keywiz help - not working - need help

[michelevit]

I just picked up two eco keywiz - they are usb versions with the no soldier option.
I went ahead and plugged them in and Windows XP pro found it as a new hardware and
said it was ok to use. I went and tryed to see if i could get some letters typed on a wordpad
to test it, but nothing happend.

I then installed the hardware, and it installed, but didn't connect with the keywiz.

the frustrating thing is that i purchased two encoders. one for me and one for a friend.
I couln't get either one to register. Any ideas on what I am doing wrong? I already tried
it on another computer- still no recognition.

I've done several keyboard hacks and several gamepad hacks and I finally brokedown and purchased
a legit controller and I cant seem to make it work.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance and I look forward to making it
work. Hopefully I'll have something working by this weekend.

MV

[MYX]

I may be totally wrong, but I think that the wiz family of products are considered a game pad device and will not place letters as in a true keyboard. It may be working just fine. Try again with a joystick or push button with mame.

[michelevit]

I still can't get it to recognize via the configuration software.
Frustrating. I don't have mame on this pc- its a fresh install
of the os.

[mj147]

I may be totally wrong, but I think that the wiz family of products are considered a game pad device and will not place letters as in a true keyboard. It may be working just fine. Try again with a joystick or push button with mame.

Both Eco's are keyboard encoders, so both should register as keys.

michelevit try using it with out your main keyboard being plugged in.

mj147

[Fozzy The Bear]

I still can't get it to recognize via the configuration software.
Frustrating. I don't have mame on this pc- its a fresh install
of the os.

The Keywiz encoder is (as far as your PC is concerned) a Keyboard!.... You can't have two keyboards plugged in at the same time or the PC gets very confused.

Unplug your keyboard and plug the Keywiz in by itself! It should be recognised as a USB Keyboard! Re-boot the computer and it will show up as your keyboard

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[michelevit]

still no luck. i've tried two different encoders, two different
usb cables and two different computers. Frustrating hobby this
is.

It shows up in my device manager as a Human Interface Device. My keyboard
is a non Usb PS2 type. My mouse however is a usb. I did unplug my mouse
and it still doesnt work.

thanks for the help and any advice is greatly appreciated.
 

[quarterback]

I have two 'keyboards' (a KeWiz Eco and a PS2 keyboard running through a ps2-usb dongle) hooked up to my PC simultaneously with no problem.

I don't remember ever having to install any "configuration software" to get it to work.  But I think I need more info on what you're doing

First off, are you sure that you have the buttons wired correctly?   How many buttons do you have wired to the KeyWiz?   Which leads are they attached to?   Did you splice into an IDE cable to wire the buttons?   Do you have ALL of the IDE wires conncted to something?  If not, are they terminated or are they hanging loose?

The first thing I'd do is to check to see what's attached to your KeyWiz and how it's attached.  There could be a ton of issues here.  You could be shorting something out with dangling wires.  You could have miswired your buttons.  You could have not wired your ground correctly.  You could have a bad IDE cable etc etc etc

[RandyT]

Whoah....It's getting crazy in here


First fun fact:  There is no such animal as a USB KeyWiz.  A KeyWiz is PS/2 only, for reasons I have made all too clear in the past. 

If you have a USB controls interface from GroovyGameGear, it would be of the GP-Wiz variety.  GP stands for "gamepad" as that is how these performance-oriented interfaces are viewed by the PC when connected.

The KeyWiz configuration software is not designed for, nor will it work with the GP-Wiz line of controls interfaces.  For 99% of what these will be used for, the native gaming control output of the GP-Wiz encoders will work fine.  Seeing that games are designed primarily with gaming controllers in mind, it's not a wonder. 

However, it may be advantageous to have one of the buttons output a key like ESC  or ENTER for the few emulator programs that might require it.  RBJoy and JoytoKey are fine 3rd party freeware apps that will let you do this.  These can be found on the web, or I can email them upon request.

RandyT

[BobA]

Good call MYX, Randy T just verified your earlier post.

