Happ 360° Steering Wheel

[Pitou]

Hello,

Anyone knows if I can use a mouse hack to connect this steering wheel to a PC? (Part # 50-2837-00)

Thank you.

Pitou!

[chrisindfw]

I was wondering the same thing. Happs does have a $150 connection that will take that wheel and able to connect it via USB.

http://www.happcontrols.com/joysticks/950800xx.htm

I was wondering if anyone has used these interfaces before?

[u_rebelscum]

You should be able to do a mouse hack or use the optipac or optiwiz for the 360 optical wheel.  I think that happs uses the same sensor board as their arcade trackball (NOT the ps2/usb TB boards), but am not sure of either as I don't have one.  I'll text one for you, if I can have the wheel after.

I haven't used happs UGCI either, but the driving version explicitly says "270° Pot Wheel Only, Does Not Support Optic Wheel".  Even so, I think you could hook the wheel up to the UGCI's TB X-axis, if I'm right about being able to be hacked to a mouse.  But cheaper to go minipac, optipac+ipac, optiwiz+keywiz, optiwiz+gpwiz, or some combo of the above if you just want digital pedals.  If you want analog pedals, you could go optipac+apac.  And you'll most likely get better support from here and ultimarc or GGG with the later, than with the UGCI & happs, since the later have all been tested by people here.  That said, I bet the UGCI will work fine, with the wheel hooked to the TB.

[Pitou]

Thanks for the answer.

I was thinking of buying a 360 steering wheel using a USB mouse hack, and for the pedal, I thought of using the PC gameport. I did some test with a POT connected to the X axis and putting a jumper between the 5V and Y axis (to simulate a joystick in Win XP), and it works fine. So I think I'll go that route.

btw, I heard that Vista doesn't support the gameport anymore and that some motherboard manufacturers doesn't include that port anymore, is that true?

If that's the case, I guess I'll have to buy an A-PAC, if I ever upgrade the PC or the OS. But that's another story...

Pitou!

[SavannahLion]

btw, I heard that Vista doesn't support the gameport anymore and that some motherboard manufacturers doesn't include that port anymore, is that true?

Haven't heard the news about Vista not supporting the gameport. Seems kind of hokey, but it might be possible since Microsoft wants to drop support for legacy hardware (but not the software  ).

As for manufacturers not including the port. Yeah, that's true, but it's not a recent development. I haven't had a built-in gameport on the motherboard since my K6-2 days. It's why I carried my Live! card around from PC to PC for so long.

[Pitou]

I did the test on a Vista PC and it doesn't detect the gameport, it seems to only see the MPU-401 MIDI, but no drivers

Pitou!

[SavannahLion]

I did the test on a Vista PC and it doesn't detect the gameport, it seems to only see the MPU-401 MIDI, but no drivers

I went looking on the MSKB and didn't find anything specific to the Gameport not working. One KB seems to imply that the gameport does work as long as the manufacturer of the card have drivers available. Another KB implies the gameport is being phased out, as recently as XP, with some of the older Sidewinder product support being dropped.

[AndyWarne]

We sell the exact same steering wheel and I can confirm it connects to the Mini-PAC and Opti-PAC.
Andy

[Pitou]

Andy,

I'm going to buy the steering wheel from Ultimarc, but would prefer a mouse hack, since I have plenty here at work that are not used. (I think we have more than 25 mice lying around)

Of course, I can't ask you if it'll work with a mouse hack or not, I guess it could hurt the a-pac, mini-pac, opti-pac sells.

So I'm taking the chance...

BTW, i already ordered a 4/8 way (on top switchable) joystick last year and it works like a charm!

Thanks!

Pitou!

[ZeroPoint]

Pitou...

I would really recommend you to spend $39 on a OptiPac instead of going for the mouse hack thing. With this board you will actually get two mice with two buttons each (4 separate inputs for mame + buttons) to connect wheels, spinners etc. In addition you can add more that that by sharing inputs with the automatic switch (although time delay should have been shorter).

The 360 wheel is much more fun than a pot-wheel. If you need to do some hacking I would recommend to take the pedals from som cheap driving set and connect them to the a-pac or similar as a pedal set for your 360 wheel. I am going to build me a Super Sprint set with two 360 wheels and two sets of pedals some time soon. Really looking forward to it. 

[u_rebelscum]

If it works with optipac, it should work with a mouse hack, as long as the mouse is "hackable".  Some mice don't have good solder points to hack to.  Some mice are too slow for high speeds (eg golf and bowling)  Others coughmostlogitechcough have a bad record of people here failing to hack.  I stopped trying to hack mice years ago, and use premade encoder boards now.

But if you still want to hack a mouse, go for it.  There's lots of information on hacking mice here and elsewhere on the web.  You can use the info from hacking spinners or trackballs; the only question you will have is on your wheel, which wire is power, which is ground, and which two carry the quadrature signal.  It should be labeled, or maybe Andy includes the info with the wheel.

[Pitou]

Thanks for the infos.

I already hacked a mouse for my trackball and have no problem at all.

Pitou!