2 replies to this topic

[majoris]

Hello, guys. First of all, I'd like to say, that I admire the effort of home made cabinets. I was thinking about building one myself.

I have done MAME cabinet once with keypad for video poker controlls and MAME fruit machines. Everything was done using led lighted buttons, controlled by Arduino and MAMEhooker. Worked flawlessly, but it wasn't enough for me.

 

Now I'm wondering of there is possibility to catch the stepper motor signals sent to reels. As I've read previous discussion, I've found info, that coin hoppers can be operated on MFME. So maybe stepper motor either? Can someone say something about it? Is it possible or it is just a dream ?

 

If this could be coded to the emulator, it would open a new wave of cabinet building. But this is just a guess.... is it possible to implement?

[Wizard]

The stepper motor signals are not available outside the emulator. It's not something that would work anyway as the timings would not be consistent enough to drive real reels smoothly.

[majoris]

My idea was to catch the signal, and put it on Arduino which would be responsible for precise driving stepper motors. I was thinking that the game software (ROM), gives numeric commands to stepper motor controller (physical controller in real machine). If one could catch such numeric commands within the software (how many steps reel has to turn), then such command could be sent to Arduino controller, which would drive the reel steppers. Arduino can be very precise controller - CNC implementations.

But anyway, I'm not an expert, if you say, that catching those signals is impossible from MFME emulator, that closes the topic for me. Too bad, I was hoping that there is some way to catch it and use it.

 

Take care.