You are a madman Andy - that's awesome!
Any way of being able to manually fire the motor to switch for JAMMA setup (i.e. via an outside button)?
Yes we have alternative firmware which enables the USB cable wires to be connected to a buttons instead, to control switching.
This looks really cool Andy, but I don't suppose it's configurable for both USB and button control simultaneously? I have several console emulators in my cabinet, I can envision wanting to have my MAME frontend set up to automatically toggle the controller using the controller info but still might (occasionally) want to manually toggle to 4-way mode if I'm playing some old console game that I think it might be better suited for. (I know, I could start a big discussion with people that don't think console games are fitting for an arcade cab and should only be played with a gamepad etc., but it is what it is).
I don't know what uC you're using and if you have free GPIO, but here are some features I can see being of use. If the hardware doesn't support it now perhaps you'd consider it for a future rev.
Software control to command it to 4-way or 8-way (already present) as well as a "soft toggle" to invert the current state.
A software means to query the current state.
GPIO pins configured as input to command it to 4-way, 8-way or toggle whatever the current state is... available concurrent with the USB control, not instead of it.
GPIO pins configured as output to indicate the current state.
With these features I could for example have MAME automatically set it to 4-way or 8-way as it believes is correct for the current game. Then I could have a hidden (or not-so-hidden) button on my CP to toggle the state, in case I for example want to try a game with the "incorrect" setup to see how it feels, or if I want to toggle things for a console game. With the 2 output pins I could for example use a hollow shaft (if/when they're available for this stick) and perhaps have the joystick illuminated blue when in 8-way mode and red when in 4-way mode. Alternately, indicator lighting could be built into the CP if that's the user's preference or in the absence of hollow shafts.
Just some thoughts sir. This is very interesting.