Arduino De Go! 3K – a Densha De Go! Project

[baritonomarchetto]

Hi all,

I have always been attracted by the train Simulators World (in particular by Boso View Express, also knows as BVE, even before it became Open BVE) and those plastic Desha De Go! controllers were somehow a Holy Grail for me. Being for the Japanese market only, and being me a cheap bastard, I have never had the opportunity to buy one.

Recently I had the opportunity to buy a smashed up Densha De Go! Arcade controller in the need for some love (and a lot of paint...) to be “restored” and while waiting for it to arrive, a light turned on – why not converting a heavy duty DDG! Controller to be used with the DDG! PC port?

DDG! Arcade controller is a rare beast: apart from it's 20 Kg, it's not what i would call a “easy to convert” thing because of the massive use of OPTO switches; in particular, the throttle lever is made up of 6 OPTO, the pedal sends it's outputs with another OPTO and the brake lever is a 5KOhm potentiometer. Going the classical joyhack or keyboard hack was not an option, so i decided to start lurking the arduino forums to see if it could be the solution for the problem … and it really was!

In particular, Arduino Leonardo and Arduino Micro (and maybe some other version) can simulate keystrokes, mouse movements etc, so one of those was the micro-controller I was in the need for.

Here are some random pics of the controller I got. A lot of rust and removed paint. Fortunately underneath the components were close to new: the brake and throttle lever assembly were close to new; the analog voltmeters used for the odometer and brake pressure meter where working, even if most of the protective glasses were broken.









Here are the throttle OPTO switches (Omron SX4009-P1, max 16mA @28Vdc) ...





… and the brake assembly



After some day of painting (I HATE this kind of work …) I finally had a decent controller that could not transmit you leptospirosys



Things I still have to do:

• repair the instruments glasses (i don't really know how to proceed with these..)
• replace the lamps bulbs
• make the bulbs do something (I will need an additional circuit for this because the USB connector outputs a too little current for bulbs and the odometer needs 12V to go fullscale )
• Everything else that comes to my mind

Ah, is a video of "the thing" working 

[fredster]

I really like that.  I would see if I could find some clear plastic and just cut rounds out to fix those lens.  Pop off those covers and just find something that's close.

Get an Arduino board to make something happen with the lights.

[baritonomarchetto]

I was starting to think that nobody would care about this project
Anyway, lamps, odometer and pressure meter are now working (simulated only being that the game returns no outputs). It was not necessary to use another arduino: i had a sufficient number of free pins and a darlington array by hand. I will upload a new video soon.
I am still searching for a way to force the game to unlock the "dedicated" controller option, but it's something for Howard and Arianne not for me unfortunately.
Who knows, maybe in the near future they will start loving train sims

[Trainkidkris]

What!!!!! This project is amazing. My question to you is the size (demensions) as I'm building one myself of a different train model for openbve!

[baritonomarchetto]

I used to LOVE BVE! I also made a (terrible) track at the time (10 years ago more or less...).
Unfortunately the control panel is not at my place now (my bro "stole" it) but it's not to scale to a real cockpit anyway, so...

[Trainkidkris]

That's awesome!!. Dam i was really hopping you did had the controller because i wanted to use that size for  my desktop cab I know its not to scale or size but its still something i feel is a right size for my desktop. I was wondering if you can give some assistance with my desktop simulation.

[baritonomarchetto]

I could for sure, but I think every arcade enthusiast should put some efforts on its own to approach this AVESOME prototype platform in order to develop new projects (and spead the word: people are still using locked and overpriced "arcade" interfaces nowadays...). This is what a forum is for (it's not a help desk).
I wrote a full guide to help start arcade related arduino projects some year ago, but its in my mother language (italian).
It is pubblished in another forum, so I dont know if I can link it here.

[baritonomarchetto]

Here is a link to the guide i wrote. You have to register to the site to see attachments.
https://www.arcademania.eu/viewtopic.php?t=386