The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Project Announcements => Topic started by: NickG on August 27, 2007, 09:11:26 pm
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Hello.
This is my first and maybe only ever "upright" cabinet. I started this cabinet sometime last summer.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/uprightfar.jpg)
For the cabinet dimensions, I started with Sasquatch's Arcade paradise (http://www.arcadeparadise.org/) 3 plans and adjusted everything for my monitor and control panels. So, yeah, this is just another generic upright...but wait a sec, watch this (click on it!)
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/th_NickGMarquee.jpg) (http://s171.photobucket.com/player.swf?refURL=http://s171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/%3faction=view¤t=NickGMarquee.flv/&file=http://vid171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/NickGMarquee.flv&fs=1&os=1&ap=1)
Planning on loads of fun with this setup. It's gonna take a bit of work controlling/automating the marquee change for my computer games and someday hopefully my console games, too. The internally projected marquee image is bounced of of two mirrors, then it hits the plastic.
here are some more photos:
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/speakergrill.jpg)
These speaker covers + grills are the front faces of some satellite speaker boxes I bought from the local electronics junk shop. I like the screw-less look. The speaker panel is 1/4" MDF. This piece is separate from the marquee holding 5/8 piece which is at a different angle. This is my third try; I did a lot of trial and error designing on this part and the monitor bezel.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/marqueeholddetail.jpg)
The marquee (currently) is a sanded plastic panel. Trying to detail here how it is supported from the inside by a 3/16" thick strip of , which has been glued and screwed to a 1/2" MDF; it is supported from the outside by some 3/4" t-molding.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/topmarqueehold.jpg)
The top of the marquee panel is supported from the inside by a mirrors edge instead of the 3/16" batten strip.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/projectorstand-1.jpg)
I had to build a way to adjust the projector angle, so here is a little stand. The playing cards on the left are a temporary level adjustment. The projector's position is very critical compared to the rest of the cabinet. The slightest maladjustment becomes magnified by the time it reaches the final image surface - the marquee - which I need to keep level and rectangular. The playing card on the right is also temporary. I am using it as a stay for the hinged movement of the stand.
The projector is a Mitsubishi PK-20 (http://www.projectorcentral.com/Mitsubishi-PK-20_PocketProjector.htm). I bought it specifically for this project because of it's small size and power consumption. It is a DLP that uses Colored LEDs instead of using a bulb and a color-wheel. This makes it very efficient - about 37 watts total. It is cool and quiet as well. It cost me $400(USA) plus shipping, I think.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/backcover.jpg)
This is the angled rear-top cover piece.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/backmirrorholder.jpg)
It holds the first mirror. I will probably just get some miniature clamps for each end of said mirror, so that I may adjust it's angle if I need to later. Currently it is only held in position by the friction and pressure between the boards. From this mirror the marquee image is reflected to the angled top mirror.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/viewfromback.jpg)
just a view from the top-rear of the cabinet, with the top-rear cover piece away.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/consolesandcontrolsshelves.jpg)
rear access to consoles control panels and stuff.
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wow u got the video marquee working. a lot of us tried to make our own but quit due to price, time consumption, etc.
good job, it may seem generic but that video marquee is fecking awesome
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Holy crap $400 just on the marquee :o :dizzy:
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Wait... what? You're using a projector for the marquee? Did anyone else think of that?
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You should look in the software forum, show what you got here, and see if any of the old timers might have a batch file or other trick to coordinate your marquees there. That's HOF material right there. First time I've seen anything like it and it is quite amazing. Congratulations on an amazing addition! :applaud: :notworthy:
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That's one hell of a Marquee. :notworthy:
Hats off to ya.
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woahhh!
:)
How much did it cost for the marquee?
With the price of everything going down though, and this projector looks tiny too, it may be a great alternative.
KUDOS!
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Dude, that is frikkin sweet! You got a good price on that projector too. I've seen that projector before and it is SUPER neat.
