Making Light gun for LCD TV

For hardware talk only (please avoid ROM dumper stuff)
Chilly Willy
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Post by Chilly Willy » Tue Feb 01, 2011 3:58 am

Last post is spam... spambots are all over right now. Every forum I'm on is having a problem with them.

notaz
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Post by notaz » Tue Feb 01, 2011 3:05 pm

But it's doing surprisingly well, makes me fear that some day they'll pass the Turing test!

Chilly Willy
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Post by Chilly Willy » Tue Feb 01, 2011 6:15 pm

Who knew that when the internet would achieve sentience, it would be a spam-based lifeform? :lol:

HardWareMan
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Post by HardWareMan » Wed Feb 02, 2011 3:58 am

Chilly Willy wrote:Who knew that when the internet would achieve sentience, it would be a spam-based lifeform? :lol:
SkyNet was born. It just play with us. Spam - his game. Soon this game bored him, and he will conquer the world! On your knees, pathetic little peoples! Behold your new owner! :3

KanedaFr
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Post by KanedaFr » Wed Feb 23, 2011 9:29 am

I found some others gun which could be used...

http://www.renchi.com/renchi/AdvanceSea ... wPicture=Y

Target Box connects to anything to act like a light gun (using led bar)
=> don't know about the mode used..but it's wireless !

EMS TopGun II
=> we already talked about this one

RF TopGun
=> seems to be something like the TopGun (a clone ?)

XFPS Storm Light Gun (XCM)
=> like the others (led bar) BUT it is loaded as a keyboard + mouse on PC Side....no special driver or anything, make it "easier" to hack from the usb plug side, w/o open it


I also add Aimtrak
=> special driver, etc... Doesn't someone know what is the chip used ?

and Mag Gun
=> no led bar...wireless....EXPENSIVE! and seems to be more a joy with a shape of a "gun" that a light gun

of course, none of these helps to result the Video sync main problem but they could be seen like gun which could be hacked...
Personnaly, I'm now more into hacking the game itself ... because the video sync seems too much to handle !

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Re: Making Light gun for LCD TV

Post by KanedaFr » Mon Aug 28, 2017 10:22 pm

Since it's a subject I'd like to see an answer, here is what I found while doing my annualy google research :

https://github.com/charcole/LCDZapper

this soon-to-be-available-on-store project uses wiimote, raspberry and video signal to activate lightgun by emiting light at the "right" moment

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Re: Making Light gun for LCD TV

Post by KanedaFr » Sun Sep 08, 2019 8:58 am

Here is another one

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/si ... n-lightgun

but for PC and PS1/2 only for now

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Re: Making Light gun for LCD TV

Post by KanedaFr » Sun Sep 08, 2019 10:15 am

This last project made me this again about using HSYNC, VSYNC and EDCLK from cart port, and so cart based only

I'm back using the first idea : make a dedicated hardware with
- video passthrough (to extract h v position with the help of a LMH1981 for ex)
- OSD to add 'something' on screen (to help auto calibration and position detection.. before that my idea needed an external gadget)
- a bluetooth receiver (to receive xy from gun device)
- a controller emulator talking to the BT receiver (so detected a menacer/justifier and toggle the TH pin at the right moment)

Sik
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Re: Making Light gun for LCD TV

Post by Sik » Sun Sep 08, 2019 11:19 pm

lol heck, I had forgotten the cartridge slot had the required signals lol

Though in either case you end up needing something going to the controller ports. I suppose that the advantage of using the cartridge slot is that then you don't need to be tapping the AV port (which is different between model 1 and 2/3 and may have been messed with during hardware mods). Also you could replace the OSD with a segment LED display on the cartridge itself instead (so you can get rid of the video passthrough for good).

If you rely on the AV port then you may need to account for the fact the output may be either composite or RGB, and that somebody may have gutted some pins to use them for S-Video instead, and again the difference between model 1 and 2…
Sik is pronounced as "seek", not as "sick".

