New cab or modular piece cp...?!?

[Aceldamor]

Need some opinions guys, I'm finally back into the saddle of finishing my cab and have realized that there is no way to put all the controlls I want on 1 panel...even rigging up swappable joystick handles and whatnot.

I'm torn however between ditching my cab shell altogether and building another, resembeling (sp?) Frost's with a rotating panel or keeping mine (LuSiD's) and building 1 cp with swappable parts.that way I don't have to have 4 huge panels, I can have the panel and just put whatever controls I want onto the panel and lock them down and get to playing.

Each have pro's and cons, the biggest con for the rotating would be a complete reconstruction of my cab...

The biggest con for the swappable piece panel is you can't really plexi the panel.  

Does anyone out there have a swappable piece panel? Help me out guys....

[Doc-]

I just finished converting to a modular "piece" panel over the weekend inspired by a thread I saw here several weeks ago.  I had a 24" wide single "classic" control panel that I replaced with a fully modular "piece" panel.  The panels are interchangable down to 2" wide spacers.

 Joysticks (4 and 8 way) and spinner are mounted on 4" wide panels, a set of 6 buttons on 6" wide panels, a 3" trackball on a 8" wide panel and so on.  I also have 2", 4", 6" and 8" spacer panels along with different joystick types so I can make pretty much any layout you can imagine within the 24" wide original cabinet.

  My "regular" fighter layout has two joysticks, two 6-button panels and either a spinner or 4-way joystick panel in the middle.  However you can swap it any way you want (joysticks on the right, tron style, dual joysticks for tank games, etc...) by just moving the pieces and spacers around on the 24" rails.

  I used RJ45 panels and a USB hub under the panel to connect individual panels and it works great.  Each joystick or button panel occupies one RJ45 slot and I duplicated some ports so I can connect (for instance) two joystick panels to the same port on the IPAC.  You can hot swap the controls - both USB and RJ45 connectors.

   I also came up with a pretty innovative way to mount and lock the panels so there is nothing visible from the top of the panel and also each panel can be swapped with no tools in a few seconds.

  It was a lot of work to make all of the panels and wire them- but the net result is pretty cool.  Something simple like swapping the spinner for a 4-way joystick takes less than 15 seconds since you just pop the old panel up, remove the USB connector, plug in an RJ45 connector and pop the new panel in.  Alternately you can reconfigure the whole panel in just over a minute.   You don't need to buy duplicate controls and its easy to add new ones at will by just mounting it on a blank panel.  Also the cabinet maintains its nice classic 24" wide look - no frankenpanel.  Finally I was able to keep my pinball buttons on the side and front - which I would have had to give up in a rotating panel scheme.

  I'm still finalizing a few of the panels (trackball, top fire joystick) and I have some minor cleanup to do (painting the edge of the panels so the space between them is less obvious).  I'll post some pictures in the next week or two.

[Aceldamor]

I would love to see what work you've done so far on that panel...

I've got so many controls that I don't want to dink around with a frankenpanel and I'm really not into making a completly new cab..(yet  )

Any pics you can post to show the actual interface and mounting system would be awsome..

[telengard]

Need some opinions guys, I'm finally back into the saddle of finishing my cab and have realized that there is no way to put all the controlls I want on 1 panel...even rigging up swappable joystick handles and whatnot.

I'm torn however between ditching my cab shell altogether and building another, resembeling (sp?) Frost's with a rotating panel or keeping mine (LuSiD's) and building 1 cp with swappable parts.that way I don't have to have 4 huge panels, I can have the panel and just put whatever controls I want onto the panel and lock them down and get to playing.

Each have pro's and cons, the biggest con for the rotating would be a complete reconstruction of my cab...

The biggest con for the swappable piece panel is you can't really plexi the panel.  

Does anyone out there have a swappable piece panel? Help me out guys....

I have a swappable panel and *love* it.  It's a little more work but well worth it.  For example I can support any new control as I find them on eBay.  I just picked up a Xybots joystick and can't wait to make a module for that.  If you have any questions about how I did mine just let me know.

[telengard]

I just finished converting to a modular "piece" panel over the weekend inspired by a thread I saw here several weeks ago.  I had a 24" wide single "classic" control panel that I replaced with a fully modular "piece" panel.  The panels are interchangable down to 2" wide spacers.

 Joysticks (4 and 8 way) and spinner are mounted on 4" wide panels, a set of 6 buttons on 6" wide panels, a 3" trackball on a 8" wide panel and so on.  I also have 2", 4", 6" and 8" spacer panels along with different joystick types so I can make pretty much any layout you can imagine within the 24" wide original cabinet.