Congrats on getting it projecting well. Now for my advice: Look into getting some rear projection plexi. ;D
Here is a site that could help you out.
http://www.stewartfilmscreen.com/materials.html
The techplex150 would probably be your best in price point to quality. I have no idea on pricing, but since you will only need a very small piece it shouldn't break the bank - especially for someone paying $400 for a marquee projector. ;) If you play your cards right, you could possibly swing some free samples that would fit your marquee area. ;D
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If you play your cards right, you could possibly swing some free samples that would fit your marquee area. ;D
that's exactly what I was thinking.....
Really cool concept.... :applaud:
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That is greatness. Using that projector that is lit by LED's with a 10,000 hour life is awesome. I bet that is low heat as well. :notworthy:
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I'm VERY impressed.
Is there any way you can borrow a camera and get some better photographs and/or video? I think your project has a good chance of winning an award.
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Excellent.
I totally thought of that too (yeah right)... but never had the money. Glad to see it works so well!
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I so want a marque like that. That adds a serious bling factor to the cab . :applaud:
Wow.
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when you tought you saw everything...
nice one :applaud:
Jay :cheers:
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Thats one of the coolest things Ive seen on here. Way to go. See if you can get some better video. Nice job! :applaud:
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That's frikkin awesome! Like some of the others had said, I had thought of it (keyword "thought") but the cost and rigging required to do it kept me from trying.
How well does it work in regular light situations (with the lights on)?
Have you figured out a software solultion yet? I might be able to help with that.
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Btw, I dunno if there is physically enough space in a cab, but with a bit of light trickery it might be possible to have a standard marquee reflected up there when the machine is turned off. I believe searching for "pepper's ghost illusion" will give the info needed.
Just an idea. :)
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oh hell yes.. this is beautiful!! two thumbs up man way up..
Neil
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:applaud:
That's one of those projects that a lot of people have dreamed about, but nobody's ever actually done. Way Cool!
:applaud:
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Really cool :cheers: As someone who haa a dual screen cab, I would love to find a way to have marquees of the games show up on the other screen, instead of just being blank unless I'm playing Punch-Out and such hehe :)
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I keep seeing this thread near the top of the forum and didn't quite get it until I saw the video.
:notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: Awesome work there dude.
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So have you put in a call yet to that company??
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I'm going to wait until they perfect e-paper, then I'll add a changing marquee to my cab.
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Really cool :cheers: As someone who haa a dual screen cab, I would love to find a way to have marquees of the games show up on the other screen, instead of just being blank unless I'm playing Punch-Out and such hehe :)
That doesn't seem that difficult, isn't that just an image viewer, moved to full screen on the second screen, showing a pre-selected image?
(Now a Marquee... ah... that's way cooler :-))
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So have you put in a call yet to that company??
I e-mailed a representative about the material. If he doesn't respond to e-mail I will call when I have enough money to purchase some.
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How well does it work in regular light situations (with the lights on)?
It looks crap compared to a regular marquee. I will up some better images and/video later. I am only using sanded Lucite as the final image surface, now. Ambient light is OK, but direct light reflects clearly off the smooth front surface of the Lucite and washes out the projected image. Hot-spotting is present in the dark and in the light. I need different material for the final image surfaces
Have you figured out a software solution yet? I might be able to help with that.
No, I will be glad if you can help. I want to have the front-end control the marquee during game selection and during game-play (be it on emulator, console or jamma). The solution would probably be the same for SodaPopinski's and McCoy's cabinets, too.
I am going to add console hardware selection circuitry as well; my goal is to have one program control it all. A Mala plug-in would work, then I could control hardware switching via existing plug-ins with some home-brew circuitry.
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Cool, there's somebody worse than I am at photography. I could barely see a thing in that video but I love that projected marquee idea. That's slick. :applaud:
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How well does it work in regular light situations (with the lights on)?
It looks crap compared to a regular marquee. I will up some better images and/video later. I am only using sanded Lucite as the final image surface, now. Ambient light is OK, but direct light reflects clearly off the smooth front surface of the Lucite and washes out the projected image. Hot-spotting is present in the dark and in the light. I need different material for the final image surfaces
Have you figured out a software solution yet? I might be able to help with that.
No, I will be glad if you can help. I want to have the front-end control the marquee during game selection and during game-play (be it on emulator, console or jamma). The solution would probably be the same for SodaPopinski's and McCoy's cabinets, too.
