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Steering Wheel Control Panel Q
Minwah:
I have been thinking of designs for my control panels (I plan to have 4 swappable panels), and I hit apon a slight problem.
Basically, I want a panel with a 360deg wheel + hi-lo shifter. This means I will only have 1 button/key input on the panel. Now my start buttons and coin inputs will be permanently wired to an IPAC, but I will have no up/down etc. inputs to control the FE.
What do you guys do about this? I figure I can either put some extra buttons on the CP, or mount some extra buttons somewhere else on the cab (maybe near the start buttons, on a panel between CP & monitor). Neither of these is really ideal, but I suppose on the CP would be best so not to have un-needed buttons when say the joystick panel is in place.
Any thoughts/suggestions would be great...
paigeoliver:
Why wouldn't your up down shifter plus start button suffice to control the front end? Up moves the front end up, down moves it down, start starts.
Of course that all depends on what kind of shifter you use. There are analog ones, ones that have a single switch (generally for the UP part), ones with a switch in each position, and ones with a switch in each position and a neutral zone in the middle.
My suggestion is to get one with a switch for up, one for down, and with a neutral zone. If the one you get doesn't come like that, it could easily be modifed.
Adding pedals could make your job a bit easier.
Minwah:
Thanks for your reply...
I already have the shifter, and it is the type which only has 1 microswitch which is either on or off, so that would not work too well. But yes, I suppose it would be possible to add another microswitch for the other position, but not so easy to add the neutral zone, since the shifter springs either up or down.
I also plan to add pedals, but the ones I have are both analog.
Perhaps I should just figure how to code mouse/joystick support in my FE!
Rocky:
I'm currently working on an analog wheel and shifter CP.
First of all, I haven't even thought about controling the FE :P But, I'm doing a spyhunter type wheel so I'll have some input options.
About your shifter, I have a similar model as you do. I tested using one key (either pressed or not) shifting in different driving games on the keyboard. I found that this did not work. So, I hacked the shifter and added a second microswitch. I plan to hook them to separate inputs on my IPAC and map the controls in MAME to accept either input for the shift command. I tested this on my keyboard and it worked.
Just something you might want to think about.
Rocky
shmokes:
Hmm...I had only thought of conrolling Windows on my driving panel (since most the racing games I'm interested in are Windows PC games rather than arcade emulated games. For this I was going to try to mount one of those $3 translucent trackballs from Outpost.com from a couple months back.
I'm using a steering wheel with six buttons on it, plus paddle shifters so I'd guess I can use those. I think they can be mapped to keys...maybe. It's something that I may need to think about too, though. Are any frontends controllable with a mouse?