Play vs Play Next; Coins/Bills > Key Mapping

[leedum]

A few questions from a newb. I've searched around but haven't found the answers anywhere. (maybe I didn't search correctly?)

1) When in credit mode, let's say "Play" costs 1 credit. Can you set "Play Next" to cost, say, 2 credits, and I suppose to that end, "Play Now" to cost 3 credits?

1a) Is it possible to assign certain songs different credit values? Say, 1-credit songs, 2-credit songs, etc. Would this be possible if they were sorted into different libraries?


2) I have a bill acceptor hooked up via USB/arduino, which is currently functioning as a keyboard/keystroke.
When I go to Revenue > Coins/Bills and click the radio button for "Unique Keycode" I receive an error message that says "Keyboard hook DLL was found but TouchJams is unable to use it." I am unsure where to proceed with this in order to get TJ to recognize the keystrokes being given by the BA. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. I put this question in a different thread as the OP was closely related. It can be moved or deleted at mods discretion.

Thank you!

[tonyneen]

1) When in credit mode, let's say "Play" costs 1 credit. Can you set "Play Next" to cost, say, 2 credits, and I suppose to that end, "Play Now" to cost 3 credits?

Not that i am aware of.

1a) Is it possible to assign certain songs different credit values? Say, 1-credit songs, 2-credit songs, etc. Would this be possible if they were sorted into different libraries?

Not that i am aware of.

2) When I go to Revenue > Coins/Bills and click the radio button for "Unique Keycode" I receive an error message that says "Keyboard hook DLL was found but TouchJams is unable to use it.

Try it with a normal keyboard to check the dll is working.

[leedum]

If I open Notepad and insert a dollar bill, the arduino correctly types <keystroke> one time. If I insert a $5 bill, it correctly types <keystroke> five times, so I know the BA/arduino side of things is working as intended. If I have TJ running (in any mode) and I press the keystroke on my keyboard associated with money being inserted, nothing happens within TJ. This leads me to believe the DLL is not operating correctly. There is little guidance within the help file regarding the revenue aspect of TJ. Bob mentioned in the other thread that the DLL needs to be in the same folder as the EXE file, which it is. I understand he is having his own issues right now so I will wait patiently for further guidance. Thank you for the quick response regarding the other questions.

[tonyneen]

I use a coin acceptor that sends keystrokes via CoinKit software to TouchJams and it works 100%, i would get another copy of Kbhk32.dll to try.

Maybe your antivirus is doing something to block it ?

Have you mapped the keys in the settings ?

[leedum]

OK. I completely restarted my system. Keyboard keypresses now work according to the keymapping I have set, but the BA/arduino keystrokes are still not registering in TJ.

I do have the keymaps set similar to yours. (I can't attach screenshot, but F12 is $1 for 8 credits, Y is also 8 credits [which is the current keystroke for the arduino but can easily be changed], and F5 is $5 for 44 credits)

Do you have a link for CoinKit or something similar? I tried a Google search but...it doesn't look like they're around anymore?? I'm running Win XP SP3 as this machine will not have internet access once installed at the final location.

I don't have any antivirus running on this machine.

Thanks again for working through this with me.

[tonyneen]

CoinKit only works with certain types of coin acceptors (https://jukeblaster.com/coinkit.html)

I can't recommend any other software.

If your arduino keystrokes are being generated in Notepad, i can't see any reason why TouchJams wont pick them up.

How is the arduino and bill acceptor conected to the PC ?

[leedum]

Bill acceptor connected to Arduino Leonardo connected to PC via USB on (COM 7)

github.com/Juul/ict-bill-acceptor-as-usb-keyboard

[tonyneen]

What i would suggest is the following,

If notepad picks up the keystrokes when you insert a bill but Touchjams doesn't, it could be a operating system issue.
Download the TouchJams DEMO and try your setup on a later OS, Windows 7 or 10.

I ran Touchjams with a coin acceptor for 2 years on Windows XP Pro SP3 with no issues.

At a wild guess, i would say it's a OS issue.

[leedum]

Aug 18, 2020 22:38:03 GMT tonyneen said:

What i would suggest is the following,

If notepad picks up the keystrokes when you insert a bill but Touchjams doesn't, it could be a operating system issue.
Download the TouchJams DEMO and try your setup on a later OS, Windows 7 or 10.

I ran Touchjams with a coin acceptor for 2 years on Windows XP Pro SP3 with no issues.

At a wild guess, i would say it's a OS issue.

Same thing happens on my Win 10 laptop. Keystroke on the keyboard works in TJ, arduino sends Notepad the keystrokes, but TJ doesn't recognize the keystrokes from arduino...which got me thinking...is it possible the arduino device acts as a keyboard but doesn't look like a keyboard? or vice versa?

In my device manager, the arduino device is listed under both:
"Ports (COM & LPT)" as "Arduino Leonardo (COM 7)" and 
"Keyboards" as "HID Keyboard Device"
(see screenshot)

...but under the Keyboard Device it does not state "Use this device (enable)". Is it possible that TJ is not seeing it as a true keyboard and therefore not registering its keystrokes? I'm not a programmer or coder or anyone, I'm just trying to think outside the box here.

My brother IS a coder/software engineer so I've asked him to come take a look at this situation later this week. Is there something we can change within the kbhk32.dll so that it finds the keystrokes?

Again, thank you very much for working with me on this.

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[tonyneen]

I don't think it's a Touchjams issue, i beleave you are on the right track regarding your Arduino Leonardo is not being recognised by TouchJams.

It's way out of my depth as to why they are not communicating with each other, good luck in getting it working.

[leedum]

Well....my brother ended up writing a program that monitors the serial/COM port used by the arduino, and when a signal comes thru it sends a keystroke which TJ is picking up. So everything works now.

Now I just wish we could change the number of credits consumed with Play Next/Now...or within different libraries. Definitely something that should have been coded into the software by now. I can't believe I'm the first to ask about that...

[tonyneen]

Pleased you got it all working.
Regarding the credits, me personally, i can't see any use for the different prices for tracks, looks like no one else apart from you does either lol.
Just out of curiosity, why would you want different prices ?

[leedum]

Having to pay more to Play Next only makes sense, otherwise why wouldn't everyone just click Play Next and whoever played their song first would never hear their song because everyone after them would be skipping their place in the queue...
As for the different credit values for different songs, I've seen places with jukeboxes feature a different artist every month and put their music "on sale", so when everything else in the box is 2 credits per song, the featured artist would only be 1 credit. Sometimes they'd give their "new releases" an introductory price to bring those new songs to the customers attention for the first month or something like that. There's all kinds of reasons to set different prices.
For us, we have several songs that are short, kitchy songs that aren't actual songs, ie TV themes or parody songs, which we feel isn't fair to charge the customer a full song rate.
At any rate, since it's not possible, we just wont include those songs on this jukebox.

[tonyneen]

Got what you mean now, just HIDE the play PLAY NEXT & PLAY NOW buttons on the skin, this will stop people jumping the queue.
I remove any songs that are under 60 seconds long.