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RC Gun Type Controller Hacks for Mame Driving?

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8BitMonk:
Got my Logic 3 Top Drive Reactor yesterday and had a chance to play around with it, interesting controller for mame.

A couple observations:

* There are a lot of buttons and you can easily change the mappings using the controller itself. Ie. the throttle (z-index) is set to L2 and R2 by default and you can change that to be the triggers instead.
* The triggers don't appear to be analog, only the wheel.
* The wheel turns almost one complete rotation, there is some resistance that feels almost like the light clicking of a scroll wheel though it has some weight to it. The wheel is not on spring that snaps back to center. You can change the wheel sensitivity + or -2 with a switch on the controller.

Though it's not ideal for 360 type games like Super Sprint I could tell from testing it that the RC controller form factor would work well as a driving controller for those type of mame games. Other than the fact that the wheel didn't spin freely it felt natural for steering and throttle control.

8BitMonk:
Just picked up one of these for $14 to use as a base for my hack.



http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DJT2JZI

Can't go wrong for 14 bucks, easy to gut and use some of the components. The trigger has a pot I'm hoping to hack to one of the the optical mouse axis'. Anyone know if this is possible? the base also has 4 battery slots which I'm thinking I can use for the wireless mouse batteries. I'll probably end up doing some sort of optical encoder wheel hack for the steering rather than an inner wheel physically moving the scroll wheel like pictured above, not sure I'd have room inside. 

PL1:

--- Quote from: 8BitMonk on November 19, 2014, 04:19:48 pm ---The trigger has a pot I'm hoping to hack to one of the the optical mouse axis'. Anyone know if this is possible?

--- End quote ---
You'll need an analog encoder like KADESTICK, A-Pac, or U-HID Nano for the potentiometer, not an optical encoder.


Scott

8BitMonk:
Thanks for the clarification PL1, I had only worked with keyboard encoders thus far in my arcade builds.

Since it looks like the analog encoders are all wired (and one of my mandates for this controller is to be wireless) I'm thinking the easiest thing to do then is going to be to grab the analog triggers from a wireless gamepad. This starts to get expensive though as the choice is basically an Xbox or Logitech wireless gamepads at $50.

Guess I could try something like this: http://www.amazon.com/AESTAR-Universal-Wireless-Vibration-Controller/dp/B00M7N6PGQ/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1416439177&sr=8-7&keywords=wireless+gamepad

Appreciate any better suggestions if something comes to mind.

BadMouth:
Hacking a cheap gamepad is the best route IMO.
I haven't come across a modern USB gamepad that didn't use 10k potentiometers.
When centered they show as 5k. 
Some (like the xbox controllers) work off voltage and will work with other values, but most work off the resistance.
Most don't give you the option to calibrate in Windows anymore.

In summary: Hack a gamepad and use 10k resistors, make sure they register 5k while at rest.

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