Episode 469: Nintendo Super Scope Modded For Modern Televisions

Interesting...I've been looking to build a headtracker. Opentrack takes too much CPU resources. Will misappropriate this for the same job.

But Aruco marker tracking capability on PI would be nice (aruco looking be it a marker made to reflect infrared)

Thanks, Matt! I think I was subconsciously inspired by the Zapper video when I was trying to think of project ideas. An NES version would be super cool... you definitely have the skills.

Some of this is specific to the SNES, including the controller interface as you mentioned. But the GunCon does use CRT timing, so a similar solution is at least theoretically possible. The SNES (and the Super Scope) have been thoroughly reverse engineered and lots of information is available. I'm not sure if the same is true for the PS2/GunCon.

Such a rad project! I had initially wanted to try this with my Zapper project way back when, but my skill set was still lacking at the time! I'm going to have to revisit it now so I can finally play some Gotcha! and Hogan's Alley the way they were intended!

This is really cool, i have 2 of the ps2 guncon's and was wondering if u think this could work for them?

I assume the big hurdle would be seeing if the guncon's have a similar chip to the receiver for the scope and then basically just the same method just different signals to the console (atleast in my head thats how it would go)

Been wanting to use them again for ages but cant really justify the space for a CRT and would love to give this a go with them.

These were sold as "Clear Miniature Bases" and they're 25mm square. I think they're from a company called LITKO Game Accessories. I had to buy a bunch, but they're not expensive.

Where do you get the clear plastic square?

I did! It was interesting the different modifications he made to add functionality to ROB, but it's not quite what I've been looking for.

There's got to be a way out there to get ROB working with modern TVs without modifying his original hardware. That Adafruit link mentions that ROB can be controlled by flashing an LED in the correct pattern. ROB has a phototransistor in his left eye connected to an undocumented Sharp IR3T07 decoder chip. The people at AtariAge.com reverse engineered old game cartridges to figure out ROBs control codes, and each command consists of 13 bits. The first 5 bits are an initialization string and are always the same: 00010. The next 8 bits are the command, and vary based on what you want ROB to do. Send the right light pulses in the right timing and order, and he works just like normal.

While Adafruit's documentation is enough to get an LED-based input device working for ROB, I don't know anything about converting part of a video signal into a timed LED flash. Maybe you or someone savvy in things like this could figure out how!

Thanks! I don't know enough about R.O.B. to give you an answer, but have you seen this episode: https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-90849/l/episode-361-rob-rebuild-and-upgrade ?

This was a super cool project! Very well done! Now I'm wondering: would there be a way to do this with the Nintendo ROB robot?

The folks on AtariAge.com and Adafruit.com figured out what bits to send/the timing to send them, and got it working using direct button inputs (https://learn.adafruit.com/controlling-a-classic-nintendo-r-o-b-robot-using-circuit-playground-express ), but I'm wondering if a peripheral for the NES could be made to separate out the light flashes from the video out signal and send them to ROB using an LED (IR or otherwise), that way modifying the original hardware wouldn't be necessary? Maybe with that Video Sync Separator chip or one similar?