Keyboard Hack (I-Pac Alternative) for Sale

[micro571]

I've done a keyboard hack for my project and it's pretty easy to do if you have some time and soldering skills.

Before I did mine, I looked at the prices of the I-Pac and J-Pac and they're ridiculous.

If anyone wants a more "I did it myself" look to the inside of their cabinet or wants to save some money - you might be interested.

I'll buy a keyboard, take out the IC Controller, map the 100+ inputs, solder away, make it connection friendly and mail it to you for $35US + Free Shipping or $30 + Actual Shipping.

For the keyboard map you'll get a sheet that has a grid on it.  Key "a" might be position 5,2 ... so you'd hook up the arcade button you want to be "a" to connections 5 and 2 on the board I'll mail you.  The numbered connections looks something like this: http://www.jbprojects.net/projects/mame/wiresb.jpg

Sorry if I'm not explaining what you'd get clear enough.  You can check out my keyboard hack at www.JBProjects.net/mame/mame2.html

If you don't want yours to be as messy as mine, just make your wires longer and of a smaller gauge.

If anyone's interested, contact me jon@jbprojects.net

I'm just considering offering this service.  So - if you really are interested, there's not a 100% gaurantee I'll do it =) But I'll do atleast 1 for somebody to see how much time and effort it requires.

[volcomtwin]

Hey not looking to buy from you, but I do have a Keyboard Hack question.  I am doing one of these myself and its comming along nicely.  My only concern is where do you ground the buttons and joysticks..... Most of these encoders have designated ground spots.  Are you making one of these or is there one one the keybaoard board that I'm missing?
thanks
L

[SirPeale]

Hey not looking to buy from you, but I do have a Keyboard Hack question.  I am doing one of these myself and its comming along nicely.  My only concern is where do you ground the buttons and joysticks..... Most of these encoders have designated ground spots.  Are you making one of these or is there one one the keybaoard board that I'm missing?

In the case of keyboard hacks you're not connecting to a ground, per se.  You're completing a block on a matrix.  So, there's going to be a lot of wires.

To the OP: it's generous of you to offer this up, but you can buy the KeyWiz for $33.95.  And you won't have any ghosting issues.

[volcomtwin]

Still not sure where to ground the buttons/joys...... Oh do you think this KeyWiz will run a 4plaryer CP?

[tmasman]

you could probably get away with a 4 player w/ 3 buttons each...
The KeyWiz has 32 dirrect inputs...
(& a shift-type function to give you 24 more inputs!)

4 player w/ 3 buttons each = 28 Player buttons (& p1, p2, p3, p4 select) = 32!
You could use the "shift" (actually called Shazaaam!) function to allow for admin & coins.

So it's doable, but it's a stretch...
I guess you could make use of Player 3 & 4s buttons to make up the extras in 2 player games too...
So it could be possible for player 1 & 2 to still have the 6 button streetfighter layout... But it would be tricky & a pain to set up.

[volcomtwin]

Thanks....I think I'll just stick w/ my keyboard hack.  Still dont know where to ground stuff..hehe.  Bla Bla Bla this should be on another board (highjacking threads is the coolest).  
L

[tmasman]

Still not sure where to ground the buttons/joys...... Oh do you think this KeyWiz will run a 4plaryer CP?

You don't "Ground" them...

With a keyboard hack you simply connect the 2 wires (from the "matrix" that send the key you want) to the switches on your buttons & joys...

Once you've mapped out your matrix, you should have something like a row or 8 (we'll call it A-H) & a row of 18 (We'll call these 1 - 18) (you row sizes may vary depending on the keyboard you used)...

Just for an example:

Say when you connect B to 5 your computer registers the keypress "z"...
Now you've got 2 connection spots on each switch (on the buttons & joys)... The NO and the GND.
It doesn't matter which wire you connect to which contact spot on the switch. You just connect B to one of them & 5 to the other... That way when you push that button or move the joystick the switch completes the circuit between those 2 wires & sends that signal to the PC.