I am going to add console hardware selection circuitry as well; my goal is to have one program control it all. A Mala plug-in would work, then I could control hardware switching via existing plug-ins with some home-brew circuitry.
You might want to try to get ahold of a busted rear-projection tv. The "screen" on those tvs is basically a giant fresnel lense (that can be cut fairly easily) and thus it looks good even in high light situations. If you are having bright spot issues, then you need to put a fresnel lense in there somewhere. The page magnifiers they sell at office supply stores work really well.
I'm not so sure I can help with the software if that's the exact way you wanna do it. I have nothing against mala, but I have my own fe and I have no intention of writing software for somebody else's. I was gonna write a dual-screen utility for mamehooker and then mame would automatically switch it for you on launch. I mean technically you could already do it via the display system in mame hooker, but it currently doesn't support scaling or pngs, so it's probably best I just write a new plugin/utility. Mame hooker now has dde/command-line support so mala should be able to communicate with it, either out of the box, or via a simple plug-in.
Knowning about the resolution of the images you are using might help a little with that as well. The marquee packs intentionally have low-resolution images, so it might not be a bad idea to download hi-res scans for your favorites. Of course I don't know the res of your projector either.
Btw, way to go moderators, you split this topic and didn't put a re-direct message on it. Took me forever to find it again. ;)
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I am going to add console hardware selection circuitry as well; my goal is to have one program control it all. A Mala plug-in would work, then I could control hardware switching via existing plug-ins with some home-brew circuitry.
Could you elaborate on this. It is not clear what is being controlled. Sounds intriguing.
Great idea on the marquee. Good luck perfecting the image.
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I am going to add console hardware selection circuitry as well; my goal is to have one program control it all. A Mala plug-in would work, then I could control hardware switching via existing plug-ins with some home-brew circuitry.
Could you elaborate on this. It is not clear what is being controlled. Sounds intriguing.
Great idea on the marquee. Good luck perfecting the image.
I could power the control pins of many sets of 4066 IC's, power relays, etc. from an LED-wiz output. This means I can have front-end control of the power, audio, video, and controller ports of each console based on a game or console selection from the menu - somehow. Not sure if I need to build my own software or not yet. I hope not.
Some additional hardware I hope to someday integrate control of from the front-end or at least the computer is:
·a stepper motor driven giro-bolt control panel lock-down/release assembly
·4/8 way switching of a joystick such as the MAG-STIK. I don't own yet own one of these, but it seems likely to be able to interface to electrical switching. If this was a computer only cabinet then I would use a programmable analog such as the U360.
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I set up MALA with an 800*1200 layout (modified from the "Blue" layout) and stacked my two displays in Windows. Mala is running in the primary monitor with the marquee showing in a small section of the extended monitor (the projector marquee .) The Mala layout and, thusly, the marquee stay rendered while the emulator runs.
A short, quick video demonstrating the functions I have so far (click to watch):
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/th_arcadesep120327am-1.mp4) (http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/arcadesep120327am-1.mp4)
I took this video with a better camera and the lights on but Photobucket degraded it a little. It should demonstrate the marquee changing during game selection and displaying properly when the game runs as well. I also showed some AVS eyecandy via Winamp at the end.
You may notice in the video that when I start a game, both the marquee display and the Primary display seem to blank for a second. This is only because I had chosen full-screen startup image in the MALA settings, and have set the image to a plain black bitmap. I could not figure out how to disable the startup image entirely, and if I use Mala's default windowed image it persists during game-play along with the marquee image.
A further issue I have to resolve is, if I want to change the resolution of the primary display for the game, the marquee image on the other display moves around. This may be possible to resolve by changing layouts per resolution (custom game-lists) or by re-ordering the display identities and/or locations in Windows-maybe)
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simply amazing... :o
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Really cool stuff there Nick. :cheers:
TTFN
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Excellent work there!
The video reminded me of "The Blair Witch Project" :dizzy:
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:notworthy:
Need to find a projector... need to find more money...
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Wow, neat, great, wonderful, exciting, awsome, and all the other superlatives that you can think of. I have seen that little projector and never thought to use it for marquees. Keep up the good work. :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:
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@All: Thanks for the comments.
