted January 7, 2013 Well if the secret is mounting it upside down closer to the nudging area then I'll give it a shot. Do leave your cab computer running? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Westworld Posted January 7, 2013 Share Posted January 7, 2013 > Do leave your cab computer running? no, I use HyperPin Long click on Exit to do a full shutdown. Next time full startup, as it is a SSD this is quite fast. For upside down: I put a piece of wood behind the apron and mounted the device directly on it, that's why it is upside down. I had not enough room (because of the coin door) to mount is lower, to have space on top of it. Mounting it upside down was a little bit more difficult to do the wiring, especially for the left/right flipper button. First I tried to simply switch them, but never was able to get Hyperpin to work correctly, somewhere it seems to be hard coded. So I wired the left one to the right side of the cabinet and opposite. This is the disadvantage. But for good nudging I think it makes sense to mount it there you 'move' the cabinet, which is the upper front area and not the bottom (at least I would not want to shake my cabinet so heavily, fearing the health of the screens). I had the feeling that it is quite easy to get full scale during the calibration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasonsmith Posted January 7, 2013 Author Share Posted January 7, 2013 When I spoke with Tech support they stated that when it loses power it loses calibration, have you found that happening? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Content Provider DeeGor Posted January 7, 2013 Content Provider Share Posted January 7, 2013 I originally mounted mine upside down and it didn't matter. The device is either WAY too sensitive or it literally takes a body check to the cabinet to get it to register. I don't think it matters how you mount it at that point. You figure for the price that these units cost, it should be fairly easy to get working, but there are countless threads all over with people wanting to throw their units out of the window. It appears that you are one of the lucky few to get the nudge board working properly. Hopefully someone else will come up with a better solution soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasonsmith Posted January 8, 2013 Author Share Posted January 8, 2013 Ya, it really is sad considering so many people are having problems with it. More people need to make it known to them that it just doesn't work very well. I have faith in the community to create something better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ViriiGuy Posted January 8, 2013 Share Posted January 8, 2013 Oh they know it doesn't work. I suspect they either can't fix it, or can't be bothered to fix it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shakenbake Posted January 14, 2013 Share Posted January 14, 2013 Well if the secret is mounting it upside down closer to the nudging area then I'll give it a shot. Do leave your cab computer running? I have mine mounted upside down just under the flippers. It works great there where in my previous cab it was mounted like yours on the bottom and I couldn't get it to work at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blur Posted January 14, 2013 Share Posted January 14, 2013 Try to mount it on front, and on top of the pinball (just under the apron, or under the lockdown bar). Probably you won't need to calibrate it there, only set dead zone and gain in vp. Check in game controlers how is + moving around when you nudge. Upside down or not is not important since you can set all in controls and table options (normal mount, rotation and so on). BTW remember that bump from left should move ball to the left, from right to the righ, and from the front - down - not up! There are not so many better solutions out there - one guy on vp made nudge with sidewinder and he also has to recalibrate on every reboot. But sidewinder measures angle not the force - it is meant to be used like rotating wheel in your hands - and you can't rotate a cab I've planned for a long time to use vulgaris ps2 gamepad turned upside down and then glue some weight to the stick, but never got to it. I did some tests but soon some wires split off and i never resoldered them... Just an idea if someone want's to try, it will never need recalibration cause gamepad joysticks are well known by the fact that they are always in dead center. Oh - and other stick can be connected to plunger so you have it all for few bucks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slydog43 Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 I reinstalled my Pincab with Win7x64 and I cant seem to find my Pinball Wizard under the control panel. WTF. I have had many problems with my motion controller from day 1 and have bought 2 of them since I thought my first one was broke. I really love using the analog plunger and want this functionality back. Any ideas? Why don't I see it under game controllers in the control panel. I hear it make the good sound when I plug it into the mobo. Really wish there was a "perfect" solution since nudging is so important to real pinball I want it in my pincab. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Content Provider DeeGor Posted January 24, 2013 Content Provider Share Posted January 24, 2013 Have you tried an alternate USB port on the motherboard? Sometimes I've had success with USB devices that don't detect properly by simply switching the USB port I was plugging into. