Should I use an iPac or Zero Delay (Raspberry pi, 4 player, track ball)

[sighmon]

I'm new to the arcade stuff and have lots of questions, so I'm starting with this one.  We want to build a four player control panel for a cabinet and want to include a track ball.  We are using an Raspberry Pi 3b+ and a Retropie image that has a ton of games.

For testing we bought a 2-player EasyGet buttons and joystick package and it came with the wires and Zero Delay USB encoders.  It wired up very easily.  Loaded the image and had it up and playing games.  To move to 4-player it would eat up all 4 USB ports on the rpi.  I've read that some people use a USB hub.  That would free up ports for the keyboard, track ball, etc... Would it work to plug in all four player controls to a hub?  Would it need to be powered or unpowered?

Or would it be better/easier to buy an iPac?  I've seen one at Ultimarc that seems popular.  Do those accommodate a track ball?

Bonus question:  if we wanted to add light guns how do they connect?

[Mike A]

Slow down. Figure out what games you really want to play. That will dictate what controls you will need. A control panel that plays every game will play most of them badly. Narrow down your list and you will build a control panel that is enjoyable to use.

[J_K_M_A_N]

I second what MikeA said. I used to put everything on one and ended up not playing 95% of them. Now I have a list of vertical and horizontal that I want to play most often (and even that list is long). By the time I am done I will probably have 2 or maybe 3 bartops (small house) set up to play the games I like. It is cool to show people that it can play EVERY game but most end up never being played.

J_K_M_A_N

[meyer980]

I agree with Mike A and JKMAN.

BUT to get to your question, the regular ipacs are just detected as keyboards, so should work no problem with a pi. It also treats trackballs and spinners as mice, so that should also work fine.

If you stick with the Zero Delay Encoders, a powered hub would take some strain off the raspberry pi but for simple buttons and such it probably wouldn't be absolutely necessary. You might want to do some searching on whether other people have had trouble using 4 at once though - does the pi always recognize them in the same order? Assigning the same one to Player 1 each time? That's sometimes a concern.

If you're definitely set on going full franken-panel (spinner, track ball, 4 players, and lightguns) I would recommend switching to a PC instead of a pi. The ability to customize MAME is much easier in those versions, IMO. Although I have little experience with light guns, many people use the USB aim-tracks from Ultimarc: https://www.ultimarc.com/

[daywane]

I find a hub was a pain with pie. Do able but a pain.
You can use the gpio pins for player 3 and 4.
But after years of emulation I agree with all above. Thousand games is not fun. Scrolling list are to long.
I like no more than 50 ROMs.

[sighmon]

I understand a single device isn't best suited to do everything, but I'm not making multiples to handle specific genres.  We already have a list of arcade games we are interested in.  None of us are enthusiasts so the list is mostly mainstream, and we won't be overly picky if the look and feel isn't dead on.  Personally I doubt I'll play it much at all as I prefer the journey over the destination.

I find a hub was a pain with pie. Do able but a pain.
You can use the gpio pins for player 3 and 4.
But after years of emulation I agree with all above. Thousand games is not fun. Scrolling list are to long.
I like no more than 50 ROMs.

In the few times I've looked at some of the front ends I see a Favorites section.  I assume I can just customize that with the games we are interested in.  And there is also a Recent section to help avoid the endless scrolling, which I also find annoying since I haven't heard of 90% of the games in these images.

Thanks for the specific input on my question.  I'll prob pick up and iPac and see how that wires up.

[sighmon]

...
If you stick with the Zero Delay Encoders, a powered hub would take some strain off the raspberry pi but for simple buttons and such it probably wouldn't be absolutely necessary. You might want to do some searching on whether other people have had trouble using 4 at once though - does the pi always recognize them in the same order? Assigning the same one to Player 1 each time? That's sometimes a concern.
...

That was my concern, too.  I wasn't sure it would consistently re-map the controls in proper order.

[Cappy]

Slow down. Figure out what games you really want to play. That will dictate what controls you will need. A control panel that plays every game will play most of them badly. Narrow down your list and you will build a control panel that is enjoyable to use.

Hi Mike,

I'm in the same boat as Sighmon here, building my first Mame control panel, although I'm integrating something like an intel NUC.  I'm planning to use an pac 2 controller connected to 2 joysticks with 8 buttons each, and a single trackball and spinner so I can play all the retro games I'd like.

When you say "A control panel that plays every game will play most of them badly", is there a technical reason for this or do you mean more in terms of the layout of the controls?

Many thanks!

[Howard_Casto]

It's the layout.  You need some room to properly play a trackball or spinner game but you won't have that room because p1 and p2's joystick/button controls are going to be in the way.  I've tried every layout under the sun and at most you might be able to put a trackball between p1 and p2.... a spinner in addition to that would require you to reach  beyond the trackball and it's just not comfortable.  Also keep in mind that depending upon the game/emulator that trackball and spinner are going to be treated as a single device, so if you accidentally hit the trackball while playing a spinner game you are going to jerk around. 

There are other reasons as well, but that's some of the main ones. 

[Mike A]

Your 8 way sticks will play 4 way games badly. You can try to get sticks that do both, but they always suck or are just okay at best.

[Jimbo]

I've built a bartop for 2 players, including a trackball and a spinner per player.  It isn't awkward to play but it's only 2 players (check the layout in my Videotron project in my sig).  4 players I can't even think how I'd arrange stuff nicely, but make sure you orient the joysticks correctly.  I also agree, small list of games is way better.  The more games you have to choose from, the less each one means.

Also, I've spent ages setting up a Pi (retropie) to play these games with 2 spinners, 2 joys, buttons, trackball and an IPAC.  It can be done but to get it working it's a lot of configuration and using advancemame for a lot of games.  It can be done though.

If you're using a trackball and an IPAC, or basically any number of attached USB devices, each will have their own usb index that can change on each boot up, but you can configure advancemame to use the device IDs so that problem goes away completely.  I spent hours figuring this out, kept getting the trackball change index regardless of where I plugged it in so sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't.  Just configure advancemame with IDs and it fixes that issue.

[leapinlew]

When you say "A control panel that plays every game will play most of them badly", is there a technical reason for this or do you mean more in terms of the layout of the controls?

It''s both!
From a layout perspective, it's a mess. It's really a mess if you have guests over and they walk up to your machine that has 4+ joysticks, trackball, spinner, etc.

Technically, some games have very unpredictable responses when 2 directions are hit at the same time and they were not programmed to receive both inputs at the same time. Even my non-gamer friends notice Ms. Pacman not acting right. They can't understand why, but they definitely know it's not good.

[bobbyb13]

All sage advice here.

Your must have game list will end up smaller than you think probably and you will only play even a fraction of those regularly.
With a short list of games you will get more helpful advice.

If you are really serious about it you will go through a number of control panel designs before you are done.

And I mean design it, build it, play it, decide what you want to change.
Make another one and swap.

You will enjoy a machine that comfortably plays a dozen games well more than one that plays 300 games uncomfortably/confusingly.