Racing Cab layout - some quick feedback needed

[vidmouse]

Going to work on my racing cab this week and try to get 'er going, finally... have a rough sketch in mind of what I want to do but thought I'd run a final by everybody to see if there's buttons or controls I'm missing.  I didnt' draw the pedal but it does have one.  I'm doing a gamepad hack and mouse hack for this.  See my attachment for details...

[Turnarcades]

Not quite sure what we're looking at here - what's with the random button layout on the left and the flight stick (?) on the right?

If building a racing cab I'd recommend hacking a decent existing wheel/pedal setup, as you can retain things like force feedback and have integrated buttons and other cool stuff. I've got three wheels I eventually intend to use that all have their own merits - a Gran Turismo force feedback wheel with shifter unit and pedals, a cheapo PS1 wheel I may hack into a Bar-Top unit, and an excellent Tevion wheel, which has all of the above, plus a handbrake unit too, all easy to hack and separate when I eventually find time.

[vidmouse]

Sorry, this is what is on my cab already:



The shfiter's a simple switch that has two buttons on the end,
not a true two-switch two-position stick.

[Minwah]

I wouldn't bother with the additional buttons (or possibly only add one or two).

You have coin slots so you don't need coin buttons, you can  move in your FE/Mame tab menu with the wheel, and you don't need P2 button since it is only a 1 player panel. Granted you might need 2 or 3 buttons for some games, but maybe the buttons on the shifter would ok for this (?)

[vidmouse]

Thank you!
This saved me a bunch in design.
I didn't realize what was possible with the frontends
and the way I was controlling them.
I also decided to mouse-hack in the Y-direction, to
simplify the menu scrolling  (Mala which I'm using wasn't
so friendly to X-dir mouse scrolling).  ... but that shouldn't
be a problem for games since I can set MAME to steer using
any Mouse direction...

Decided I still need a few additional buttons...
One for ESC, One for Pause.  The green button
already there is the 1 pl;ayer stert I believe.
I still might make a coin button since I have a lot of
kids come over to play and don't want them
runnin' off with all my change....  Meh.

Did the first part of the work today, got the mouse hack working.
Took awhile b/c I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work until
I reasoned that I needed more power for the hack than the ps/2
mouse was supplying... drew it from the main power supply instead.

[mytymaus007]

What type of wheel is that 270 or 360 and what games will you be playing. Im in the process of building a driving panel but there are so many combinations for MAME driving games. I want to do a swappable panel so i can switch out shifters when needed and have 2 different wheels for all games

[bkenobi]

If he's doing a mouse hack, he must be using a 360 wheel.  If it were a 270 wheel, it would already have a pot in there that he could just hook straight up to a optiwiz/minipack/apac/dual strike/etc.  The pedals are either one or two switches or else another pot.  I don't know what game that is, so I can't look it up to see for sure.

[vidmouse]

Yep, I'm using a 360 wheel.  The game
is "Special Criminal Investigation"



The pedal (1) is two switches, and there is a "dead zone" in between
them (presumably to give it some "analog-ness").

[bkenobi]

Ha, I didn't notice the "Special Criminal Investigation" text right on the CP before.   

[severdhed]

i woudn't bother with coin buttons, what i would do is add switches behind the coin reject buttons on the coin door.  that way you can have coin buttons, without having to add them to the cabinet.  plus it just seems more authentic

[vidmouse]

Bravo, I like this idea...
have to look into it, see how I can do it w/
what I've got on hand.

BTW, funny story with my racing cab this morning...
was tired of hearing the steering make this awful
squeeking grinding noise everytime I turned the wheel
so I cleaned out all the unnecessary junk (stuff I wasn't
using since I'm MAMEing it) cleaned off the gears of
the wheel, and WD40'd the gears, and now it's a niiice
clean "whrrrr" when I spin the wheel, even spins
a little bit more freely now, like Pole Position.

Still on a "whrrrr"  high...

[severdhed]

it is pretty easy to do.  it really depends on the coin door, but there are alot of examples on the forums of how this is done.  on my first cabinet, i used two tiny switches that i removed from a mouse that i was hacking for a trackball interface.  i just hot glued them to the coin mech area so that they would be activated by the reject button. 

on my donkey kong cabinet, i used two standard pushbutton switches that i mounted using little metal brackets that i found in the cabinet.

[bkenobi]

I personally recommend a switch with a lever on it.  That way you don't have to push the button to exactly the right point to add a coin.  I had standard switches originally, but I kept knocking them off.  I wouldn't push the reject in far enough to activate the switch so I'd get no credit.  Then, out of frustration, I'd go too far and max out the travel...errr...I rammed the reject button into the switch too hard and it would pop off (that makes it hard to add more coins).   

[vidmouse]

i used two standard pushbutton switches that i mounted using little metal brackets that i found in the cabinet.

I opted to do this, more or less...  Used just one (had an extra one, and didn't feel I needed
to convert both) and drilled and used cable ties.  It works....



Did my drilling today, here's an update on the panel:



and my mouse hack



and my gamepad hack

[bkenobi]

Wow, when I said switch, I meant just the switch.  I guess putting the whole button assembly in there could work too.   

[severdhed]

Wow, when I said switch, I meant just the switch.  I guess putting the whole button assembly in there could work too.   

yeah, i just used a switch also, but hey, as long as it works

[Zebidee]

Looks like he needed the whole button, otherwise the cable ties wouldn't have enough to hold onto.

[vidmouse]

Looks like he needed the whole button, otherwise the cable ties wouldn't have enough to hold onto.

Exactly.   Or rather, they could hold onto it, but it wouldn't align properly.  Rather than make something up to align it properly, better to "sacrifice" a button I found (was a junker that didn't have a retainer anyway--came with a junk harness someplace).  I couldn't think of a better use.  I left the cable ties untrimmed in case I need to make some adjustments later.

[bkenobi]

Like severd said, if it works...   

[vidmouse]

Yesterday I finished the wiring.  Haven't tested it all out yet because I don't have the software loaded yet.  Picked up a Cyberacoustics computer speaker set with subwoofer for the sound and figured out a way to mount it while keeping the volume control at a place where i can reach it (had to drill a little more), and picked up new light for the marquee.  Was hoping to reuse the but the stuff that was there didn't look in too good of a shape.

[vidmouse]

Finally got my cab "done" for now and playable, installed it with the help of a neighbor.  I had to do some rewiring on the gamepad on Saturday b/c not all the grounds on the gamepad were connected.  But it was only about a morning's work.  Unfortunately, the turbo button on the stick is non-functional (problem with the unit as I got it, not my wiring)... didn't feel like cracking open the stick to fix it.

I installed MAME and Mala and set to work configuring different games.  Started with 18 games or so... heavy favorites are Outrun, Roadblasters, Badlands, Championship Sprint, and the Pole Positions, and of course, SCI.   Roadblasters is really incredible on this cab.  Had a bunch of kids over today playtesting it and they loved it.



The pic shows the cab with the front access panel off so that I can access the PC.