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJRobX Posted December 22, 2013 Share Posted December 22, 2013 The notion that the Mot-Ion "loses calibration" with a power cycle is nonsense, the calibration is stored in the Windows registry, not the device. What I've noticed with mine is that the calibration seems to be temperature sensitive. The numbers will skew in one direction until the cab warms up. The only way I can accommodate for it is to set the dead zone really high, which makes nudging hard to use. The "solution" i can think of is to write a daemon that periodically resets the calibrated center. It's probably fairly easy to figure out where center is, if you nudge the values start swinging wildly. If they're reasonably stable you can pretty safely assume the cabinet is not being nudged, and to use a recent average as center. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJRobX Posted December 23, 2013 Share Posted December 23, 2013 I hacked up a DirectInput sample to do the above. So far, it seems to be working, and I'm able to set a much smaller dead zone without worrying about it going out of wack. Was pretty fun, the structures for getting and setting calibration data (DIPROPCAL) are barely documented. I've attached it, along with source, for anyone who wants to mess around with it. Note that I did just enough to make it do what I needed to do and nothing more. It's ugly, dirty, filthy, proof-of-concept quality code. If someone wants to take this and make it into a more user-friendly package knock yourself out! Summary: 1) Sample the joystick input once every 30 seconds 2) Record those samples for 10 seconds 3) If any movement during those 10 seconds is above a threshold (i.e., you're nudging), stop and wait for things to settle. 4) If you make it through 10 seconds, average the readings and set the new center. Rinse, repeat. It has a UI so you can sort of see what it's doing. At startup and runs and minimizes into your tray (as to not mess with Hyperpin). If you open it you can see the numeric readings of your X and Y axis. If you watch it in the first 10 seconds you should see it center itself. The configuration constants are currently: #define SAMPLES_TO_TAKE (30 * 10) #define MAX_DEVIATION 200#define DELAYTIME (30 * 10)#define ADJUST_THRESHOLD 5 This does mean your calibrations need to be in the ballpark (idle values no more than +- 200) in order for it to start working. You could set higher deviations, but that means the centers could get temporarily corrupted by gentle nudging. I have not seen any performance impact from this. Its calculations are very light. JoystickCenter.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neohusky Posted December 28, 2013 Share Posted December 28, 2013 This looks promising. I've had the nanotech kit disabled for the past few months. Maybe now with this I can try it again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BamBam Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 I have tossed mine to the curb too. The purchase was a nightmare and the product is not exactly as I expected. Push button launch function here I come. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BamBam Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 Well I emailed them and chatted with David. He stated that it loses it's calibration as soon as it turns off, which in my opinion is absurd, I'm not leaving my cab running 24hrs a day, I asked him if there was a way to deal with that but he ignored the question. Also he asked if the board was level to the floor (house) or if at an angle to the cab floor. Since I have it mounted to the cab floor it wouldn't be level. I however don't think this would effect left and right nudges, forward and backwards probably. I'll adjust it and see what happens but I'm not confident of a solution. This was my second email to them, the first being shortly after I got it, that email though was ignored as well. Get used to waiting for a proper reply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BamBam Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 During my initial purchasing nightmare and a lot of money "David" promised me a second unit for the hassle. That never materialized. It does not matter anyway. If I had ever received the second plunger he promised, I'd have two bricks laying around my arcade. I posted a complaint at another forum about issues with this company and was accused of starting a flame war. It was nothing more than a consumer alert. We work hard for our money and expect to get what is advertised that's all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJRobX Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 Yeah, I was sure David took my money and ran at one point, but my PBW controller finally materialized. My calibration solution is working for me, so while I'm not happy that I had to code in someting that its firmware should be taking care of, I'm happy with the end result. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guruguy Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 I too have had nothing but issues with the analog gyrometer on this kit. Where do you adjust the dead zone in VP990? I have some tables that just won't work at all, like Tales_of_the_Arabian_Nights_[aaron_james]_VP91x_3.4FS_Night_Mod where no matter how I set it that table ignores the 'dead zone' and the ball just goes all over the place. I can never calibrate mine so that it isn't shaking all over the place causing a huge dead zone. What is the easiest way to disable the motion (nudge) and just use the plunger? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KAPSIG1 Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 Wow thanks might accually make my pinball wizard controller much more useable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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