Hey guys. Sorry for not being up here as much as I should, but school has bogged me down a bit. Anyways. The news on the FPS controller are great indeed. This possibility will allow Sean much more freedom in the use of the controller.
By using a PS2 controller, the compatibility list greatly opens up since we can use adaptors to connect to almost any console or PC available. Theoretically, as long as we get the PS2 pad working right on the PS2, it should work with any other console with just the use of an adapter.
Has anyone looked into the possibility of connecting the Happs analog sticks to the FPS Master controller? If we can not connect our analog sticks to the controller it is useless, right?
I've been talking to Dave (http://dave.bit2000.com/) about an alternative way of connecting the Happ's analog sticks to a console. He says that he might be able to adapt his AKI Analog Kontrol Interface to work with an Xbox. If he can pull this off I think it would be the best solution. You wouldn't need to take apart a FPS Master controller, and assembly would be significantly easier. An Xbox to Ps2 adaptor or a usb to Ps2 adaptor could be used to connect the AKI to the PlayStation. I will have to search some more to find the best adapter to use. 1hookedspacecadet and everyone else, what do you think about this? It might not be the best solution for a PS2 controller, but it would definitely work on an Xbox.
One downside to this would be the ability to remap the controls. The AKI does not have this functionality built into it. I know of two ways to overcome this. Like someone suggested earlier, we can route all of the buttons to the back of the controller and have a series of switches or a patch panel that would allow the user to manually rewire the buttons. A more elegant solution would be to add some type of hardware logic, maybe a simple cpld or something, that could handle the remapping. This is unfortunately beyond my level of expertise though.
The design of the cpld, in theory, is very simple. Have a separate control button that, when pressed, would tell the cpld the the following two button presses should be remaped. Like so...
[control] [button4] [button6]
Then the cpld rewires 4 and 6. Are there any engineers out there that could do this? Anyone know if there is a better way to implement hardware remapping?
JSCO: The more possibilities we have to interface the controller, the better. The PS2 hardware has a standard that every controller must meet in order to function properly. This won't necessarily mean that the hardware used is the same, but it has to function in the same fashion. This is apparent in the difference between Sega branded DC controllers which use Hall Effect sensors to detect movement in the analog pad, compared to most aftermarket pads which use Pots to detect movement.
The FPS pad looks to use pots, and I believe they should be 10k pots just like on the other PS2 pad that I looked at. The pot Resistance will not really matter, since we are getting 2 analog joysticks with 100k pots that we can adjust to a lower Resistance value. It would be great if Dave could come up with an interface, but it seems to me that it would be a lot of extra effort to recreate something that we seem to have put together for us already with this FPS controller.
Other than that, I just bought a shiny new Dewalt DW621 Plunge router to start the project on a good note, and along with it came a Keller dovetail jig to make this box nice and strong. I can't wait to start putting this thing together!
Again I want to thank everybody for their input and ideas, without you guys the concept of remapable controls would still be up in the air!