Gesture test for Power Pad

A place where you can keep others updated about your NES-related projects through screenshots, videos or information in general.

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
tepples
Posts: 22708
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Gesture test for Power Pad

Post by tepples »

I wanted to see if I could guess the direction of a jump (left, straight up, or right) in a Power Pad game by detecting which foot leaves the sensor first. It turned out I couldn't. I ended up with a visualizer tool anyway, showing what sensors are pressed, the centroid (average position), a trail of the path taken by the centroid, and a ticker for what sensors turn on and off in what order.
Attachments
Light gray floor mat marked "Power Pad side B", with an electronics box at the top center, a red line around the electronics box warning against stepping on it, and three rows of four colored circles marked with black numbers denoting sensor positions. Sensors in top row from left to right are 1 (blue), 2 (blue), 3 (red), 4 (red). Sensors in middle row from left to right are 5 (blue), 6 (blue), 7 (red), 8 (red). Sensors in bottom row from left to right are 9 (blue), 10 (blue), 11 (red), 12 (red). White circles show presses on 6 and 7, with a Secchi-Whipple disk to show a centroid between 6 and 7 and a trail behind it showing that 9 and 10 had been pressed and released. A ticker at the bottom shows recent presses and releases, showing 9 down, 10 down, 9 up, 6 down, 10 up, 7 down.
Light gray floor mat marked "Power Pad side B", with an electronics box at the top center, a red line around the electronics box warning against stepping on it, and three rows of four colored circles marked with black numbers denoting sensor positions. Sensors in top row from left to right are 1 (blue), 2 (blue), 3 (red), 4 (red). Sensors in middle row from left to right are 5 (blue), 6 (blue), 7 (red), 8 (red). Sensors in bottom row from left to right are 9 (blue), 10 (blue), 11 (red), 12 (red). White circles show presses on 6 and 7, with a Secchi-Whipple disk to show a centroid between 6 and 7 and a trail behind it showing that 9 and 10 had been pressed and released. A ticker at the bottom shows recent presses and releases, showing 9 down, 10 down, 9 up, 6 down, 10 up, 7 down.
powerpadgesture-0.01.zip
ROM and source code
(33.24 KiB) Downloaded 70 times
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Gesture test for Power Pad

Post by rainwarrior »

Always good to have nice test ROMs.

Edit: Never mind, didn't notice the statement below was about the Family Trainer Mat instead.

Not a question about your test specifically but I read this on the wiki:
The Famicom must manually scan the matrix; additionally it seems that there are quite large parasitic capacitances so you may need to wait a whole millisecond before going on to the next row.


Does anyone know where that statement comes from, and what is normally done about it? I couldn't find a forum thread discussing it. I also didn't identify any such delay in tepples' powerpad.s source file, nor did I see anything about this in powerpad.txt or the old test program by Tennessee Carmel-Veilleux.
Post Reply