Ultimarc rotary pinout

[smee]

Hi all,

I have an old Happ Rotary (optical) joystick that I want to use in a new arcade build (as a mouse ate though the wiring in my last arcade machine!) as an upgrade.



The stick only has four wires connected to the Optical rotary interface, and I have the pinout for the Optical rotary interface (Optic Sensor pcb A052-1010-00)

RED Output A
BROWN ground
ORANGE +5v
YELLOW Output B
Taken from here http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=2000.0

The wires are soldered directly onto the board, but the other ends are loose wire/solder.

I want to connect the stick to the Ultimarc Rotary joystick interface, but all I can find is that it’s plug and play and I assume this is due to the stick being wired up and you plug in the harness directly to the interface.
The problem I’ve got it that I’ve not go the harness/connector to go from the stick into the board

I can make something up, but I’m struggling to find the pinout of the Ultimarc interface. I’ve checked the website, searched this forum and the net but can’t find anything to find the connections on the Ultimarc interface - I assume I can connect the up/down/left/right from the stick to the interface as well as the rotate left/right? Not a huge problem as I have another USB encoder (with pinouts! )

Anyone able to give me a steer at all please?

I've added pics of the joystick/wires, 2 interfaces and what I think is the harness here:
https://imgur.com/a/zoOQT

TIA!

[PL1]

I have an old Happ Rotary (optical) joystick

I want to connect the stick to the Ultimarc Rotary joystick interface

1. The Ultimarc Rotary Joystick Interface is for mechanical (50-5618-00), not optical rotary sticks like yours. (50-5619-00)



2.  Even if you had a mechanical stick, the Ultimarc Rotary Joystick Interface only handles the rotary part of the mechanical stick -- you would still need a separate encoder for the up/down/left/right microswitches. (BTW the stick in your pics doesn't have the microswitches installed. )

The optical rotary circuit connects to an optical (mouse) encoder like a spinner/trackball/mouse axis.

An Opti-Wiz would work in parallel with the Xin-Mo encoder in your pics.

If you want a single-board solution, you could use an IPac2 (2015 or newer) in place of the Xin-Mo and Opti-Wiz.




Scott

[smee]

Hi Scott,

thanks for the info, that's really helpful!

Would the iPac 2 be suitable for the Rotary stick I have (as in both for up/down/left/right as well as rotation)? I paid a lot for the stick in the past and would like to get some use for it on Ikari Warriors . The microswitches are still packed up, I've just not put them on the stick yet.

I think this is the same as your picture? If so will order one later.
https://www.arcadeworlduk.com/products/I-PAC-2-FS32-Keyboard-Encoder.html

Do you think that's a better solution and just ignore the (just bought! ) Ultimarc interface?

thanks again

[PL1]

Would the iPac 2 be suitable for the Rotary stick I have (as in both for up/down/left/right as well as rotation)? I paid a lot for the stick in the past and would like to get some use for it on Ikari Warriors .

Yes the IPac2 is suitable for your stick or I wouldn't have recommended it.   

The optical 5v/ground/data A/data B lines connect to the pins.

The microswitches connect to the screw terminals.

The microswitches are still packed up, I've just not put them on the stick yet.

Glad to hear that.   

I think this is the same as your picture? If so will order one later.
https://www.arcadeworlduk.com/products/I-PAC-2-FS32-Keyboard-Encoder.html

Yes, that's the newer-style IPac2 with the optical input pins.

You can order from Ultimarc, ArcadeworldUK, or many other resellers.

Do you think that's a better solution and just ignore the (just bought! ) Ultimarc interface?

You need to use the right tool for the job -- a paintbrush and a screwdriver both have a handle, but only one is suitable for painting your house. 

The Ultimarc Rotary Joystick Interface ONLY works with mechanical rotary sticks -- it can't decode the quadrature waveforms on Data A and Data B of the optical stick.

This small board connects two rotary 12-position switch joysticks such as Happ Controls p/n 50-5618-00 to USB.

It appears that when your stick was reassembled, the pivot cone (96-1302-00) was installed under the joystick body instead of over.




Scott

[smee]

Scott,

you're a star. I've spent a week reading up on it and you've given me far more useful info in a few posts! I'll go and order the right parts now

worth the post for this line alone. Classic

You need to use the right tool for the job -- a paintbrush and a screwdriver both have a handle, but only one is suitable for painting your house.

thanks again buddy

[AndyWarne]

I supplied info about the interface not being the correct one for the stick via an email reply to the OP.

I mentioned using an Opti-PAC as this has screw terminals for easy connection but Scott is correct above in that the spinner connector on an IPAC 2 would also work. This would need the correct connector or wires to splice onto the Happ optical connector.

Andy

[smee]

Sorry to bump an old thread folks, but I've had some time to be able to set this up now, and the stick and buttons are all working fine, but I can't for the life of me get the rotation to work .


The wires coming out of the rotary part of the stick are (left to right, looking with the rotary dial facing up) red, brown, orange, yellow.
As Andy commented I tried to connect to the spinner connector on the IPAC2 -

I mentioned using an Opti-PAC as this has screw terminals for easy connection but Scott is correct above in that the spinner connector on an IPAC 2 would also work. This would need the correct connector or wires to splice onto the Happ optical connector.

I connected the yellow wire from the rotary control to the IPAC2 so yellow, white, green, brown on the IPAC to yellow, orange, brown, red from the stick but no joy.

I've checked in WinIpac and the interface is set correctly to disabled but when i turn the stick I don't get any input (I also read that the mouse should move once rotated, but nothing).

Do I need to change the wires around (Andy mentioned splicing them but I'm not sure what goes to where)? If so can anybody please be kind enough to tell me which wires from the rotary control go to which part of the IPAC2 (Spinner/trackball).

sorry to be a pain, I've spent some time trying to google how to do make it work but think I need some expert advice

Thanks

[PL1]

The optical board is a P/N A052-1011-00 "Red Board", right?



According to the SpinTrak page, the "brown/green/white/yellow" spinner pins on the IPac correspond to:

Brown    +5Volts
Green    X2
White    GND
Yellow    X1




Scott

[smee]

Thank you again Scott!!

I rewired and got it working on a laptop so I know the sensor is correct. Need to rig up to arcade box now and happy days.

thanks so much for your advice - it's a great community!

[PL1]

Glad to assist.   

Soon you'll be playing Caliber .50 and the other rotary joystick games on this list.   

For the mechanical rotary stick games, you'll want to adjust the settings in MAME because the optical rotary stick has twice as many steps per rotation as the mechanical rotary stick. (24 vs. 12)


Scott

[smee]

That was a useful list! I finally got the software (RetroPie & MAME32) to work with the control panel after many attempts and Caliber .50 and Ikari are brilliant! Just like in the arcade, and makes a huge difference.

Thanks again for all the help