I've made a little progress
A further issue I have to resolve is, if I want to change the resolution of the primary display for the game, the marquee image on the other display moves around. This may be possible to resolve by changing layouts per resolution (custom game-lists) or by re-ordering the display identities and/or locations in Windows-maybe)
I seem to have resolved my marquee moving around problem by reversing the order of my displays in Catalyst and swapping the menu section and the marquee section in my modified Mala layout. Now my main display can switch resolutions to fit my games without bothering the Marquee image size/position.
I finally bought some giro-bolt and giro-bolt strike plates.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/DCAM0107.jpg)
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/DCAM0108.jpg)
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/DCAM0109.jpg)
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/DCAM0106.jpg)
To securing my control panels' bottoms -
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/DCAM0098.jpg)
-to my cabinet control panel shelf.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/DCAM0096.jpg)
It is a very sturdy connection, but it is still easy to make/break from inside the cabinet:
supporting my cab with a stick to demonstrate <glue commercial style>
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/DCAM0095.jpg)
I finished routing, trimming, laminating, and applying t-molding to my main control panel. Home Depot stopped stocking the color pattern of the laminate I was using for all my projects. I had to special order the laminate for the control panel , which cost me about $30 more than the stocked laminate previously had. I made the mistake of assuming that laminate was a slower industry than it is. I had great plans to build much more furniture to match this laminate. As it turns out, WilsonArt, the laminate sheet manufacturer still makes the same color pattern, but the finish texture is not exactly the same. I tried to take a picture of the texture difference to make an example, I can't seem to get my camera to capture the detail, so, obviously, they blend together well. If you are going for a less common laminate than plain black for a project it is probably a good idea to buy it all at once.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u315/nickgravley/DCAM0091.jpg)
I still haven't found a good rear-screen material for my marquee. I ordered some by-the-foot Da-tex last week but I am still waiting on it. It isn't a rigid material, though, which would be easier to assimilate. The guy I was corresponding with about the techplex 150 had not responded to my last mail. I've just resent my response to ask for a local representative's contact information, so I might still work something out with them if the Da-tex is not good enough.
Today, I ordered a 4-port Ir-learning (electronic) Component Video + Audio Switch (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10112&cs_id=1011201&p_id=3027&seq=1&format=2) for three of my video game consoles. I hope I can rig it up to Mala via the serial plug-in or to another frontend or launcher. Otherwise I might mount hidden buttons to the top of my cabinet. The rest of my AV will connect directly to my monitor which also has a serial connection and IR receiver.
@Howard_Casto: Hi, I didn't know you wrote a fully-featured frontend with a GUI and everything. I will try it out soon, so that I will already be familiar with it when you make your new release.
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Man that is SLICKER THAN ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---!
I am VERY impressed.
Any chance of a higher res video? Maybe youtube?
Dude, it freakin rules!
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Coolest marquee out there.
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I am really excited about my latest innovation to my upright cabinet. I tried the LED-Blinky route for a while, and found I wanted more... I am in the initial build phase of my upgrade. The intent is to have projected button legends inside the actual button. I am setting this up with my electric ice 2 buttons. I was incredibly displeased in the fitment of the Electric Ice 2 switch holders and how loose they have proven to be with any of the various micro-switches I have tried to install to them, and decided to put them to more optimal and extravagant use by creating a framework beneath my panel which allows the button plunger retention feature to block an infrared pair when pressed. First I verified good clarity and diffusion in the concave and the convex button plunger. Then I drill a hole in the bottom of each button, large enough for the projection, small enough to hold the plunger retention and spring. So far I have tested the projection across multiple buttons and designed a circuit with some ir pairs and some 7404's. This is co-incident with another upgrade; I am also upgrading my U360 based controller to output directly to some consoles, mainly Ps2, via Dual-Shock 2 controller hacks (this is an impressive upgrade on it's own, full analog joy capability to consoles via Arduino and digital potentiometer, plus true digital mode with micro-switches added to the U360's, switching with a 4066 if I ever figure one out, or simply using a bulky relay board I have already tested with in my proto-type) The controllers connections to PS2/PC and the digital/analog switching is done via Arduino compatible over Com/Serial batch commands from Hyperspin. I have yet to work out the software methods for the display of the legends. Most likely I will make use of CPWizard and custom graphic or one of the other Artwork/Marquee helper apps.