 

[quarterback]

Good call MYX, Randy T just verified your earlier post.

 

Well, not exactly

I may be totally wrong, but I think that the wiz family of products are considered a game pad device

It is the "GP" family of products thar are seen as gamepads.  There are plenty of other "wiz" products which are not seen as gamepads.   For example: The KeyWiz Eco 2, the KeyWiz Max 1.5 are both keyboard encoders. The Opti-Wiz is a Trackball and Spinner Interface and the LED-Wiz is a Lighting and Output Controller

[MYX]

Can I be just sort of right and we just clap wit 1 hand.

[BobA]

I caught the jist of what you are saying even without the exact facts.  So one hand clapping all the way around.

[michelevit]

problem solved. not really a problem but an error on my part. this item i purchased is not the keyboard encoder,
its a gamepad encoder. works fine. shows up as a game controller in the control panel.

what threw me off
is that on the circuit board are printed values like 1234, aceg, ikmo, rldu and 8765. i am guessing the company
that makes these use the same board as the keyboard encoder.

they look very similar, but one has a usb and the other has a traditional keyboard connector.
I was very excited to receive the part and turns out it actually works fine, i was just expecting it to send
keystrokes like the keyboard hacks that i am accustomed to.

thanks for all the help and thanks to groovgamegear.com for providing this item.

mv.

ps works fine, no need for drivers, very fast encoding and great low price. 

[quarterback]

what threw me off
is that on the circuit board are printed values like 1234, aceg, ikmo, rldu and 8765. i am guessing the company
that makes these use the same board as the keyboard encoder.

I believe it's a different board, but I'm with you on the 'confusion' part.   I'm sure there's a reason for the way they're laid out, but the repetition of letters/numbers on the board makes it confusing for me as well.  Is your wire connected to the pin marked "U" or the other pin marked "U" on the board?   The "G" indicates a ground... well, except for the one time that it doesn't. 

Below is the diagram for the KeyWiz (keyboard encoder).  Could it be a little more confusing?

The non-ground "G" pin defaults to "J", the "U" to an "R", the "R" to a "G" the "G" to a.... 

[Fozzy The Bear]

problem solved. not really a problem but an error on my part. this item i purchased is not the keyboard encoder,
its a gamepad encoder. works fine. shows up as a game controller in the control panel.

what threw me off
is that on the circuit board are printed values like 1234, aceg, ikmo, rldu and 8765. i am guessing the company
that makes these use the same board as the keyboard encoder.

So you don't know what it is you bought.....!!?? you don't have the data sheet in front of you??, you can't read the words GPWiz that are on top of the chip in big letters??

When you said it was a Keywiz Eco plugged into your USB, the only assumption we could make was that you WERE plugging a Keywiz Eco into your USB port via a PS2 to USB adapter. In which case it would have shown up as a USB keyboard.

Pleased to see you sorted it out, but please, in future try to describe items accurately or we all end up giving you answers that you either don't need or which are way off the mark.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear) 

[RandyT]

I believe it's a different board, but I'm with you on the 'confusion' part.   I'm sure there's a reason for the way they're laid out, but the repetition of letters/numbers on the board makes it confusing for me as well.  Is your wire connected to the pin marked "U" or the other pin marked "U" on the board?   The "G" indicates a ground... well, except for the one time that it doesn't. 

The first time someone starts to use a custom codeset the board labels wouldn't match anyway.  Would you rather try to remember that you wired P1B7 to your ESC key?   Another alternative would be to use standard connector labeling practices and label only the pins at the end of the connector and refer to everything as a number between 1 and 40 and hope everyone is an EE student.  Didn't think that would fly either, so this was a compromise.

Plain English pin labels are only good if you plan to hook things up exactly as they are printed on the board.  Seeing that the interface boards are used in a number of industries, this would probably be confusing to others.  Otherwise, I think the diagram is fairly clear about which input does what.

