Paddles that jitter... how to fix?

[D.Yancey]

All the pots I found at Radio Shack for about $2.59 had a much longer round metal rod. A.J. Franzman was correct, the "D" shape seems impossible to find.

 

Adding to the discussion about which size pot to use... I would think that for Kaboom!, one would benefit from a slightly smaller ohm pot. This would require you to turn a bit further to move the buckets. I always find myself moving the buckets faster or further than needed. The full range of motion of the buckets onscreen requires far less than the full 270 degree range of motion in the paddle. I find it frustrating to have to get the paddle snycronized before each round so I know that it is not registering as off the side of the screen so to speak.

[A.J. Franzman]

All the pots I found at Radio Shack for about $2.59 had a much longer round metal rod.  A.J. Franzman was correct, the "D" shape seems impossible to find.

 

Adding to the discussion about which size pot to use... I would think that for Kaboom!, one would benefit from a slightly smaller ohm pot.  This would require you to turn a bit further to move the buckets.  I always find myself moving the buckets faster or further than needed.  The full range of motion of the buckets onscreen requires far less than the full 270 degree range of motion in the paddle.  I find it frustrating to have to get the paddle snycronized before each round so I know that it is not registering as off the side of the screen so to speak.

956176[/snapback]

It just happens that I have here, a 500K Ohm pot that I thought would fit the paddles but doesn't quite, new in the package. It has an aluminum "D" shaft that's too long, and not flattened for its entire length - if cut to the right length, it'll be round. It may be possible to make it work by extending the flattened area and cutting, or doing one or another of the parts swap tricks, but I don't want a paddle with slower movement anyway. If anyone wants it, I'll sell it for $5 shipped in the U.S., or trade it for something of ~ $3 equivalent value in one of my Wanted lists (see link in my sig). D.Yancey has option of first refusal.

 

Edited October 29, 2005 by A.J. Franzman

[A.J. Franzman]

500k is too little (you'll have dead spots) but if you like yours a bit more responsive, you can go with something a little higher than 1M.

954825[/snapback]

Actually, you should only have 1 dead spot (the high resistance end not being high enough). The low resistance end of any pot pot will always be fairly close to zero ohms.

 

What you can do in this case, is turn the pot just past where the onscreen "paddle" or other avatar stops or disappears offscreen at the end of travel opposite from the dead spot, and unplugging and measuring the pot's resistance at that point. Take these resistance readings from several different games, then add a resistor of the next lower standard value from the lowest reading, in series with the pot (it doesn't matter which end). This should shift the pot's travel such that the direction you moved it to make the readings, will now require turning almost to the end of the pot's travel to reach the limit of onscreen movement, and turning in the other direction, the dead spot should be gone or at least a lot smaller.

 

It's also possible to make an adjustable-travel pot, by putting (for example) a 10M ohm trimmer pot in parallel with the main pot. The main pot can be made larger than 1M ohms (something in the range of 2M to 5M should be good enough) for extra responsiveness. The lower the 10M pot is set, the more responsiveness is reduced in favor of precision. Unfortunately, the control will also become increasingly nonlinear, moving faster at one side of the screen than the other. I don't know if the nonlinearity will be severe enough to be annoying, or if there's a way to eliminate it.

Edited October 29, 2005 by A.J. Franzman

[ComputerCollector]

I created a thread on this subject a few months back.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=70340&hl=

 

I still havent even had the time to do the things suggested yet, so I hope the thread wil be here for a long time, because I probably wont be able to do it for a while, since my stuff is in storage right now.