Chime Speed Test Table

[Scottacus]

https://vpinball.com/?post_type=cmdm_page&p=227242

This is a test table for those with chime units to see how fast your chime unit can play notes.

The ‘a’ key is used to select which chime bar plays and the ‘s’ key is used to select the speed at which it plays.  Pressing the ‘f’ key will fire the selected chime bar three times at the speed selected.

If you want to test at faster or slower speeds, just go into the table and change the “timer interval” for timer “chime200” to whatever speed you want to test.  Now when you select “Speed = 200 ms” with the ‘s’ key the chime will fire at the new speed that you entered in the step above.

PM me with questions.

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8 users thanked author for this post.

xenonph, KrakenByte, bord, tmpc, -RpT, baalisan, Marcio, dondi

[scampa123]

Thank you for putting this together, it will be helpful for testing!!

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[dondi]

Thank you @scottacus

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[Marcio]

Very Good Thank You

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[dopdahl]

Super great.  Installing chimes soon this will be a big help.  Thanks!

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[bord]

Thanks! This will come in handy.

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[dondi]

Just FYI – We are having an active discussion on the Discord about performance, hence @Scottacus was kind enough to offer his knowledge as well as this tool in assisting with getting the chimes dialed-in. There are certain variables involved with performance; the coils, the PSU, etc., etc. Some may find the chimes not firing consistently and/or missing hits. In addition to this table that Scottacus posted, I personally find Eight Ball a good test table (if you know the melodies and chime sequences, or turn-up the VPX audio for comparison). My chime unit wasn’t anywhere close on Eight Ball. I’d get the first hit and the rest would not make it (plunger rod falling just below tone bar). So, that’s the ongoing discussion on the Discord and another post here: https://vpinball.com/forums/topic/chime-unit-settings-for-loserman76-tables/ (an older thread with a revived discussion).
So, after monkeying-around, I was finally able to get a 1,000% increase in performance of my chimes via a simple software setting. I have a Pinscape AIO board with a CHIMES add-on board. In Pinscape Config tool, there is a setting for CHIMES LOGIC with MIN/MAX settings. The default MAX is set to infinity. I adjusted this to 100ms and voila… much, much, much better performance. Not 100% perfect, but not sure it’ll ever be… in Eight Ball, the startup melody still misses a few hits, but far-and-away hitting more notes than before. Aaannnnd, I hear ALL hits in the bonus tally sequence. Previously, I’d only get the first tone for each tally.

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[Scottacus]

I adjusted this to 100ms and voila… much, much, much better performance. Not 100% perfect, but not sure it’ll ever be… in Eight Ball, the startup melody still misses a few hits, but far-and-away hitting more notes than before.

That makes perfect sense.  By increasing the duty cycle time of your coil, you increased its strength which resulted in stronger and better hits.  There will be a slight downside to this and that is that by setting this 100ms you will limit the maximum speed of cycling to 100ms plus whatever time it takes to get the slug away from the chime bar and far enough down into the coil to be ready to cycle again.

I’d be interested in seeing just how fast you can cycle your chime using this test table, changing the length of the chime200 timer and playing around with the duty cycle of the coil (ie try 90ms, 80ms).  Post the shortest time you can get by this method (ie base table fastest timer is 130 ms).  You just might be able to tune your unit to play the entire start up song.

The only other possible things to try would be to hollow out the chime slugs (Bally did this) to make them lighter and more responsive and to raise the coils up to be closer to the chime bars.  When I’ve watched my unit not quite be able to cycle fast enough it looked like the slug was oscillating just below the bottom of the chime bar.  Raising the coil might just get the bar/top of slug into position to strike at faster speeds.

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[dondi]

Yeah, I tried a bunch of different settings in the DOF Config (even played with adjusting MIN). I did tests with MAX at 200ms, 100ms and 40ms (and I think I also tried 80ms & 60) with varying results with your test table. Basically, I would be able to get either 150ms or 200ms to respond well, but not both, and the others (130ms & 100ms), just one hit on each chime. The 40ms and 100ms would get the 150ms to hit on all hits and ‘felt’ the most-responsive and strongest-hitting. When I was able to get the 200ms to hit on all three chimes, it ‘felt’ weak.
I concur, perhaps boring-out the plungers and raising the bottoms would be the ‘finishing-touches’. Will do that the next time I open-up the cab; trying to avoid/minimize doing this at all-costs… just on a when-needed-basis these days

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