The board design is the same for all units, which is one of the reasons why in the latest batch of boards, references to specific models have been removed from the screen. 

Everything else is done the way it is as a matter of economy and board space. 

RandyT

[quarterback]

Another alternative would be to use standard connector labeling practices and label only the pins at the end of the connector and refer to everything as a number between 1 and 40 and hope everyone is an EE student.  Didn't think that would fly either, so this was a compromise.

I think counting from 1-40 is much more straightforward than the progression of:

V+, G, G, G, 8, 1, 7, 2, 6, 3, 5, 4, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, U, L, D, D, L, U, R, G, G, S


No offense intended Randy, I love your products, but having a non linear / non-chronological system where multiple pins have the exact same identifier seems like an un-intuitive way to do it.   As I try and work my way down the IDE cable, I'm going from L to D to D to L to U to R


It'd be much easier to know that 25 comes after 24 and I can always figure out which wire is #24... because it's the 24th wire.   If I give you 40 ends of an IDE cable and say "Tell me which wire is 'U'" How could I accomplish that without counting anyway?  You have to count and then go to some kind of "key" or "legend" to figure out the answer.  If you're going to count in the first place, then why not just make the 5th wire be wire number 5?

You don't have to be an Electrical Engineer to do this.  Anybody who is 5years old or older can count from 1 to 40 and quickly tell you where any one of those numbers lies in the progression.  I don't know who can say the same for the series of pin-labels on the KeyWiz.   Maybe you can immediately tell me which wire is "R", but I doubt many other people could do that.  Everybody else has to count and then look up the wire.

[RandyT]

You don't have to be an Electrical Engineer to do this.  Anybody who is 5years old or older can count from 1 to 40 and quickly tell you where any one of those numbers lies in the progression.  I don't know who can say the same for the series of pin-labels on the KeyWiz.   Maybe you can immediately tell me which wire is "R", but I doubt many other people could do that.  Everybody else has to count and then look up the wire.

Sorry, but I think you are making much more of an issue of this than it is.  The diagram clearly shows everything exactly as it is on the board.  It could have geometric shapes that repeated themselves 8 times in succession and it would still be pretty obvious which pin had which function merely by examining the position on the board.

Without the diagram, it would be problematic.  If you are having trouble with the diagram in hand, I don't know what to tell you.

RandyT

BTW, do you know how to count from 1 to 40 on a 40-pin header?  It is not necessarily intuitive to someone who hasn't done it before.  Just like the pins on a chip, you have to know how to count them or you could be completely wrong.  From the standpoint of an IDE style cable, it's linear.  But not from the standpoint of someone putting wires directly to the inputs.  Other methods need to be taken into consideration.

BTW2:  It should also be noted that the ECO board is a derivative design from the MAX.  In order to use the same chip from the MAX (where the layout tends to be simpler to follow) it had to end up like this on the header.  Anyone who finds this too confusing, should probably pony up the extra $14 for the MAX version.

[quarterback]

You don't have to be an Electrical Engineer to do this.  Anybody who is 5years old or older can count from 1 to 40 and quickly tell you where any one of those numbers lies in the progression.  I don't know who can say the same for the series of pin-labels on the KeyWiz.   Maybe you can immediately tell me which wire is "R", but I doubt many other people could do that.  Everybody else has to count and then look up the wire.

Sorry, but I think you are making much more of an issue of this than it is.

You're the one who said counting from 1 to 40 would be a problem because your users would have to be Electrical Engineers.

The diagram clearly shows everything exactly as it is on the board.  It could have geometric shapes that repeated themselves 8 times in succession and it would still be pretty obvious which pin had which function merely by the the position on the board.

With wires attached to the board, who's looking at the board?  I'm looking at the end of the wires which are going to be attached to a button.   In fact, with the board mounted to something and with the IDE cable attached to the board, I can't even see half the labels on the board.  They're blocked by the IDE cable itself

Perhaps this is why you and I see this differently.   You're assuming that users are reading the labels off the board.   I'm not looking at the board as I'm connecting my buttons.  I'm counting wires.  And with the current setup, I have to count wires, then go to the diagram and count (up and down) to figure out the letter that corresponds to that particular wire, then I have to see what keyboard letter corresponds to the letter you've assigned to that wire.