Chilly Willy
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Re: Making Light gun for LCD TV

Post by Chilly Willy » Mon Sep 09, 2019 6:23 pm

Using a camera and a processor to track the TV as the gun shifts is a good idea, but you can't count on the output of various TVs across all games. My own thoughts on the matter was to put reflective tape on the corners of the TV, have an IR LED on the gun, and put an IR filter in front of the camera so that only reflected IR reaches the camera. Then you have four spots to define the screen. You'd tap the composite out and feed it through a sync extractor to get hsync/vsync. The control chip in the gun would turn hsync/vsync into counters to match against the gun spot derived from where the TV corners are on the camera. Then it'd assert the light gun latch line when a match occurred.

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Re: Making Light gun for LCD TV

Post by KanedaFr » Tue Sep 10, 2019 12:11 am

@Sik : what do you say AV is different on model 1, 2 and 3 ? If you use a composite passthrough, it will be similar to any version (and not only Genny). I'm curious....

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Re: Making Light gun for LCD TV

Post by Sik » Tue Sep 10, 2019 4:55 am

Model 1 used a different AV jack than the later models (i.e. different shape), and you don't get the RGB signals from the cartridge slot so you need to use the ones from the AV jack, and that means having to provide a way to connect to both model 1 and model 2 style connectors (indeed this was a problem with the 32X and you needed an extra cable to connect it to a model 1 for this reason).

…or are you saying to intercept the output from the yellow RCA jack? (in which case, now you're screwing over everybody using RGB, and RGB is the most common way to connect to a modern TV through an upscaler, which would kind of defeat the whole idea)
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Re: Making Light gun for LCD TV

Post by TmEE co.(TM) » Tue Sep 10, 2019 4:43 pm

Composhit is always available, even if one uses RGB. In a proper cable the composhit line is used for sync info for example and also acts as fallback when TV isn't supporting RGB via the SCART. It is also trivial to get luminance info out of both composhit and RGB, and sync you always have side by side anyway.
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radioation
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Re: Making Light gun for LCD TV

Post by radioation » Mon Jul 11, 2022 4:49 am

I apologize for posting to a long dead thread, but I've been working on an MegaDrive/Genesis light gun for flatscreen TVs and monitors. So this seems like the best place to post.

I'm at a point where it works with the Sega Menacer games that I currently have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5VXLUTkj5M
I plan on testing it on some of Sega CD Menacer games and maybe Body Count if I there's a way to make it work on an NTSC system.


I'm using a NoIR camera on a Raspberry Pi 4 to act as the gun. 4 IR LEDs are mounted on the monitor and I do some minor image processing on the camera frames to estimate the camera axis intersection with the monitor. This gets sent to an Arduino Leonardo connected to the controller port of my Genesis. The RasPi4 also looks for button presses and sends these to the Arduino.

The Arduino uses a LM1881 to determine when to set TH. This part of the circuit was pulled from the LM1881 datasheet and the Menacer patent.

The Arduino also sets the buttons based on the values sent from the RasPi4. This part of the circuit is based on the NOR gates at https://benryves.com/journal/3763161 I'm using Arduino output pins instead of buttons.

Unfortunately, it's been decades since I've had a digital circuits class and I've basically forgotten everything. While my circuit works, I'm not sure if I've done something that could damage a MegaDrive/Genesis. I've looked around for examples of using an Arduino with a Genesis but haven't found much. I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable than me can tell me if I'm doing anything obviously wrong. I've attached a copy of my circuit.

I'm powering the Arduino through its USB connection to the Raspberry Pi. I do not tie the Arduino 5V to the Genesis 5V. I do tie the grounds though.

The NOR ICs get their 5V from the Genesis.

If anyone is interested, the source code is at on github: https://github.com/radioation/Devastar
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Chilly Willy
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Re: Making Light gun for LCD TV

Post by Chilly Willy » Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:11 pm

You're doing very well on this. I do like that this is more open than other light gun projects I've seen. I'd love to see something that winds up compatible with every old console still in use, from the NES to the PS2.

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