  My "regular" fighter layout has two joysticks, two 6-button panels and either a spinner or 4-way joystick panel in the middle.  However you can swap it any way you want (joysticks on the right, tron style, dual joysticks for tank games, etc...) by just moving the pieces and spacers around on the 24" rails.

  I used RJ45 panels and a USB hub under the panel to connect individual panels and it works great.  Each joystick or button panel occupies one RJ45 slot and I duplicated some ports so I can connect (for instance) two joystick panels to the same port on the IPAC.  You can hot swap the controls - both USB and RJ45 connectors.

   I also came up with a pretty innovative way to mount and lock the panels so there is nothing visible from the top of the panel and also each panel can be swapped with no tools in a few seconds.

  It was a lot of work to make all of the panels and wire them- but the net result is pretty cool.  Something simple like swapping the spinner for a 4-way joystick takes less than 15 seconds since you just pop the old panel up, remove the USB connector, plug in an RJ45 connector and pop the new panel in.  Alternately you can reconfigure the whole panel in just over a minute.   You don't need to buy duplicate controls and its easy to add new ones at will by just mounting it on a blank panel.  Also the cabinet maintains its nice classic 24" wide look - no frankenpanel.  Finally I was able to keep my pinball buttons on the side and front - which I would have had to give up in a rotating panel scheme.

  I'm still finalizing a few of the panels (trackball, top fire joystick) and I have some minor cleanup to do (painting the edge of the panels so the space between them is less obvious).  I'll post some pictures in the next week or two.

I'm very curious to see how you handle holding down the panels and can do it so that nothing is visible *and* no tools.  Sounds awesome.  How sturdy is it?

[Doc-]

Here's the key:
  The panel slides under the bezel and then locks down on dowels drilled in rails both front and back.  There are holes in the bottom of each panel which match the dowel locations exactly.

  In this picture I propped a joystick panel up on the back dowels/rail and under the bezel showing the position it might be in just prior to inserting it.  You rotate the panel down onto the back dowels which locks the back lip of the panel under the bezel.  The panel also gets set onto matching dowels in the front dowel rail.   You can also see the edge of the two RJ45 wall outlets and my slide out keyboard tray below the panel.

  This gives each panel only one degree of freedom.  All other movement is stopped by the dowels, rails or bezel.  You basically have to pull the panel straight up from the front edge to loosen it at all.

  The only panels you pull up while playing are joysticks - so each of these panels has a roller cabinet latch on the inside front edge.  The other panels don't require a latch.

  The setup is surprisingly robust so far.  Pressing the joystick forward (even very very hard) does not generate enough moment on the cabinet latch to break the seal because you have a 3" arm working to rotate a 11" panel with a latch at the end of it.  You basically have to yank the joystick straight up (i.e. vertically towards your nose - not a normal direction of movement) very hard to break it loose during play.  On the other hand you can easily lift the front edge of the panel up with your hand and overcome the roller latch to swap the panel.  

  Just pop the front edge up, wiggle it off the back dowels a bit and then pop the new one in and press the front edge down.  Each panel has one RJ45 or one USB plug (i.e. for trackball or spinner), so there is no real work there - you can hot swap all of the panels - both USB and RJ45.

[telengard]

Here's the key:
  The panel slides under the bezel and then locks down on dowels drilled in rails both front and back.  There are holes in the bottom of each panel which match the dowel locations exactly.

  In this picture I propped a joystick panel up on the back dowels/rail and under the bezel showing the position it might be in just prior to inserting it.  You rotate the panel down onto the back dowels which locks the back lip of the panel under the bezel.  The panel also gets set onto matching dowels in the front dowel rail.   You can also see the edge of the two RJ45 wall outlets and my slide out keyboard tray below the panel.

  This gives each panel only one degree of freedom.  All other movement is stopped by the dowels, rails or bezel.  You basically have to pull the panel straight up from the front edge to loosen it at all.

  The only panels you pull up while playing are joysticks - so each of these panels has a roller cabinet latch on the inside front edge.  The other panels don't require a latch.

  The setup is surprisingly robust so far.  Pressing the joystick forward (even very very hard) does not generate enough moment on the cabinet latch to break the seal because you have a 3" arm working to rotate a 11" panel with a latch at the end of it.  You basically have to yank the joystick straight up (i.e. vertically towards your nose - not a normal direction of movement) very hard to break it loose during play.  On the other hand you can easily lift the front edge of the panel up with your hand and overcome the roller latch to swap the panel.  

  Just pop the front edge up, wiggle it off the back dowels a bit and then pop the new one in and press the front edge down.  Each panel has one RJ45 or one USB plug (i.e. for trackball or spinner), so there is no real work there - you can hot swap all of the panels - both USB and RJ45.

