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I was playing Target Alpha tonight (VPX) and noticed that my chime unit was not registering all of the strikes for multiplied scores on this Loserman76 table. From my testing, my Gottlieb chime unit has a maximum strike rate of once every 150ms so I started looking through the code for this table and noticed that Loserman76 uses a clever “scoring motor timer” to prevent scores from being registered faster than once every 135ms. This timer has a side effect of having score multipliers cycle every 135ms which is too fast for my chime unit, hence the missed strikes. Changing the value in the table timer did not fix the problem so I looked further in the code and saw that he sets this timer speed in the script so I changed it there to 150ms and now all of the chime hits register.
I looked through other Loserman76 tables (vp9 and vp10) and I see he uses this same scoring motor timer in those as well. If you are having missed chime strikes it might be because your chime unit has the same restrictions in speed as mine. Others on this forum with Gottlieb units report 150ms cycle times but one person with a Williams unit (I think?) can reach 130ms or faster so the manufacturer can make a difference (coil choice, plunger weight, unit geometry, operating voltage etc).
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You should let loserman know as I’m sure he’s more then open to making this change for his vp10 wips
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Soon December. I’ve had this feeling and I’m still hoping that I’m right – that he is releasing one table a day like a x-mas calendar. Nice find.
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An Advent calendar of Loserman76 EM tables in VPX, what a great ideaÂ
  I did contact him and he knows about the issue but he said that changing the single variable is pretty easy for the end user to do so it looks like 135ms will be the default setting. I didn’t press him on the issue because some units can cycle at this speed its just that our Gottlieb units can’t at present.
A couple of weeks ago MJR and I were brainstorming ways to increase cycling speed and we came up with two ideas, return springs and photoeyes controllers. The return spring would help gravity to get the plunger back into the coil faster which should increase cycle speeds. The photo eye could be used in a circuit to turn off the current to the coil just as the plunger exits it on its way to the chime bar. Momentum carry the plunger the rest of the way to the chime bar. The coil could be re-energized a short time later to pull the plunger back towards the coil to set up the next cycle.
Of the two solutions, the return spring would be the easiest to do and the photoeye looks like it could yield the best performance.
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@randr – why does the quote button just take me to the top of the page?
I think I’ll just tweak the script if need be, if gravity was good enough for Gottlieb it’s good enough for meÂ
interesting ideas though, especially the photocell. Is there anyway to get a shorter pulse from DOF? maybe that’s something we could get added to DOF config is a pulse duration for chimes like the targets and drop target settings that way we could each tune them to optimal performance for our cabs, could have much the same effect as the photocell idea.
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It’s a cache bug if you clear cache in your browser it will work.
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also I think any return spring you put on it would likely have a slowing effect on the initial firing the plunger possibly negating any gain you get on the other side
and re-energizing to pull the plunger back down isn’t going to work because at rest the bulk of the plunger is below the coil waiting to be pulled up into the coil to strike the bar. maybe if you stacked a second coil below the first and fired that one to pull it down it would work. with a very miniscule pulse of the regular coil when the plunger is fully extended you may, maybe see a slight gain, but the timing would need to be perfect.
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It’s a cache bug if you clear cache in your browser it will work.
You are correct sir. Â
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BorgDog, I really like your DOF pulse idea if that can be done. Without a scope there is no way to tell how long these pulses are but the ability to tune that pulse width could make big differences in how these chime units function right out of the box.
In terms of the other ideas, if you look at the chime unit plungers, they sit in opposite configurations at either end of their throws (mostly below the coil at rest, mostly above the coil when hitting the chime bar). Since there is no polarity to the plunger (ie just ferrous metal) the coil should work to throw the plunger either way based upon timing of the energization of the coil.  That’s the idea behind MJR’s photocell Rube Goldberg design as he refers to it.
The spring would definitely impede the throw of the plunger but the strength of the coil’s magnetic field is very strong and it probably is powered most of the way to the chime bar. My thought was that a weak spring could help gravity return the plunger to a more favorable location in the coil’s magnetic field. If you look at my videos of my chime unit when it fails at 125ms timing, you can see that the plunger is just missing the chime bar. Just a little help in getting the plunger to sit further into the coil might make big gains in performance.
The other very important aspect is the elasticity of the interactions of the plunger at either end of the throw. The nylon vs metal of the hit to the chime bar throws the plunger back downward while the metal vs soft rubber of the lower end dampens the plunger to keep it down.
