Is this disturbing? Or just the way things are?

Printable View

03-25-2013, 10:00 AM
Patron God of Pirates

Is this disturbing? Or just the way things are?

In my little mission to produce an IC free "Idiot" frame (see "dumb" electro thread) I started to suspect that all modern electro's are incorporating some type of rampinging/queuing to produce a consistent and high ROF. In order to test this I borrowed a very popular marker and set up a test.

I tapped switch listeners to wires coming from the trigger and to the output to the firing mechanism. I set this up on arduino board and wrote a quick program to report the results over serial to a processing sketch on my PC every 2 seconds. Below is the output with the marker set to factory default semi-auto. This will probably be hard to read because it's not really designed to be readable. The first line is the average signals over 2 seconds from the trigger, the second line is the average signals over 2 seconds to the noid:

(note that the decimal points do not show because I'm reporting the data as int rather than float (2 points for you if you know what that means)
-----------------------------------
4
6
10
10
12
25
11
25
13
25
13
25
16
25
15
25
15
25
10
25
10
10
3
3
-------------------------------------

You have to divide everything by 2 to get the cps. I did it over 2 seconds because it supposedly capped at 12.5 and I didn't want to lose the half ball. Now my program is far from perfect but I look at that and I see ramping. As soon as I got over 6 pulls per second it jumped to 12.5 and stayed there until I dropped back down to 5. I got as high as 8 but never 12.5. More disturbing to me is that first pair. 4 pulls, 6 cycles. My program was running a software debounce. Clearly the program on the marker was listening for switch noise.

So here is the question for everyone. Assuming these results are representative (I know that is a big assumption), are you OK with that? I'm not naming the marker here because I'm disinclined to being sued, but it is an inexpensive elctro that lots of people feel played a part in bringing down the cost of high end electros. You figure it out. If this is the standard, manufacturers programing advantages straight into there products, then everyone may as well be shooting full auto and we can dispense with the finger twiddling theatrics.
03-25-2013, 10:31 AM
brokeass_baller

I have a Promaster with Kila Drive board, and i always swore it's ROF was more consistent with eyes on than with eyes off, and i play semi-only. This type of programming may be why.

If this is all legit, it's bull crap. I just want pure semi.
03-25-2013, 08:10 PM
athomas

That is definitely ramping and not semi. Are you sure you had the tourny lock disabled when you changed the setting to semi?

A lot of boards do use some sort of queuing for trigger activity. It does smooth out the shot consistency because it doesn't waste the trigger pull that occurred right before the dwell period was over. Otherwise, you would have to wait the amount of time for your finger to release and then pull the trigger again. The same effect can happen with eyes on vs eyes off. With eyes off, the gun will fire no matter where the ball is. With eyes on, the gun specifically waits for the ball to be perfectly in the breach and in most cases it must be there for a specific period of time before it will fire. Combine this with trigger queuing and it becomes a more regulated time sequence determined by the rate of your hopper, which in most cases is quite consistent when compared to an erratic trigger finger.
03-25-2013, 10:41 PM
Frizzle Fry

Quote:

Originally Posted by brokeass_baller

I have a Promaster with Kila Drive board, and i always swore it's ROF was more consistent with eyes on than with eyes off, and i play semi-only. This type of programming may be why.

If this is all legit, it's bull crap. I just want pure semi.

1) Eyes are set too low in the breech.

2) Eyes are set WAY too low in the breech and paint is bouncing up.

3) Eye logic sucks (not uncommon with old boards).

4) Eyes are bad, board is capped low when eyes don't function.

First try replacing the eyes. If that doesn't cut it get a forcefed loader. If you already have one, just run it blind.

Oddly enough my buddy told me about this thread while we were puzzling over another ICD gun, a Shocktech B2K2 which has two switches; marker on/off and eyes on/off. We noticed the same thing which makes me think your eyes are fine and your board is fine but Indian Creek dropped the ball with the eye placement.
03-26-2013, 09:12 AM
Patron God of Pirates

Quote:

Originally Posted by athomas

That is definitely ramping and not semi. Are you sure you had the tourny lock disabled when you changed the setting to semi?

No idea. The only electro's I've ever owned were E-Mags. I asked the guy I borrowed it from to set it to factory semi. Is it possible that the manufacturers default semi is actually ramping on purpose? This marker is a few years old so it may predate the rules changes that clamped down on allot of this stuff.

Quote:

A lot of boards do use some sort of queuing for trigger activity. It does smooth out the shot consistency because it doesn't waste the trigger pull that occurred right before the dwell period was over. Otherwise, you would have to wait the amount of time for your finger to release and then pull the trigger again. The same effect can happen with eyes on vs eyes off. With eyes off, the gun will fire no matter where the ball is. With eyes on, the gun specifically waits for the ball to be perfectly in the breach and in most cases it must be there for a specific period of time before it will fire. Combine this with trigger queuing and it becomes a more regulated time sequence determined by the rate of your hopper, which in most cases is quite consistent when compared to an erratic trigger finger.

Maybe it's the purist in me, but this seems to violate both the spirit and the law of semi auto. How long does an un-fired shot remain in the queue? If the trigger is pulled three times before the second ball if fired, will it still fire 3 balls? One pull = one shot should not mean one pull = one shot queued. Just my feeling on the matter.

My next big question is how many of these markers are actually treating switch noise as trigger pulls. There a couple of ways I could jig up a test for that, but I will have to get my hands on a modern electro set to verifiable, tourney legal semi.
03-26-2013, 11:01 AM
athomas

Quote:

Originally Posted by pgop2.0

No idea. The only electro's I've ever owned were E-Mags. I asked the guy I borrowed it from to set it to factory semi. Is it possible that the manufacturers default semi is actually ramping on purpose? This marker is a few years old so it may predate the rules changes that clamped down on allot of this stuff.

Default may be ramping.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pgop2.0

Maybe it's the purist in me, but this seems to violate both the spirit and the law of semi auto. How long does an un-fired shot remain in the queue? If the trigger is pulled three times before the second ball if fired, will it still fire 3 balls? One pull = one shot should not mean one pull = one shot queued. Just my feeling on the matter.

Queuing doesn't mean accumulating shots for each trigger pull. It just means you won't lose the shot because you pulled the trigger too soon. You only hold one one activation, and usually only until the dwell and wait period for the previous shot has completed.

In original electro markers, many used switch noise to enhance rate of fire performance. Debounce settings could be tweaked to give the illusion of one shot per one pull, but rapid firing and trigger fluttering could keep it going at rates higher than most people can consistently pull the trigger.