Open-Source Light-Gun Firmware

OpenFIRE and its relatives compared, with OpenFIRE in depth: hardware, flashing, configuration, calibration and host integration.

Firearms

Open-Source Light-Gun Firmware · Deep Dive

Open-Source Light-Gun Firmware

The firmware that turns a Pico and an IR camera into a light gun.

OpenFIRE and its relatives compared, with OpenFIRE in depth: hardware, flashing, configuration, calibration and host integration.

Photo: OpenFIRE App configuration screens (README header) by TeamOpenFIRE · GPL-3.0

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    Volumes

    1. Vol 1 The Landscape — Every Open and Closed Light-Gun Firmware, and What Its Licence Actually Says SAMCO, Prow Enhanced, IR-GUN4ALL, OpenFIRE and its ESP32 port on one side; GUN4IR, Blamcon, Sinden, AimTrak and the RS3 Reaper on the other — with each licence quoted from the repository, not from a forum
    2. Vol 2 Inside OpenFIRE — Three Repositories, Two Cores, One Camera and a Homography The v6.2 source read file by file: what runs where, how the camera is read at 209 Hz, how four dots become a cursor, and three things in the code that do not do what the comments say
    3. Vol 3 Hardware as OpenFIRE Defines It — Boards, Pin Presets, the Camera, the Emitters and the Hardware Guide's Circuits Every supported board and its default pin map quoted from the project's own files, the DFRobot camera and the Wii-sensor alternative, the two emitter layouts, and the solenoid, rumble and button wiring exactly as OpenFIRE's Hardware Guide v1.3 draws it
    4. Vol 4 Flashing and First Boot — UF2, BOOTSEL, the OpenFIRE App and the First Docking Getting v6.2 onto a bare Pico, installing the App on Windows and Linux, what the gun does the first time it powers up, a bench bring-up order that proves each part before any soldering, and how updates work once the gun is closed up
    5. Vol 5 Configuration, Calibration and Force Feedback — Every Setting in the OpenFIRE App and What the Firmware Does With It Profiles, the six-shot calibration, sensitivity and smoothing, then the solenoid and rumble parameters with their defaults, how the timing actually behaves, the temperature cut-outs, autofire, and the pause menus
    6. Vol 6 Host Integration — USB HID Modes, MiSTer, Multiple Guns, and the Serial Language of Game-Driven Recoil What the computer sees when an OpenFIRE gun is plugged in, how buttons map on-screen, off-screen and as a gamepad, how MiSTer switches the gun into its own mode, how to run two guns at once, and the full MAMEHooker serial command set with MAMEHooker, QMamehook and DemulShooter
    7. Vol 7 Building OpenFIRE From Source — The Pinned Toolchain, the Build Switches, Adding a Board, and What a Modified Build Owes Arduino IDE and arduino-cli on TeamOpenFIRE's patched arduino-pico core, the exact compile line the releases use, how to add a board to the shared presets, debugging a development build, and the list of known issues a fork should start from