Quoted from metallik: By comparison, TOTAN uses the genie to sense the ball and turn on the magnet, and that arrangement worked well, since the ball rarely Escape the genie area.
I'm actually not sure why this isn't how this should work. Direct hits to the captive ball/cube deaden the ball and put it right there for the catching. Why work to make the magnet pick up the ball while its rolling around at all? Use the field sensor to determine IF the ball is caught, not WHEN to catch it.
Just turn the magnet on when the captive ball is hit for say, 3 seconds, then use the sensor reading to determine if its caught to do the hammer lock stuff. Seems simple to me - maybe it doesnt work that way. I realize there are the possibility of high speed deflections up towards Sparky, but so what? The ball won't be affected if it's moving fast, and if it's moving slow, I doubt many catches will be missed.