But I'll agree wholeheartedly with one point you made.  Having 8 geometric shapes repeated over and over would be just as good as the current labeling. 

[RandyT]

Read my edits.

This is probably more constructive than arguing methodology.

The following is the default key set on a 40 pin cable with the red wire to the left:

1. +5v
2. Ground
3. Ground
4. Ground
5. L CTRL
6. V
7. L ALT
8. C
9. Space
10. X
11. L SHIFT
12. Z
13. A
14. S
15. Q
16. W
17. I
18. K
19. J
20. L
21. 1
22. 2
23. P
24. 5
25. 6
26. ENTER
27. TAB
28. ESC
29. Right Arrow
30. R
31. Left Arrow
32. F
33. Down Arrow
34. D
35. Up Arrow
36. G
37. Ground
38. GROUND
39. Shazaaam!
40. N/C

RandyT

[quarterback]

Read my edits.

BTW, do you know how to count from 1 to 40 on a 40-pin header?  It is not necessarily intuitive to someone who hasn't done it before.

This I can understand.   I can see where you would be concerned that not everybody necessarily knows how to count up and down and across the header.  But, that being said, that's exactly what I have to do when I use the diagram.   Since I'm counting wires, linearly, across my cable, I then have to go to the diagram and count up and down.  So I'm not sure that all of that potential problem has been eliminated.


Like I said, I think you and I are simply imagining the KeyWiz being used in different ways.  I can't imagine having to look at the board to determine what wire should be connected where.   

If 3 of my buttons get disconnected, I don't want to have to pull the IDE cable, look to see what letter attaches to which wire and then trace the disconnected wires back to that letter on the board, then go to a chart to see what that letter-wire is really connected to.  It makes much more sense for me to count across the end of the IDE cable that's actually attaching to the buttons.   I see that wires "3" "5" and "7" are disconnected and then I can see which buttons should be attached to "3", "5" and "7"   OTOH you, if I understand correctly, would use the board by reading the letters right off the board itself.

But, again, beyond that, that's only part of the confusion I see.  The other part is that connection-indication-letters are repeated even though they indicate different keystrokes. 

The "U" connection doesn't do the same thing as the other "U" connection.  I think there's a reason that: composite A/V cables use different colors for video, right-audio and left-audio, or that RJ-45 wiring uses unique color coding for each wire, or why home electrical wiring doesn't consist of 3 or 4 wires which are all red.  The color or the identifying letter, number or symbol is unique because the purpose of each wire is unique.   

Anyone who finds this too confusing, should probably pony up the extra $14 for the MAX version.

I feel like you're upset with me for bringing this up.   I can't believe that nobody has ever questioned the layout before or found it to be un-intuitive.    In any case, I love your products Randy and have great respect for what you provide at a reasonable price.    Don't be pissed just because I would prefer each wire to be uniquely identified and in a linear fashion.

Peace.

[RandyT]

Like I said, I think you and I are simply imagining the KeyWiz being used in different ways.  I can't imagine having to look at the board to determine what wire should be connected where.   

That may be, but many ECOs are used in the way I am describing, with users soldering wires directly to the inputs.  In fact, I can safely say that many more go out without headers than with.

The "U" connection doesn't do the same thing as the other "U" connection.

Like I said, it comes from the MAX version, the need to make the software usable with it and the fact that there isn't enough room for 2-digits next to each pin.  If you look to the right side of the connector there is a J1 and J2 next to the pin rows.  The UDLR inputs should be labeled U1, D1, L1, R1, U2, D2, L2 and R2 indicating the joystick up, down left and right connections for player 1 and 2.  Not enough room on the board, so this was the solution.  Was it a great one?  Probably not, but there weren't too many others, given the constraints.

