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| USB controller hack HELP!!! |
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| johnnybleu:
Alright, so I'm hacking up a few usb controllers for my control panel, but it's been a complete nightmare. Long story short, I've been at this for nearly a week, and I have everything working perfectly. All the wires are soldered into place, and hooked up to the buttons, and all is functioning as it should. That is, except for one small detail.... For some reason, one of my controllers is constantly registering two button presses- left, and one of the shoulder buttons. I've gone through everything trying to figure out what could be causing this- calibrated the controller, double and triple checked my joints to make sure I didn't bridge the contact points, make sure I wasn't grounding anywhere, etc etc etc. I'm just completely baffled. The controller in question is a Sector 7 Xtreme gaming pad- dpad, 4 face buttons, 4 shoulder buttons, dual analog, and rumble. I didn't remove the analog sticks, but I did cut off the rumble motors which I later re-attached trying to fix the problem. I noticed the left direction sticking after I soldered my very first wire onto the contact (for left), but that eventually went away as I soldered more wires onto the board. I figured it just messed up the current or something.... By the time I was done soldering, everything was working beautifully, but after I hooked up all the wires to my CP, that's when I noticed the "sticking" buttons. At first, one of the "buttons" was just flashing constantly, and randomly stopped as I was snooping around the wires. Now, it's just always on for some reason... Anyway, if anyone ran into the same problem, or has any ideas or suggestions, lemme hear it coz I've had about enough of this. I REALLY regret not getting the I-PAC in the first place. Thanks in advance, and if you need more info just let me know. |
| tikbalang:
- minimize wire lengths to cut down signal interference between wires that are too long or crossed-over or sticking too close to each other. - if the circuit board uses common ground for the buttons, use one ground point on the circuit board and one wire going around each of the button's ground side. - some dirt might be causing the microswitch to bounce. - your gamepad maybe using some form of connection matrix, search the forum for "ghosting", "keyboard matrix", and use diodes to eliminate them. |
| johnnybleu:
Thanks for the reply! Well, I do know that one of the sticking buttons DOES have long wires, wrapped together- those are intended to be for the coin door. That's actually the button that was flickering for a while, but then worked fine, but is not constantly on. As for a common ground, there doesn't seem to be one for the dpad... I have a 6 button CP, and hacked into the 4 face buttons, along with the 2 right triggers for those, using a common ground and daisy chain set up. That all works perfectly. The directions, however, don't seem to have a common grounding point, since when I was testing the contacts all kinds of crazy directions came up (i.e. up became right, left was down, etc etc). Those ones, along with the remaining two trigger buttons have two separate wires for each contact. Oh, and the dirt in the microswitch, if you're talking about the arcade button microswitches, then that can't be it seeing as the controller registers the presses regardless of whether the wires are connected to anything or not. I'll do a search on the matrix thing, see if those would be the symptoms I have. Thanks again! |
| johnnybleu:
Okay, so I've made some sort of progress.... I've fixed one of the sticking buttons (not the directional one)- by accident. I ended up soldering the two wires for one of the rumble motors to a ground point of the shoulder trigger board, and voila. It works fine now. Now, for the left direction..... I removed the wires, but it's still registering the button press. The mere fact that there's some solder on the contacts seems to trigger it. Could it be that I fried something? I did notice something however. The two buttons that were/are giving me a hard time were accidentally bridged with some solder. To fix this, I cut some of the "fingers" of the contact points in an attempt to break the connection. Could it be that this is causing all these problems? As far as I know, just cutting bits of the copper circuit track at the ends shouldn't have any effect on anything, but I'm no electronic wiz. Is it possible that this is the root of my woes, and can it be fixed? I'd really like to get this to work, since buying an I-PAC now would seem like a monumental waste of time and resources... I've just put in os much work, and I'm so VERY close to have everything working that giving up now would be ridiculous. I'm just afraid it might be my only option. Thanks again. |
| tikbalang:
--- Quote ---Now, for the left direction..... I removed the wires, but it's still registering the button press. The mere fact that there's some solder on the contacts seems to trigger it. Could it be that I fried something? --- End quote --- could it be you soldered the wires to the N.C. (normally closed) side of the button? that would be equivalent to the button being pressed. you want the N.O. (normally open) and C (common or ground point). check again because it's easy to reverse the signal and ground wires. --- Quote ---I did notice something however. The two buttons that were/are giving me a hard time were accidentally bridged with some solder. To fix this, I cut some of the "fingers" of the contact points in an attempt to break the connection. --- End quote --- it's hard to tell where the "fingers" connect to. why don't you just cut the connection where the accidental bridging happened? --- Quote ---Could it be that this is causing all these problems? As far as I know, just cutting bits of the copper circuit track at the ends shouldn't have any effect on anything, but I'm no electronic wiz. Is it possible that this is the root of my woes, and can it be fixed? --- End quote --- post pics. hopefully you haven't fried your circuit board bad enough for the copper to separate from it. i'm not anti-ipac or anything but usbpads are cheap and you'd end up the same: connecting wires from the circuit board to buttons. if there are wires from the ipac ready to connect to buttons, then that's another matter. |
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