Hope that helps!

~ tmasman

[volcomtwin]

Rock and Roll!!!!!  I see the light now....thanks alot!
L

[micro571]

That's why keyboard hacks have so many more wires than other methods.  What you can do though is kind of have a ground.

You have 2 sets of wires.  Say 1 set of 8 we'll call set A and a set of 16 we'll call set B.

If you pick a "ground" say Connection 1 of Set A then any connection 1-16 from set B will give you a keypress.  If you have virtual grounds like this, you can't very well pick which keys you use, but you can re-map them all in mame or whatever you're using.

Note: keyboards matrixes have something like 110 possible inputs.  In a mapped chart, all 110 will not be unique.  I've mapped 2 matrixes so far (not for sale) which have included some duplicates and some that aren't registered as keypresses.  So you can't blindly connect wires without mapping them first.

[bloodyviking77]

Also, you really need to map the matrix so you understand what key allocations will work the best for mame.

Note that you should only have 1 key per row of the matrix allocated to any player's buttons, with the exception of directionals in which case you can have both "up" and "down" on the same row, as well as "left " and "right".  (i.e. there should only be one "active" input per row - up and down can never be on at the same time, so this counts as one active input)

This is to avoid the ghosting issues mentioned above.

There's an excellent guide at emuadvice (recently updated by Marshall) that covers all this in detail.: www.mameworld.net/emuadvice/keyhack2.html

Good luck

[Lave Laar]

I made a program to assist me in making my keyboard hack some time ago.  If anyone is interested it can be downloaded here :

http://home.online.no/~lindgrd/kmm112.zip

[paigeoliver]

Also, to the fellow who is trying to keyboard hack a 4 player panel.

Good luck doing a keyboard hack that can handle at least 16 simultaneous keypresses at a time without ghosting or blocking. (16 simulatenous is the bare minimum for a 4 player panel, which is 4 players jump-attacking diagonally at the same time.

[Hellfromabove]

So... no ghosting? I am pretty interested in this but mainly I am going to be using it for fighting games such as King of Fighters series and Capcom vs. series. Does anyone know if like I am doing a 360 on one stick and press 2 buttons and press 2 buttons on the other side if it will work? Basically how many keys can I press at once? Also don't plan on using it with a 4 panel, 2 panel for right now. Thanx.

-See Ya!!!

[neuromancer]

Also, to the fellow who is trying to keyboard hack a 4 player panel.

Good luck doing a keyboard hack that can handle at least 16 simultaneous keypresses at a time without ghosting or blocking. (16 simulatenous is the bare minimum for a 4 player panel, which is 4 players jump-attacking diagonally at the same time.

You can make a 4 player panel with 2 buttons each with a keyboard hack. The joysticks take 2 lines each, and the buttons 1 each. Since you can't move the stick left and right *at the same time*, each axis can share inputs (on the "long" side of the matrix).

Now if you tried to do 3 buttons, you would need 20 lines, and no keyboard encoders that we know of have that many.

The setup above will need to share lines for coin inputs, so if you feed credits while playing, you've got a problem, but in practice, you need to take a hand from the controls to put the quarter in anyway. Out of fairness, you should probably share the coin input with the player who's coin it's for (so I can't mess up the other players by pressing my coin button)

Bob

[dphirschler]

Yeah, but there is always some nerd  that sticks his credit in while you are playing rather than stacking his quarter on the monitor glass.


Darryl

[micro571]

Sticking a quarter in while playing would only be a problem if both players were hitting like 4 buttons each.  (angled joystick + 2 buttons, both players).  If you're hitting that many things at one, it's quite unlikely you're putting in a quarter unless you have very nimble toes.

Basically a keyboard hack is a cheap alternative to the more expensive solutions if you're doing a 2 person cabinet (6 buttons each) or a 2+ person cabinet with less buttons.  You can normally get about 8 inputs if you plan your key selection.  It's working fine for my 2 person cab.

Jon