This label scheme, BTW, makes much more sense on the MAX version. 

Don't be pissed just because I would prefer each wire to be uniquely identified and in a linear fashion.

If you haven't already, print my last post.  It should make it easier for you or anyone else using an IDE cable. 

FWIW, I'm not angry.  It just gets a little frustrating when I find myself defending design decisions that were meant to find middle ground from 5 different directions.  Ideally, there should be 2 or 3 different versions of the Eco and probably a software version for each to make it as intuitive as possible for the different ways it can be used.  Unfortunately, doing such things also increase costs dramatically, which pretty much defeats the purpose of the product.  The ECO is a high-performance / minimum cost / minimum convenience product.  The MAX increases convenience at a price.  My point was that the MAX is more intuitive because it's the original product around which the software was designed and there is more board space for labels (and of course, screw terminals .)  If one doesn't want to deal with the complexities of the ECO, the MAX is simply a better choice.

And while I'm sure a number of folks might feel the same way you do, only about .1% of my customers have mentioned it to me.  Most likely because the first thing the rest probably did was take a few minutes to make a chart like the one in my last post  .

But I will look at adding that table to the printed docs if there is value to be found in it.

RandyT

[Xam]

Whoah....It's getting crazy in here


First fun fact:  There is no such animal as a USB KeyWiz.  A KeyWiz is PS/2 only, for reasons I have made all too clear in the past. 

If you have a USB controls interface from GroovyGameGear, it would be of the GP-Wiz variety.  GP stands for "gamepad" as that is how these performance-oriented interfaces are viewed by the PC when connected.

The KeyWiz configuration software is not designed for, nor will it work with the GP-Wiz line of controls interfaces.  For 99% of what these will be used for, the native gaming control output of the GP-Wiz encoders will work fine.  Seeing that games are designed primarily with gaming controllers in mind, it's not a wonder. 

However, it may be advantageous to have one of the buttons output a key like ESC  or ENTER for the few emulator programs that might require it.  RBJoy and JoytoKey are fine 3rd party freeware apps that will let you do this.  These can be found on the web, or I can email them upon request.

RandyT

Responses such as these are why I started buying from GGG. Just got my key wiz in today! Man...talk about a small footprint!  Got all the essentials for building my cab...now if the wife would just let me start cutting wood (gotta wait til we move )

Xam

[RandyT]

Here's something else that might be of value.  Basically, which button I would hook to each of the wires.

 Again, red stripe on the 40-pin cable to the left (toward the PS/2 connector) :

1. +5V
2. GROUND
3. GROUND
4. GROUND
5. P1 BUTTON 1
6. P1 BUTTON 8
7. P1 BUTTON 2
8. P1 BUTTON 7
9. P1 BUTTON 3
10. P1 BUTTON 6
11. P1 BUTTON 4
12. P1 BUTTON 5
13. P2 BUTTON 1
14. P2 BUTTON 2
15. P2 BUTTON 3
16. P2 BUTTON 4
17. P2 BUTTON 5
18. P2 BUTTON 6
19. P2 BUTTON 7
20. P2 BUTTON 8
21. P1 START
22. P2 START
23. PAUSE
24. COIN1
25. COIN2
26. ENTER
27. TAB
28. ESC
29. JOY1 RIGHT
30. JOY2 UP
31. JOY1 LEFT
32. JOY2 DOWN
33. JOY1 DOWN
34. JOY2 LEFT
35. JOY1 UP
36. JOY2 RIGHT
37. GROUND
38. GROUND
39. Shazaaam!
40. N/C

Should be correct, but it was done quickly.  Probably only need 6 buttons per player, so ignore 7 and 8 or use them as you'd like.  Let me know if I boned it.

RandyT

[quarterback]

If you haven't already, print my last post.  It should make it easier for you or anyone else using an IDE cable. 

Thanks. 

FWIW, I'm not angry.  It just gets a little frustrating when I find myself defending design decisions that were meant to find middle ground from 5 different directions.

