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I posted this at Halloweenforum ( while this site was down) and thought I'd share it here in case there is any interest in triggering VSA remotely.
While I am really into Halloween prop building, I used to be heavliy into building my own arcade video game cabinet for use with M.A.M.E. (The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) program. Anyway, the jist is, folks run the MAME program (which emulates all those video arcade games that were popuar in the 80's/90's) from thier PC, but the problem is if you wanted a realistic arcade machine experience, you had to somehow wire arcade buttons and joysticks to your PC to make it work. There are 2 main solutions to this, both pertain to triggering VSA externally. The first, is a Keyboard hack. Basically, you take your keyboard apart (preferably an older one just to save $$) and use the little circuit board in it to control the hot keys on VSA. There are keyboard alternatives for mouse controls in VSA:
Play all: ENTER
Loop play: @
Play to first marker: ]
Play from second marker: [
Play between markers: TAB
Play frame at first marker: CTRL+TAB
Reset Device postions: BkSp
Wire a matswitch, or PIR or whatever to the keyboard circuit board to trigger the hot key in VSA...You would have to plug your keyboard hack into your PC, but if you want to keep your regular keyboard control, keyboard splitters are available.
The second solution is to buy a ready made device that does pretty much the same thing for about $30-$40 bucks..Those are made for those who have ALOT of controls wired to thier PC to prevent something called "Key Ghosting" which doesn't really apply here, so I won't go into it.
Here is a master link to www.arcadecontrols.com which goes into depth on the whole arcade cabinet making thing,( a VERY intersting read, BTW..a TON of examples but don't blame me if you get into this hobby. It is quite awesome!), but if you want just the keyboard hack, go here:
http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm
[edited]..the site has frames, so just go to the menu on the left and click on "Interfaces"..that'll get you there.
Hope this is useful, I've never heard of anyone using this method to trigger PC controlled props, and I haven't done it either,(for props, but I HAVE hacked a keyboard circuit before, so if you any ??'s just ask.), but there's no reason why it wouldn't work for VSA triggering.
M
While I am really into Halloween prop building, I used to be heavliy into building my own arcade video game cabinet for use with M.A.M.E. (The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) program. Anyway, the jist is, folks run the MAME program (which emulates all those video arcade games that were popuar in the 80's/90's) from thier PC, but the problem is if you wanted a realistic arcade machine experience, you had to somehow wire arcade buttons and joysticks to your PC to make it work. There are 2 main solutions to this, both pertain to triggering VSA externally. The first, is a Keyboard hack. Basically, you take your keyboard apart (preferably an older one just to save $$) and use the little circuit board in it to control the hot keys on VSA. There are keyboard alternatives for mouse controls in VSA:
Play all: ENTER
Loop play: @
Play to first marker: ]
Play from second marker: [
Play between markers: TAB
Play frame at first marker: CTRL+TAB
Reset Device postions: BkSp
Wire a matswitch, or PIR or whatever to the keyboard circuit board to trigger the hot key in VSA...You would have to plug your keyboard hack into your PC, but if you want to keep your regular keyboard control, keyboard splitters are available.
The second solution is to buy a ready made device that does pretty much the same thing for about $30-$40 bucks..Those are made for those who have ALOT of controls wired to thier PC to prevent something called "Key Ghosting" which doesn't really apply here, so I won't go into it.
Here is a master link to www.arcadecontrols.com which goes into depth on the whole arcade cabinet making thing,( a VERY intersting read, BTW..a TON of examples but don't blame me if you get into this hobby. It is quite awesome!), but if you want just the keyboard hack, go here:
http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm
[edited]..the site has frames, so just go to the menu on the left and click on "Interfaces"..that'll get you there.
Hope this is useful, I've never heard of anyone using this method to trigger PC controlled props, and I haven't done it either,(for props, but I HAVE hacked a keyboard circuit before, so if you any ??'s just ask.), but there's no reason why it wouldn't work for VSA triggering.
