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Installing hardware drivers & configuring COM ports

Related Config File Sections:

This guide explains how to configure MPF to work with a Penny K Pinball controller (PKONE NANO) and add-on boards.

1. Install the USB driver

PKONE Pinball controllers use a USB chip from STM. On most operating systems the driver is built-in (Windows 10, Linux, MacOS), so there is no need to download and install the STM driver.

Once this is done, when you plug in and power on your PKONE controller, you should see some kind of notification that new hardware has been detected. What exactly you see will depend on what OS you have.

TODO: Finish this section

2. Configure your hardware platform for PKONE

To use MPF with a PKONE controller system, you need to configure your platform as pkone in your machine-wide config file, like this:

hardware:
  platform: pkone

3. Find the PKONE COM port

Even though the PKONE controllers are USB devices, they use "virtual" COM ports to communicate with the host computer running MPF. On your computer, if you look at your list of ports and then connect and power on your PKONE controller, you should see a new port appear. The exact name and number of this port will vary depending on your computer, what other devices you have, and which port you plug the PKONE controller into.

You need to tell MPF which port is used for the PKONE Controller, and the first step to doing that is to figure out what the port names are on your system:

Finding the COM ports on Windows

On Windows, it's easiest to use the Device Manager. Right-click on the Start button (or whatever it's called now) and choose "Device Manager" from the popup menu.

Then expand the "Ports (COM & LPT)" menu section to see which ports the FAST Controller is using. The easiest way to do this is to open the Device Manager to that section, then plug your PKONE Controller in (or power it on) and just see which port name appears.

The port name will start with "COM" and then be a number.

Finding the COM ports on Max or Linux

On Mac or Linux, it's easiest to find the port numbers via the terminal window (or console window). To do that, open a new window and run the following command:

ls /dev/tty*

This will list all the devices whose names begin with "tty".

The PKONE port will have the name that starts with "/dev/cu.usbmodem", then a number. (The number will be different on every system.)

For example, the PKONE port might be something like on MAC:

/dev/cu.usbmodem (141)

On linux it would look like this:

/dev/ttyASM0

4. Add the port to your config file

Next you need to add the port to your machine config file. To do this, create a new section called pkone:, and then add a port: setting under it.

Then if you have a PKONE Nano controller, enter the name of the port.

So an example for Windows might look like this:

pkone:
    port: com3

And an example for Mac or Linux might look like this:

pkone:
   port: /dev/cu.usbmodem

Note that if you're using a version of Windows before Windows 10 and you have COM port numbers greater than 9, you will have to enter the port names like this: \\.\COM10, \\.\COM11, \\.\COM12, etc. (It's a Windows thing. Google it for details.)

There are more settings in the pkone: section of the machine config that we have not covered here, but the port is the bare minimum you need to get up and running.

What if it did not work?

Have a look at our PKONE troubleshooting guide.

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