 

Dig it.   Sometimes I can't help being frustrating   But seriously, I wasn't trying to be annoying.  You'll note I've had the KeyWiz for over a year and never complained;  I only mentioned it because of this thread.   Consider me a completely  satisfied customer.

Thanks Randy

[mj147]

Here is a even an easier idea to hooking everything up   

Hook up any wire from the IDE cable to any button you choose (not your grounds, vcc, shaz n such) and just change the Mame default inputs. 

Ive done this with 2 of my Eco's and everything sets up fast and easy-
I guess for ~20 bucks some folks want cake n icecream too

Both been up and running for about a year with no probs- Great product Randy BTW 

 
mj147

[quarterback]

Here is a even an easier idea to hooking everything up   

Hook up any wire from the IDE cable to any button you choose (not your grounds, vcc, shaz n such) and just change the Mame default inputs. 

Gee, I wish I'd thought of that 

Clearly if that were the best solution, Randy wouldn't even bother marking the boards at all. 

I guess for ~20 bucks some folks want cake n icecream too

I'm not asking for "cake n icecream" or any extra or add-on at all.  I was just looking for a rationale behind something that seemed unecessarily complicated

[michelevit]

just want to let everyone know that i built my controller over the weekend
and the joywiz worked great. i shows up as gpwiz game controller. it is small enough
that i was able to just hot glue it to the inside of my controller. works great! much easier than
hacking a keyboard which is what i've normally done. i'd definatley would recommend this option.

[Tiger-Heli]

Joywiz

Just want to chime in on the discussion between Quarterback and RandyT.

If you know followed the history - i.e. paid attention when the KeyWiz was released - the button labels make much more sense.  My KeyWiz Max is not confusing at all.  The KeyWiz Eco was designed to have the majority of the features of the max in a smaller, lower cost footprint.  That meant that the pins weren't ordered as logically as they could have been, but he also didn't want to completely change the labelling so he didn't confuse users who were familiar with the Max and were now buying additional Eco's.

As I've said before, RandyT got this RIGHT on the KeyWiz.  Quoting from my page:

Level of Usage

Of the three main encoders, I've noticed for a long time that the I-PAC is the most beginner friendly, the MK64 (discontinued) is the most advanced in setup, and the KeyWiz is somewhere in between.

For example - the I-PAC has inputs labeled 1SW1 through 1SW8 which always leads to people posting questions like "What games need 8 buttons?" (Doesn't help when the X-Arcade uses this set-up too!). (Short answer: None, but they're handy for Joystick 3 or dedicated admin buttons).  Then, when you get more advanced, you get to, "Well, I was going to use 1SW8 for Rotary Joystick CCW, but then the NumLock LED will flash when I rotate the joystick, and that's annoying, so I can reprogram 1SW8 to "1" and reprogram "Start1" to "V" and then I wire the Start1 button to the 1SW8 input, and the Rotary Joystick CCW output to the Start1 input, etc." which gets confusing.

OTOH, the MK64 just says "This Pin is Input 00, these Pins are Inputs 01 through 63, you figure out how to program them!"  Which means the end-user has to figure out "What inputs do I really want, and what can I live without?" and occasionally "There, 64 inputs, now let's build: Where do I wire Coin 4 to? Oops, I didn't assign it anywhere!, Hmmmn, what do I need to drop out now to make room for it?" However, this is preferable if you know how you plan to lay out your panel and may not want the same inputs as everyone else.

The KeyWiz strikes a nice balance, IMHO, in that the Joystick Keys are pretty well set in stone, but all other terminals are alpha-numeric, but the default codeset gives hints about what to include.  The KeyWiz Max 1.5 even improved on the previous version in that inputs are now shown as U1 and U2 (previously and on the Eco, they are both U, but the position on the board makes the usage clear).

One recommendation I would have made was that the Player two joystick inputs could have been lower case (U,D,L,R for Player 1, u,d,l,r for Player 2), but I don't know if the board silk-screening process would have allowed for this.