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...Abandoned Projector buttons for now. I will probably hot-glue or shim my microswitches to my electric ice 2 buttons in interim. For the Projector buttons project, I drilled out the bottom of the buttons to the spring diameter and the springs started shifting a bit and getting through the bottoms. This could be be corrected later with more modification such as shaving off the buttons bottoms entirely and adding a clear plastic sheet with holes drilled for the button retention prongs and the optics to detect the prongs adhered to/through it, but I am saving this task for later and focusing on DualShock Analog from U360 raw output automation. So now I am just using the Electric Ice 2 RGB buttons as-is.
The cabinet which was once the subject of this thread is now a Dedicated (mostly) Pop'n'Music Cabinet. New computer, old slimline PS2, and an Arduino with a KA05 shield kit. Running Hyperspin. Computer & computer-emulated big-button games are setup with configurations common to many other hyperspin setups. Playstation 2 games are started via IR commands from the Arduino (w/ a transmitter) on a real Playstation 2 slimline through it's remote IRr sensor (with some custom programming on my part but most by another party which I am not sure is allowed for discussion or reference here. IR stuff I used on the Arduino was fairly pedestrian after adding Ken Shiriff's Library and should be ok to relate here for educational purposes here if requested; PS2 software modification I added was a workaround for the controller type to navigate to and launch the correct game (pop'n controller has down/left/right shorted). The KA05 shield on the Arduino in this cabinet switches Playstation controller lines from PC/PS2 (PC is using Parallel port and PPJoy as featured on Emulatronia and other sites) , and I added a couple more relays to the kit in some unused pcb space to switch the audio channels from PC/PS2. My Video is switched via IR commands and a second transmitter taped to my XM29, including anunderscan/overscan switch command. (PS2 is connected via a GBS 8220 for now, despite the crappy white artifacts those produce on every monitor and power supply I have tried.)
So. I cloned my cabinet, mostly The new cabinet has same profile but is narrower by some parts of an inch. I decided to try a 1/3 LCD from ebay for the dynamic Marquee this time. At first I updated the image from Hyperspin Helper, but now I have added a raspberry pi B+ which seemed kind of underpowered for what I bought it for originally as the Marquee driver. This RPI accepts commands via putty from my PC to change the marquee images, but I have not yet completed setup of prelaunch programs/whatevs in Hyperspin/other frontend. My intent with the rpi is to keep the analog XM29 monitor in my new main cabinet as "default monitor" and //display1 in the modern Windows operating systems, while offloading the marquee image tasks to the rpi to something other than my main GPU. I've also continued efforts to allow for Dualshock Analog Support from My UltraStik360s. So far I have an Arduino which translates the Raw Analog output from the U360 connector to some mcp42010's. My sketch as yet, (which I built on top of: http://arduino-projekte.de/index.php?n=65 (http://arduino-projekte.de/index.php?n=65)) , takes analog inputs from the U360's, and is able to set the digipots (42010s) values to the wires I have attached to my Dualshocks. Arduino processes a few times faster than a DS2 so latency should not be an issue, at least for the PS2 Games (PC games should still be able to use direct connection if needed once I have this sorted.) What I am working on now is being able to detect and toggle the analog mode of the Dualshocks. At first it seemed as though I just had to pulse low/high the analog switch line to toggle the mode, but now, after running into P1/P2 cross-controller toggling problems, I am looking at using relay to toggle the switch. I have resorted to installing IR LEDs in place of the original Red LEDs, with IR detectors stuck to them with some tubing to allow the Arduino to verify detection of the analog/digital mode.
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I will probably hot-glue or shim my microswitches to my electric ice 2 buttons in interim.
There's no need to take this approach. Just give the switch holder legs a good hard squeeze together, hold it for second or two, and they will remain in that position to hold your switches nice and tight. You won't break or damage the material in doing this, as it is extremely rugged.
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Thank you so much for the clue Mr. T, you benevolent plastic wizard, you! I have your buttons back in with RGB LEDs, for now, and tight for days!
