How to add one more button to the X-Arcade Tankstick

[BadMouth]

I always wanted just one more button on my x-arcade as a dedicated exit mapped to ESC.
Here is how to add one more button without altering any of the existing buttons:

The x-arcade trackball has wires for 3 mouse buttons, but only two of them are used in the tankstick.
The wires for the third button are unused.  They are tangerine(peach?) color, coming out of the trackball assembly. 
After cutting the zip ties, there is enough wire to reach anywhere in the case. 
There are also plenty of unused ground wires coming out of the trackball assembly.

I hooked them up to the trackball "cheater" button for testing.
The computer sees it as the center mouse button. 
To make it post as the ESC key, I installed AutoHotkey http://www.autohotkey.com/
and used the following script- 
MButton::escape
Create a shortcut to the script, right click to copy it, then paste it in the startup folder.
(right click start>explore all users>programs>startup)
This will launch the script with windows and a middle mouse button click with post as the ESC key.
This solved exiting problems that I was having with FuturePinball and some PC games.

EDIT: MAME does not see fake key presses, so you'll have to remap UI Cancel in MAME to the middle mouse button.

I didn't want my guests accidentally hitting the programming button on the back of the tankstick, so I installed another button at the top of the control panel.

The button is even with the 1P & 2P buttons and a little left of the center of the joystick.
This missed some brackets & there was plenty of space to work in that corner.


(hammer not used during this project)








 

[ziggyrj]

Thank you this is exactly what  i wanted to do and now i know it's this easy I'm ordering my parts now. 

[MaseMan]

That's pretty cool. Not sure if I'll ever do that, but it's a neat mod either way.

I'm currently replacing most of the buttons on my Tankstick with iL convex style ones.

[BadMouth]

Ah, the early days....just a few months into my BYOAC membership.   

I actually didn't even know emulators existed before discovering BYOAC while looking for megatouch info.
Week 1: I gotta build a cab next weekend.
Week 2: Holy crap I'm not ready to build something on the level of what these guys are building, might as well order an x-arcade to use while I learn.

I'm glad you found it useful.