Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: Liveinabin on December 12, 2014, 05:05:06 am
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Hi all. I need your sage advice.
My arcade cab has been evolving and I've run into a bit of an issue.
See, it started out as a multi console job with a chipped Xbox doing MAME duty(with a PS3, Saturn and PS2 in there too) - so for controls, I had two MC Cthulhu boards, each attached to an FDWidget LED board to make the buttons do pretty things.
Then I removed the consoles and built a PC to replace them. Here's where the problems start. The Cthulhu boards reported to the PC as game pads but, since they were two identical boards with identical Joy IDs, player 1 and 2 would switch at random.
So, I bought two Dual Strike PCBs to replace the Cthulhus, since these could report as joypads or MAME keyboards. However, due to (I think) the nature of modern motherboards to never turn the USB ports off when you shutdown, these boards always throw up a 'Device not recognised' error at boot. You have to unplug and reconnect them every time you power up, hardly fitting for a cab.
So rather than bash my head against that brick wall, I've done what I should have done at the start and bought a 2 player i-Pac PCB. Nice and simple.
It's on it's way and I've no doubt it'll work (being, after all, just a keyboard as far as Windows is concerned).
I was really happy about all this and then it struck me this morning - the LED buttons!!
In my cab, each players control PCB had a 5v out point and a common ground that the FGWidget (a board that makes the buttons light up in fancy ways when you press them) attaches to. Now, I'm installing a single PCB i-Pac. How do I get the lights working?
For a start, there's one PCB for both players and no obvious 5v out. I'm sure I could find 5v somewhere else (a hacked USB cable for instance) but then we wouldn't have a common ground so I'm not sure the lighting PCB would work properly.
I don't have to buy some other lighting solution do I? (I feel like I'm hurling money at this - I've got almost enough rejected stuff to build a second cab)
Anyway, thanks in advance for any advice you can give, I'm an electronics ignoramus but I'm willing to learn.
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Do you just want the LEDs always on? If so check in the PC, odds are you will find an extra molex connector in there. That has a 5v line you can use for always on LEDs.
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No. What I currently have are buttons that light up when pressed and then, when released, the light ripples through the other buttons. There's also a 'screensaver' mode that Cylons around when you leave the buttons alone for a few seconds.
It's really nice and I'd love to find some way to keep it.
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You're only "hurling money" at this thing, because you don't do your full research before you make a purchase. You need an LED controller, I recommend a PACLED64, and you'll need to run LEDBlinky.
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The FGWidget is an LED controller. Whats the difference between that and the LEDwiz?
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Never heard of it, but probably LEDBlinky compatibility.
ETA: Straight from the LEDBlinky website:
•Supports the following LED Controllers;
◦LED-Wiz and LED-Wiz+GP (Groovy Game Gear)
◦iPAC Ultimate I/O, Pac-LED64, Pac-Drive and U-HID USB (Ultimarc)
◦Howler (Wolfware Technologies)
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motherboards have a jumper to switch the usb power from +5sb to +5 (turning them off when the power goes off)
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How about trading everything in and just buying a Howler?
http://www.wolfwareeng.com/ (http://www.wolfwareeng.com/)