Vitrolight Marquee Progress/Failures:
My original goal was to have marquee as DISPLAY2/Secondary in Windows OS, instead of DISPLAY1/Secondary, and to be at Pixel-Perfect resolution. I found my first success with pixel-perfect resolution on the RPi. This lead to many a misadventure. Sending batch commands from a front-end is no biggie, but I was met with performance issues when getting them to the Raspberry Pi. plink would be an easy solution for only changing the Marquee upon game launch, in a single-frontend menu configuration, but I have been spoiled by hyperspinhelper and wanted more. Sending plink commands from Windows CLI; I found, requires re-connection+login every time, which seemed possibly too laggy for something like a menu selection change in hyperspin or the like. Then I tried AHK scripting with an invisibly-windowed already logged-in Putty connection. This worked to quickly enough change the marquee from batch commands, but I encountered reliability issues returning to the CLI/frontend from the putty window. Abandon ship, try something else. I added a second video card to the cabinet (NV cards seem to not have a way yet available to persons of my knowledge to change a display number, and no, Ultramon cannot actually change it at least in my install of WIN7) I was then able to add the Vitrolight on HDMI/DVI as a secondary/DISPLAY2 from within windows. As a strange side-effect, with this second card installed, I was finally able to have a Virtual monitor from zoneos show up in the Windows display settings program. I was able to get a good image to my RPi by sending this secondary image via VNC to the RPi. Then I was able to run Hyperspin helper images to RPi, but I was disappointed by the lag, and still had thousands of pixels missing due to scaling. Due to the lag, rather than look into scaling the image on RPi or vitual monitor side, I tried CRU and Nvidia custom resolutions on the new card, connected directly to the monitor. I was able to remove left,right,top overscan on the new card (had to make it 1366x768@61Hz w/o LCD standard timings), but my VitroLight only has 243 or 244 vertical pixel rows viewable, so HyperspinHelper 1/3 option had lower- cutoff of the image. I tried HyperMarquee next, as it had user option to scale the image window. I tried and tried and tried, and eventually understood Hypermarquee+EDS setup. HyperMarquee would not draw anything normally to secondary card during setup, like it would not draw to it at all. I then abandoned hope for the foolproof avoidance of DISPLAY1-only programs, and will find a workaround for that if it later proves to be a real issue. I copied the custom resolution to my main card config and uninstalled the secondary. I know am using EDS+HyperMarquee sucessfully to have marquees scaled as I like, at the least.
The PS2 DualShock analog selection : I moved the P1 and P2 automatic analog selection switching to relay contacts to successfully avoid P1/P2 mode selection crosstalk issues, although I am not sure it was entirely necessary (I may have done wrong on the Arduino scripting or a buffer IC could do instead.) I have gained reliability of detection of analog vs digital modes for later scripting; by removing the Analog Mode indication led from the Dualshock, and wiring the cathode point which traces to the MCu on the Dualshock, to an Arduino digital input configured in script as a pullup input. I can reliably switch modes from batch script or buttons wired to extra Arduino inputs now.
I attempted to have my entire control panel connected through one 50p centronics cable, but encountered problems with USB noise or bandwidth or something; devices could be used individually but would not be recognized with various hubs, even with a separate power connection. I decided against this idea in-lieu of keeping the control panel portable and mostly dumb like my pop'n panel. To do this I decided to have a second Arduino just for the cab to control the PC/PS2/Whatever-Other-Console and AV switching in the CAB (just the cab stuff), and have Dualshock Mod Dedicated Arduino inside the controller with the powered USB hub which connects to 2 LedWiz, 2 U360s, and a trackball. (Now tempted to build a dedicated spinner cab now instead of adding it back in from my first project, and may liberate the TB, too, if i do not find games which use TB+Joy setup.) The end result will mean disconnect/connect of four plugs instead of one or more, but my track record has hinted to me that I may continue to prefer dedicated setups vs. ease of portability of existing setups.
I hope to share cab pron soon instead of wall-of-text, but I've had issues capturing the marquee image (too bright to my cellphone camera) and am not finished mounting/wiring the control panel guts. I gues some of this could be interesting to someone, so I will go ahead and post today.