Very nice indeed!

I definitely like the RJ45 idea, is it expensive?  I use molex connectors which are OK, but not the easiest thing to deal with.  I don't think I'm good enough w/ woodworking to do the dowels.  The rack panels I use are idiot proof.  

[Doc-]

No the RJ45's were not that expensive.   I searched around the internet a bit and found the "wall socket" inserts for < $3 each.  These just snap into two wall socket panels which cost only a buck or two.  

The cables for each panel are made from 3 foot patch panels cut in half.  These are a bit short so you need to be careful when wiring, but they are long enough for my layout.  Half of a 5 foot cable would be better.  Again, I searched around online and found 3' patch cables for $1.50 each.

Totalling it up - I had around 8 sockets (I have duplicates for each button set and joystick to let me have two joysticks do the same thing - as well as a control button socket) and used 4 patch cables - so that comes to somewhere around $30.  Considering the number of panels (8 wired with RJ45) and ease of use factor - that is not too bad.

The 4 port USB hub I bought about a year ago for < $10.  Go to pricewatch.com and you can find one very cheap - even with shipping.

The picture shows the patch panel.  The IPAQ sits on the back side in the center of the panel.  The hanging object on the right is the USB hub (not too elegant - but I had it laying around).

[telengard]

No the RJ45's were not that expensive.   I searched around the internet a bit and found the "wall socket" inserts for < $3 each.  These just snap into two wall socket panels which cost only a buck or two.  

The cables for each panel are made from 3 foot patch panels cut in half.  These are a bit short so you need to be careful when wiring, but they are long enough for my layout.  Half of a 5 foot cable would be better.  Again, I searched around online and found 3' patch cables for $1.50 each.

Totalling it up - I had around 8 sockets (I have duplicates for each button set and joystick to let me have two joysticks do the same thing - as well as a control button socket) and used 4 patch cables - so that comes to somewhere around $30.  Considering the number of panels (8 wired with RJ45) and ease of use factor - that is not too bad.

The 4 port USB hub I bought about a year ago for < $10.  Go to pricewatch.com and you can find one very cheap - even with shipping.

The picture shows the patch panel.  The IPAQ sits on the back side in the center of the panel.  The hanging object on the right is the USB hub (not too elegant - but I had it laying around).

The RJ45 idea is great.  I'm now thinking of switching over all of my modular panels to it except using RJ11 instead since at most I have 3 wires used.  The reason why it would be a good change is because I would only need two hands to plug the control module in.   Right now w/ molex connectors I pretty much need 3 hands.  1 to hold the control, 1 to hold the male molex, and one to hold the female molex.  I should have thought this through more.

So are the RJ45 keystone things easy to crimp or impact?  Do the wires stay put in there?

[jerryjanis]

The rj-45 wall-mounting things really look nice!  I'm using an ugly set of molex connectors.  It works very well, and was really cheap, but I wish I knew about the possiblity of using your system!  Looks great!

Here are some basic pics of my system:





Not pretty, but very functional.

[Doc-]

So are the RJ45 keystone things easy to crimp or impact?  Do the wires stay put in there?

The RJ45 wires are a bit thin, so you need to take some care with them.  First, you absolutely must have the stranded RJ45 wire - which is used for patch cables. The solid stuff is unworkable for crimping and tends to break too easily.

  Since I converted an old non-modular control panel over, in most cases I kept the old wiring in place (22 guage stranded) and just twisted the old wiring with the RJ45 and then crimped it together using an insulated connector.  This is not as pretty as directly wiring it but it seemed a lot more secure to me than crimping the thin RJ45 alone.  I also secured the RJ45 cable to the board in several places with staples so I could not inadvertantly pull the wires out.  So far I have not had any breakage even though I'm handling the joystick panels all of the time.

  On the IPAC of things - the RJ45 sockets are designed to take the wire - you basically just push it into place and two thin edges cut into the wire and make the contact.  For connections to the IPAC itself, I just twisted the wires together and screwed them down, much as you normally would.  In most cases I had more than one wire going into the IPAC (for example there are two JOY1 sockets, two JOY2 sockets and so on so I can map more than one joystick to the same port) which helps to secure the small wires.

One other nice feature - since ALL of the inputs (including the pinball and control buttons on the cabinet) plug into an RJ45 jack, I can actually just unscrew the patch panel and remove the IPAC panel as a complete unit for servicing.

I think the RJ45 is more flexible than an RJ11 - you can support joysticks with buttons, six button panels, or (as I have done) add "thumb" buttons to the joystick panels that align with your six button fighter panels.  Plus if you want to wire the control buttons to a control port you may need 6-7 inputs.

