Main > Driving & Racing Cabinets
Building gearshift box, need advice (mainly wiring but feel free to share other)
kahlid74:
--- Quote from: Billkwando on March 12, 2012, 09:23:29 am ---Is there a way to wire a controller to be both common ground and, ahem...."uncommon ground"? What's the 3rd contact on a Cherry switch do?
Just trying to think of a way I can make this thing plug & play without having to open it up again (unless a switch goes bad).
I was thinking about wiring a + and a - to each switch, then hooking them to phono jacks via barrier strip/terminal block, but then having a 5th phono jack that was just a ground....so for non-common ground controllers I'd only wire the other end (the controller) to connect to my +'s and then have the final wire for ground......but...
Doesn't this mean that my common ground jumpering would instantly short out my circuit for controllers that each button uses it's own ground?
I'm trying to think a way of building some kind of switch into the works.
Also, wouldn't I need a killswitch for the controller for navigating menus ingame, otherwise it would always think I was holding a button down? Those Happ sticks don't do neutral. LOL
Edit: Got my box built this weekend for the most part, and I just have to figure out what I'm gonna do for a jackplate, then prepare for final assembly. After that I'm gonna round off all the corners and edges and put that carpet they use on subwoofers on it. I also have some black corner protectors I salvaged from an old bass amp I'm prolly gonna slap on there too to make it look extra fancy. And maybe a handle LOL (prolly not). Those shifter boltholes are awfully close to the edges of the cavity....trying to think of a way to reinforce them.
--- End quote ---
The cherry switches typically have three connections for two different options. The one way it works as normal arcade buttons by connecting the circuit when you press it. The other way it works where the circuit is always connected and when you press the button you break the circuit. You should be able to see on the side of the cherry switch where one contact has a connected line and the other contact as what looks like a draw bridge falling into the moat.
As far as common ground it depends on what you're doing. When we talk controls lets say we've got a button, and whatever is controlling that buttons contact has to also have it's ground. So if you had a cherry switch and you grounded it into the PC instead of the controller, the controller would have no way of knowing when the button was actually pressed. That's my limited understanding of it.
Billkwando:
Thanks for the clarification on the Cherry switch. That's what I thought it did.
Billkwando:
Unless somebody else has a better idea, I'm prolly going to have to wire each of the 4 cherry switches to a speaker terminal plate like this:
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=260-308
That way each cherry switch contact will have its own terminal, and if I wanna do common ground, I'll just wire up a jumper wire, tin all 4 of the ends, and stick one in each of the black terminals, and my 4 button wires in the 4 red ones. It's gonna look a little bit ghetto as hell, but I don't know what else to do.
Anybody?
Edit: A friend much more talented than I suggested wiring each contact to a DB-15, then I could do any jumpering necessary on the plug that I'll be plugging into it.
Billkwando:
So I finished this but forgot to update the thread. :dizzy:
I ended up doing the DB15 and just making pins 1-4 gears 1-4, and making the pins directly below the grounds for each (the carpet is a little dusty in the pics).
I ran each of the switches to a terminal block, and then ran 2 wires from each....one to the DB15, and jumpered one to the 1-4 buttons of an old Gravis pad. I screwed the pad to the lid of the box, and secured my wires with hot glue, for extra security.
You can see where it runs from the terminal block to my DB15:
and I covered the box with Polymat speaker carpet:
If anybody needs a speaker carpet application tutorial, I found this one both helpful and amusing:
If anybody's interested in making something similar, I made a video that has a few more details about it:
I totally forgot about the corner pieces I was thinking of adding. I'll have to take a look at those and see how that might work.
Oh an for the neutral issue, on my shifter, if I position the stick right in the center between 1st & 2nd or 3rd and 4th, the stick will stay in neutral on its own...though my shifter being a used one could be a factor in that. It helps when setting up buttons in a game.
The shifter works amazing for drifting in Daytona on M2, which is what I made it for....though it would be nice if there were some other 4 speed games outside of M2.
isamu:
Nice one bro! Good luck with the project. ;)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version