Instead of trying to tweek a few more horsepower out of a motor we’re trying to get a few more ms out of our chime units. I guess instead of motorheads that would make us chimeheads?
Having said all of this, these units work extremely well just as they are.  I agree with Randr that the chime unit is one of the best additions we can put in our cabs, in fact for EM machines it may very well be the best.
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I sent a message to arngrim to see if he can shed some light on possible pulse time modifications.
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what do you have in here?
<GlobalConfig>
<LedWizDefaultMinCommandIntervalMs>3</LedWizDefaultMinCommandIntervalMs>
<LedControlMinimumEffectDurationMs>60</LedControlMinimumEffectDurationMs>
<LedControlMinimumRGBEffectDurationMs>120</LedControlMinimumRGBEffectDurationMs>
<IniFilesPath>c:\Tables\plugin\directoutput\ini</IniFilesPath>
<CabinetConfigFilePattern>\\HYPERPIN-PC\Tables\plugin\directoutput\Config\cabinet.xml</CabinetConfigFilePattern>
<TableConfigFilePatterns />
<EnableLogging>true</EnableLogging>
<ClearLogOnSessionStart>true</ClearLogOnSessionStart>
<LogFilePattern>c:\Tables\plugin\directoutput\ini\DirectOutput.log</LogFilePattern>
</GlobalConfig>this is the default pulse behaviour for the non rgb toys if you don’t define a specific duration in a feedback assignment
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I’m pretty sure mine would be the default on that.
What do you mean by “define a specific duration in a feedback assignment” are you saying we can specify the a duration for just each chime?
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if you put E141 180 , duration will be 180ms on and then off, if not specified, it will take it from the setting i showed
that it independant from the hardware used, if the hardware is slow to start and or stop, dof won’t be able to control that, dof order a specific pulse to a toy and it’s up to the toy to handle it
so you can try to put E141 60 but it should do the same than E141, so i don’t think it will solve the problem, but try it?
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Well at least it’s something we can play with, I assume we could go lower as well to say 50 or 40, would probably need to edit the <LedControlMinimumEffectDurationMs>60</LedControlMinimumEffectDurationMs> as well to allow something shorter, which would then of course possibly mess everything else up, or would the E141 50 override the minimum?
What I’m trying to test out is a shorter pulse that still hits the chime effectively but allows the plunger to drop sooner resulting in being able to fire it again in a shorter time frame. don’t know if it will actually work, but something to play with anyway.
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you can even try E141 20 if you want for example, you have to find the best setting for your toy, there is no harm ;)
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The sweet spot for my chime unit seems to be a setting of 20. I was able to get my chime unit to cycle at 100ms with a DOF setting of 20 (ie 153 20, 154 20, 155 20) with my Chime test table! This is an incredible increase in performance, nice job BorgDog!Â
  At 100ms cycle time with DOF 20 the chime is slightly less loud than at 150ms with DOF 20, the DOF 20 setting is also slightly less loud overall than DOF 60
I set the code by editing the directoutputconfig51 file for the E code for my chimes in my chime unit test table just to try it out.
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Cool, glad to hear it did some good! I wonder if a default could be added for chime duration to the dof config under the port settings / contactor variables, or how much rewriting of things that would entail. But at least we know we can do individual configs for tables that cause us issues.
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I set the global DOF to 20ms and the contactors fired just fine. It seems that the performance in actual play may be different from firing the chimes in a test table with nothing else going on. I tried Target Alpha with a 135ms setting for the scoring motor timer and it fired the chimes OK but not nearly as well as with a setting of 150ms. Both the quality and loudness seemed to be better at 150ms despite both having a global 20ms DOF setting. I tried setting the directoutputconfig51 for Target Alpha to 20 for each of the chime unit E codes (global still at 20ms) and that didn’t seem to make a difference. More testing is needed…
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Well now all this is looking very promising!
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I’m sure you’ve mentioned it before @scottacus but what voltage are you feeding your chimes? i know on my real nobs I’m building even though all my stuff is setup with system 1 parts that originally ran at 25v (or was it 24?) everything seems to work much better when I adjusted my power supply to give them something around 28V. If your supply is adjustable try bumping up a few volts and see if that does anything for it. maybe the combination of shorter pulses with higher power will yield a nice compromise, as long as everything else you have hooked up can handle the higher voltage, don’t want to cook anything else to make chimes better… maybe :)
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