Virtue Board

[head.shot.wick]

What is a better board to get for the mini..
1. Virtue Board
2. Ape Board
3. Tadao Board
And are they a good upgrade, or just if your want to make your gun easier to change from semi to auto and ramping?

[Tabris17]

In my experience Tadao is the best after market board out there. Though some people are going with the Apes, I would stick with Tadao.
After market boards more often have much better algorithm coding which translates into more true trigger pulls and less likely chance of bounce or false trigger pulls. The added firing modes are a real bonus if you play at different fields that allow different settings. And the other settings themselves often lend into finer tuning of your marker and better operation. Honestly though, with the Tadao boards I only change my firing modes and I leave everything else stock because they work very well stock. Will tests and retests his boards until they are perfect for that type of marker.
On that note, Virtue is a waste of money. More often then not the boards are more expensive then others on the market. And if you do find them for cheaper the coding is usually subpar or just a knock off from another line of code on the market. Not to mention they usually do something gimmicky or mislead the buyer. Like with the Virtue Marq boards, they say it supports the 4-eye system but what they don't tell you is that the board only uses the bottom two eyes. It is just compatible with the 4-eye system but does not use all 4-eyes.

[Uziel Gal]

I actually like APE boards, other than the fact that they use preset tournament modes. They have one of, if not the, most adjustable board out there, but as soon as you turn on the tournament lock, it sets the board in to a preset, non-adjustable, tournament setting (though you do get to pick which mode it locks in to). Not an issue if your board is up to date, but if the rules change again, your board will have the wrong rate of fire, wrong ramp activation rate - or whatever else may change - and there is nothing you can do about it until you get the board flashed to meet the new rules. Alternatively, you can risk playing with the lock off, when the board is fully programmable to meet any rules you care to name. Why they didn't just have the lock fix your current settings, I'll never know.

The other strange thing about the APE board specifically for the Mini, is that as far as I can tell, there are no debounce settings. :confused: Their Shocker board has debounce and anti-mechanical bouce; the Quest board has debounce; the Mini board has neither, and I'm not really comfortable with that.

As such, I would have to cross the APE off the list. APE make some great boards..... but with some big oversights.

[Dees_Troy]

Which is best will depend a bit on what you need from the board. I have an APE and just sold a Tadao. This explanation will be a bit long, so bear with me.

The Mini's solenoid setup is unique. The solenoid needs to be powered twice, once to open the solenoid and again to close it. The stock Mini board sends the open pulse, waits a bit, then sends a close pulse. The "dwell" that can be adjusted on the Mini's stock board is the wait time between the pulses which gives you some control over how long the solenoid stays open. This dwell adjustment on the stock board can be adjusted in 0.25ms increments. If you plan to or have upgraded to the NDZ bolt and spring kit, then adjusting the dwell is pretty important for efficiency. So, in conclusion, the Mini solenoid has 3 different parameters, open (5ms), wait (default of 7.00ms), and close (9ms) (numbers in parenthesis are for the stock board).

The Tadao board has an issue with adjustability in that it allows you to adjust the open and close settings, but it has a default wait setting of 4ms that cannot be changed. The open and close pulses are adjustable in 1ms increments.

The Virtue allows adjustments in 0.5ms and allows you to adjust both the open and close settings. There is no wait adjustment, but unlike the Tadao, there is no wait time at all; the board sends the open pulse then immediately sends the close pulse. This setup allows full adjustability, but may wear out the battery and solenoid a little quicker by powering the open setting longer than it needs to. (Note, the Virtue might still get better battery life than other boards by being overall more efficient, but it could be more efficient than it is).

The APE allows adjustment of all 3 solenoid items in 1ms increments. One downside to the APE is that while it is trigger programmable, you really need to see the set of 4 LEDs that are inside the grip frame, so you have to take off the grip panel to program it, which kind of defeats the purpose. You can, however, save 5 different user profiles that you can easily switch between without removing the grip panel.

There is also the 7th Element board. It is like the Virtue in that it has open and close adjustments and no wait time whatsoever. I'm pretty sure it allows adjustments in 0.5ms increments. It isn't as fully featured as the Virtue, but the MSRP is the cheapest at $75, nearly half price compared to Virtue.

Both the Virtue and APE support user profiles (2 for Virtue, 5 for APE). With the stock board, if you remove the battery don't immediately reconnect it to a battery, the board will lose all of its settings, so you have to remember your settings and reset them or be real quick about your battery swaps. All of the aftermarket boards save the settings permanently. There is a rumor that Virtue is making an OLED board for the Mini, but no one knows how they will make the OLED screen visible (new grip panel?).

[paingwin238]

i like the tadao