Adding Spinners/Trackball

[ramoncitomang]

Hi all!  Im in the middle of building my cab, which currently has a ipac Ultimate 4 joysticks & 36 buttons.  I seem to have maxed out the button input on the ipac, however my question is i'm looking to add a steering wheel (Spintrak) & trackball to the control panel but i wasn't sure if i need to pickup another ipac to do so.  Is there a point to add 2 wheels, would that work for older games like Mario Kart, CTR etc?  I'm also waiting on the Sinden Light guns to come in, which with the 4 sticks, 2 guns, and potentially 2 wheels not sure how much mame can handle.  Any help would be appreciated, im new to the building scene.

[javeryh]

Hi all!  Im in the middle of building my cab, which currently has a ipac Ultimate 4 joysticks & 36 buttons.  I seem to have maxed out the button input on the ipac, however my question is i'm looking to add a steering wheel (Spintrak) & trackball to the control panel but i wasn't sure if i need to pickup another ipac to do so.  Is there a point to add 2 wheels, would that work for older games like Mario Kart, CTR etc?  I'm also waiting on the Sinden Light guns to come in, which with the 4 sticks, 2 guns, and potentially 2 wheels not sure how much mame can handle.  Any help would be appreciated, im new to the building scene.

Both the SpinTrak and U-Trak can be connected via USB.

Your CP sounds insane.  What could you possibly need 36 buttons to play?

EDIT: Welcome to the forums/hobby.  You should start a Project Announcement thread for your cabinet when ready and share lots of pics.  People around here are tough sometimes but are always helpful.

[bobbyb13]

It sounds like you will need more than one cabinet.
There are three types of steering wheels that I know of so it depends on which games you want to play.

If you are using Ultimarc stuff, then you will need a Mini-Pac Opti or U-HID to pull off what you are planning for steering.
Andy is a great resource and if you can ask specific questions he will give you concise helpful answers.

Randy at GroovyGameGear also offers top shelf interfaces and the same quality of support.

If you are Arduino savvy then you can make your own interfaces for short money.

If Scott (PL1) sees your post he may offer some wisdom too.
Heed his advice.

The hardest part of building a nice machine is spending a LOT of time planning which games you want to play and realistically paring the list down so that you end up with a nice looking cabinet that plays well (and not a CrapMAME worthy franken-disaster.)

[PL1]

Im in the middle of building my cab,

Before you go any further, work through the design process outlined in the "What type of build meets my needs?" section of the FAQ.

- As Bobby suggested, pay special attention to the game list. (step 2)

- If your answer to this step is "all of them",  you're guaranteed to fail and there's nothing we can do to help you.

- I don't say this to discourage you, just encouraging you to set realistic expectations for what you can (and can't) achieve so you're more likely to succeed in making a fun-to-use cab.

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/FAQ#What_type_of_build_meets_my_needs.3F

which currently has a ipac Ultimate 4 joysticks & 36 buttons.  I seem to have maxed out the button input on the ipac

Sounds a bit big, even for a 4-player setup.
- How many admin buttons? (Exit, Pause, P1-P4 Coin, P1-P4 Start, etc.)
-- Dedicated admin buttons or shfted functions?

- How many player buttons for P1/P2?

- How many player buttons for P3/P4?
-- If you're just using MAME, P3 and P4 need at most 4 player buttons.

i'm looking to add a steering wheel (Spintrak) & trackball to the control panel but i wasn't sure if i need to pickup another ipac to do so.

360 degree wheels, spinners, and trackballs use an optical (mouse) encoder.
- There are several commercial options available.

As Bobby mentioned, if you can load a firmware on an Arduino and do some simple soldering, you can "roll-your-own" optical encoder(s) for very little money.

Is there a point to add 2 wheels, would that work for older games like Mario Kart, CTR etc?

Depends on the game.   

Read the Driving sub-forum sticky thread here for more info on the challenges associated with racing games.

I'm also waiting on the Sinden Light guns to come in, which with the 4 sticks, 2 guns, and potentially 2 wheels not sure how much mame can handle.

Don't worry, MAME can handle more controls than almost any Frankenpanel you might come up with.      


Scott

[GeoMan]

2 x Ultrasticks (each supports 8 buttons + another 7 by using one button as a "shift"), 1 Spintrak and 1 U-Trak trackball is all you need. All come with USB so no extra hardware needed.

[KenToad]

If you have six action buttons each for players 1 and 2, then four action buttons for players 3 and 4, then eight buttons total for credit/start for each player, that gets you to 28 buttons. Then you might have Exit, Save, Load, Pause for a total of thirty-two buttons. That leaves you four buttons. Personally, I use those four buttons around the trackball. Some people might want to add fast forward and rewind buttons or even add the seventh and eighth buttons for certain modern 1v1 fighters.

So, I'm not understanding the shock about using 36 buttons for a four player setup.