Coin operated arcade with dedicated select button

[warawara]

So im building a full cab arcade with rpi 3b+ and ipac2 and decided to add a coin mech for tokens to complete the retro experience. Everything works great, the only thing that bothers me is that the select button which works as a hot key and the insert coin are the same, so every time I need to exit a game I have to activate the coin microswitch and press the p1 start button. I use it mostly for arcade games but get the same behavior in consoles. I understand this is normal as the way ipac and retroarch map buttons but I cant get to set a seperate select button (or hot key). I got an extra button for this set to switch8. I must be missing something since ive gotten this far in my build and after hours of searching for a solution I just cant get it to work.

[DougA]

@warawara
I'm building one too, and just using MAME 2003, so I can only tell you how I solved a similar issue with that system. MAME has it's own buton configuration menu that is semi- independent of Emulationstation. If you assign your coin mechanism as another button in EmulationStation (left shoulder or something else), then when you are in a MAME game, hit 'tab' to bring up the configuration menu and scroll down to the key assignment, and look for 'Coin1'. When you get to it, hit 'enter' on your keyboard and then activate your coin mechanism. That way your coin mechanism is not your select button.

You may have to play around a bit, but you should get a solution that fits what you want to do.

[caver01]

@warawara You are both making it harder than it needs to be. You don't need a software/configuration solution to do this. Just wire your extra button in parallel with the existing coin mech. In other words, from the IPAC you will end up with two wires from the COIN input. One goes to your coin mech, the other goes to your switch. Both the coin mech trigger and the added select switch are wired to ground.

You could also daisy chain the COIN input from the IPAC, to mech, to switch, or from IPAC to switch to coin mech. Electrically, this is the same.

The point is, two switches/buttons get wired to the same IPAC input, and you can now press your button OR deposit a coin, and either will trigger the input, and no special configuration necessary--it works everywhere you need coin or select.

[DougA]

@caver01
Depends if you prefer a hardware or software fix, and what you want to achieve. In my case this was actually better to do it this way, as what I was doing was reprogramming buttons so that I could hit any button on one button games, but still have them retain their individual functions on games that required more buttons. In @warawara 's case, rewiring would work too.

[Lurker]

I think the thread replies so far are missing the point of the issue...

Or maybe I am. But I think and @warawara correct me if I am wrong, that you want to have a different button then the select act as the hotkey button.

That or you do NOT want to select button to add coins.

I have done both in my builds. I like the coin acceptor for both the retro feel and to help limit play with myself and my kid.

Not to say it is the best solution but what I have done;
I wired the coin acceptor as a button and in the retropie I set it to "Left trigger" (as I don't use that in any of my games)
I then globally configure the emulators I use to use the left trigger instead of select for coin. It addresses 99% of the coin arcade games and there are a few custom deals that you have to work with. Player specific coin slot games are an example such as Simpsons where each player has a coin slot and it determines the character you play. For that I added a toggle switch that lets me "shift" the coin acceptor to the player I want to activate. But like I said, in most cases I'm fine leaving it on player 1.

Select in this method is just select and a hot key. No coins are added when pressed. This is basically the same solution as @DougA wrote with a few minor changes in what button the coin acceptor is assigned to.

For the other situation (IE independent hot key);
I had a small momentary puss button that I added to a build as a button for player 1. So player 1 had 9 buttons; 6 action, start select and this extra button. In the emulation station input configuration I set the extra button as the hot key. I only pressed that extra button when I got to the last entry of setting a hotkey. So instead of pressing select and start to exit you would press what I labeled the FN button and start. The same applies for all the other functions at that point as well. FN + B = reset, FN + X = menu and so on.

If we are way off base in what we are explaining, you will need to re-explain what you want to happen in your set up.