# Button Options

## Pulse Mode

In some cases, you might want a button or switch to send a keystroke to the PC every time the switch state changes, rather than when the button is held down or the switch is left on. This is called Pulse Mode.

If you set a button to Pulse Mode, the controller will send one key press to the PC when you push the button, and will then send another single key press when you release the button. It doesn't matter how long you hold the button down: there will always be exactly two key presses sent to the PC each time you push the button, one when pressed, the second when released.

In contrast, a regular non-pulse mode button tells the PC it's being held down continuously as long as the button is pressed. For a keyboard key, this usually means Windows auto-repeats the key as long as the button is held down.

The canonical example of a Pulse Mode button is the coin door switch. The VPinMAME software uses a "toggle" key for the coin door. One press of the key "opens" the virtual coin door in the software, and a second press "closes" it. This convention works great for keyboard play, but it's really inconvenient for cabinet use, where you want to connect your real coin door to the software so that the pinball ROM knows when the door is open. For a real coin door, it's much easier to install a physical switch that senses the state of the coin door. That is, the switch is off when the coin door is closed, and on when the door is open. But that doesn't work well with VPinMAME's expectation of one keystroke on opening the door, and a second keystroke on closing the door.

The Pulse Mode option is designed to bridge this gap. It lets you install the physical switch the simple way, and translates this to VPinMAME's "toggle key" convention by reporting changes in the switch state to the PC. When you open the physical coin door, the physical switch turns on, so the Pulse Mode button sends a single keystroke to the PC. VPinMAME reads the key and toggles the virtual coin door to "open". As long as the coin door stays open, nothing more happens. When you close the coin door, the physical switch turns off, so the Pulse Mode button sends another single keystroke to the PC. VPinMAME reads this new key and toggles the virtual coin door to "closed".

You can select Pulse Mode for any key by clicking the pulse mode icon in the key's Options column.

The pulse mode setting applies to both the regular and shifted meaning of the key. There's no way to apply pulse mode only to one or the other.