As is often the case, as soon as I publicly articulate a problem, a solution starts to bubble up.
Yesterday I wrote on social media about my initial impressions of the Sinden Lightgun and how I felt deflated.
Well, it turns out what I thought was a software problem was, in fact, a pretty weird hardware problem!
Sticky Trigger
In use it became apparent that the trigger was sticky, while it is spring-loaded, the trigger would not return back to position correctly. Moving the trigger back and forth manually seemed to give a much better result.
After opening up the light gun, all the screws out, everything worked perfectly. I knew the culprit must be the case!
Seeing as this gadget is crowdsourced and behind schedule, I imagine the QA is under pressure, plus the manufacturers might not be producing to the exacting tolerances required.
Regardless of the cause, I now knew the root of the issue and had some ideas about solutions.
Shimmy
Could I use plastic screws as spacers?
This could work with some shaving off of the nylon nuts, but as it stood they were a bit too big if I was going to get the case to go back together flush.
Realizing how minimal the shim needed to be, I tried wedging in a piece of shrink wrap.
Success! That ~millimeter difference makes all the difference!
I will likely shave off some case to get a true solution, but for now this bad boy is up and working, and man it brings back so many happy retro video arcade memories!
OK so most of the time I die a quick and horrible death, but at least now it is not costing me a pocket full of silver coins!
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