 

[GGKoul]

Mortalpawn

I love the design and I'm probably going to wire my buttons your way.  As the Printer cable that I spent wiring all night yesterday is causing me grief.  Since the wiring is too thin.

Just a question, how did you wire the grounds?  Did you daisy chain them and just add the ground to one of the RJ45's?  I assume to one that was always going to be plugged in.  

Can you send a close up of your plates?  As I'm interested in reading what the descriptions are.

Thanks!
-GGKoul

[Doc-]

I decided to use a separate pin for the grounds - pin 1 on the RJ45.  That leaves 7 inputs for buttons, or in the case of joysticks I have the four directions plus up to three buttons inputs.  Obviously on each panel itself the grounds are daisy chained to each other from pin 1 on the cable.

A useful byproduct of having all panels grounded on pin 1 is that you can plug button panels into joystick jacks and visa versa.  For example a 4 joystick setup is possible (two player, two joy tank games?) by plugging the second joystick for each player into the button jacks.

I don't have any closeups of the wiring handy - I will try to take some tonight or tomorrow morning.

[telengard]

So are the RJ45 keystone things easy to crimp or impact?  Do the wires stay put in there?

The RJ45 wires are a bit thin, so you need to take some care with them.  First, you absolutely must have the stranded RJ45 wire - which is used for patch cables. The solid stuff is unworkable for crimping and tends to break too easily.

  Since I converted an old non-modular control panel over, in most cases I kept the old wiring in place (22 guage stranded) and just twisted the old wiring with the RJ45 and then crimped it together using an insulated connector.  This is not as pretty as directly wiring it but it seemed a lot more secure to me than crimping the thin RJ45 alone.  I also secured the RJ45 cable to the board in several places with staples so I could not inadvertantly pull the wires out.  So far I have not had any breakage even though I'm handling the joystick panels all of the time.

  On the IPAC of things - the RJ45 sockets are designed to take the wire - you basically just push it into place and two thin edges cut into the wire and make the contact.  For connections to the IPAC itself, I just twisted the wires together and screwed them down, much as you normally would.  In most cases I had more than one wire going into the IPAC (for example there are two JOY1 sockets, two JOY2 sockets and so on so I can map more than one joystick to the same port) which helps to secure the small wires.

One other nice feature - since ALL of the inputs (including the pinball and control buttons on the cabinet) plug into an RJ45 jack, I can actually just unscrew the patch panel and remove the IPAC panel as a complete unit for servicing.

I think the RJ45 is more flexible than an RJ11 - you can support joysticks with buttons, six button panels, or (as I have done) add "thumb" buttons to the joystick panels that align with your six button fighter panels.  Plus if you want to wire the control buttons to a control port you may need 6-7 inputs.
 

I would definitely need to have at least some rj11's since I have a connector currently for each button.  My goal was to support *any* game layout and sometimes that means some weird combos.  For asteroids there are 3 modules that have buttons.  The left (with 2 buttons), the center (with 1up 2up and hyperspace), and the right (2 buttons).  That's one example.  I have them color coded too so I don't have to do a lot of remapping of inputs.

I also found something called 'pass thru' keystone jacks.  Phone cables are cheap so I figure I could just use those and not have to do any crimping.  WooHoo!  

Great idea using these though, thanks for sharing!!

[telengard]

So I took the plunge and bought a bunch of keystone jacks etc.  I bought the rj45 ones only because the rj11/12 ones didn't seem as common and the rj45 ones are cheaper.  The only bad thing will be a lot of the pins/wires will not be used.  I got pass through ones too in the hopes of avoiding having to crimp.  I'll just need more cables.  I bought a 24 port patch panel too for $11.  Not too shabby...

I got all the stuff at www.coolgear.com, their prices seem pretty good, about $1 for a 3 foot cat5 cable and 2.50 for the keystones.

[Doc-]

FYI,
  I just remap my existing layout to play asteroids - I have a six button fighter panel with the extra seventh thumb button for both players.  

  The bottom row buttons on the player 1, 2 panels can be mapped to be thrust, fire, rotate and the thumb button on the player 2 panel is hyperspace.  If you do the mapping in the software right then you can duplicate the original button layout very closely without building a separate set of panels.

[Aceldamor]

LuSid's CP is pretty big, and I've modded the CP box to cover the entire CP instead of leaving that big lip on all the edges. I've been toying around with a couple of ideas, kind of a hybrid situation mixing JJ's cab with telengard's stuff.

I'll have to build a prototype to see how operative and beneficial it would be