New Xbox USB Interface Board!!

[chris.arney]

I've been wanting to build an arcade cab for years, and have only now started working towards one. I decided to use an Xbox, but wasn't satisfied with the various ways of connecting buttons and joysticks to the Xbox. Not that any of them are bad, just none of them were exactly what I was looking for, so I decided to build my own. I wanted to have something that was clean to connect to (unlike soldering directly to an existing gamepad). I also wanted one board that everything plugged into. So, here is my first stab at it! Let me know what you think!!!

[sharpfork]

Cool project:

I asked you a bunch of questions on the coinops forum.  Here, I'll just say I'm sure folks would like more info about price and two player model.

I'll point out a few of my opinions:

• You mentioned in another post that you want to sell these.  You are entering an market that has quite a few options for xbox encoders but all of them give owners options of connecting other devices, not just the xbox.  Your price point is going to have to be pretty low to compete with the DualStrike (sold+open source), iPac -> xBox, xArcade + converter.
• I personally think the xbox is great but is a dead end when it comes to changing gaming devices.  I guess it could be used on a PC with the correct drivers too.  After asking around, it seems like making a Playstation 2 encoder and converting to various consoles it is much more flexible.
  See this: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=120588.0
  

[chris.arney]

I'm going to design it to support up to 4 players on one cable on the Xbox and PC. PC support is easy. Right now I know very little about the PS3 USB interface. I have researched the DC controller protocol in the past. It's kind of weird, but I think I could eventually add support for it.

I hadn't seen the DualStrike before. It's the closest to what I was looking for when I started looking around for what I want in an arcade cab. I'm going to have to research it further.

I don't know what it'll cost yet. I haven't finished selecting the final processor or all of the features. I'm leaning towards an ARM.

I'm not really trying to make tons of money off of this. This is more for fun. It seems like a really nice challenge. I'm open to suggestions for features, etc...

[sharpfork]

I'm going to design it to support up to 4 players on one cable on the Xbox and PC.

For 4 players, you are likely going to have to have 4 xBox cables, one plugged into each controller port.  Some emus might let you remap but not all of them will.  I'd think about doing two cables since not many folks run 4 player cabs.  Those who do just buy two.

You should talk with degenatrons too.

[chris.arney]

For 4 players, you are likely going to have to have 4 xBox cables, one plugged into each controller port.  Some emus might let you remap but not all of them will.

Which Xbox emulators don't let you remap buttons? I'm interested in having the ability to support multiple players on one connector, so I can do a 4 player cab with 2 light guns. That's not to say that a person would have to use one to support 4 players, but that's what I want.

[johnm]

Wouldn't you need an individual pin for every action? common, 4 for joystick, a,b,x,y,white,black, start and back and 4 optional for triggers and stick buttons. Thats a lot of inputs for 4 player support on one board.

[404]

I think this is a great idea considering there is practically nothing like it at the moment. I will however have to agree with PBJ to an extent. The issue here is that the xbox is quite old and xbox controllers are very cheap these days. Depending on the hardware used, it might just be cheaper to hack an old controller.

the tech enthusiast in me is still interested in this.

[chris.arney]

Yep, that's a lot of buttons! It's going to be somewhere around 100 for all the player buttons and other controls. I've got a good solution for that, but I haven't been able to prototype anything else yet. So I'm not going to talk about it till I know it works. But I don't want to do a matrix or anything. I'm waiting for another development board to get in to try a couple of other ideas.

My primary goal is to fit my needs, then adopt it to a wider crowd. I'm not trying to make a million bucks, so if no one wants one, I just won't sell any. No big deal. I mostly just want it to fund itself, and my cab. I do think I've got some great ideas that people will love, but I don't really like to talk about them much till I get them working.

[sharpfork]

Which Xbox emulators don't let you remap buttons? I'm interested in having the ability to support multiple players on one connector, so I can do a 4 player cab with 2 light guns. That's not to say that a person would have to use one to support 4 players, but that's what I want.

So the xBox is expecting each player to be plugged in a separate port.  Unless you have some magic like code that drives a multitap type device that allows you to push something like p2 button X through Player 1's port, you are going to have trouble.  I found that some emus support keyboard encoders so hooking up an iPac via USB worked but not predictably.  It only really worked in the mame core.  Console emus didn't let me map to anything other than standard gamepad buttons.

I think this is a great idea considering there is practically nothing like it at the moment... The issue here is that the xbox is quite old and xbox controllers are very cheap these days. Depending on the hardware used, it might just be cheaper to hack an old controller.

If it is super cheep or open source that folks could program an AVR for, focusing on the xBox 1 only would be OK.  If you can solder, a pad hack is way more cost effective.  I am finding s and duke controller for about $3 US these days.  This kind of solder-less solution would be cool for people who are building coinOps based cabs.

If I knew how to code for this kind of thing, I'd either:

• try to make a super stripped down Xbox only DualStrike (open source) on the cheepest chip that could support it
• Make a Playstation 2 version of this encoder and add converters for any other consoles I wanted to support.  As the best selling console of all time, there are a ton of options for converting controllers.

http://etokki.com/Xtokki360
http://dx.com/ps2-playstation-2-to-xbox-controller-converter-24856?item=2
http://dx.com/p/ps2-to-wii-controller-adapter-54000?item=15
http://dx.com/p/ps2-to-ps3-controller-converter-cable-50cm-32611?item=17

[degenatrons]

Hey,  AVR boards are a good place to start,  as some come with bootloader and built in USB lines.

I have tried running a cut down version of dualstrike firmware for xbox only on an AT90USB162 (Minimus AVR) but the board was not up to the job. 

I will be trying the same on an ATMEGA162 board (Pro Mini Arduino).  They arrived in the post today.  These are super small.  No USB plug,  but that is no big deal.
This is the same hardware as DualStrike uses so I am hoping for more success with this chip.

I am happy to discuss stuff if you need to bounce ideas.  I won't be competing against you, lol   If you need any help then just give me a shout.  It is great that people are still actively developing on this console.

[sharpfork]

Any updates?

[chris.arney]

This has spawned a whole new project for me. I've planned out the new project, but have only received some boards to start working on the software this week. So I probably won't have any new updates for a while. But I'm really excited about this new project! It's way more awesome than I was originally planning. It's using processors that I've never played with before. It's gonna be awesome! But it'll probably also be a little slow getting started.

[sharpfork]

it'll probably also be a little slow getting started.

When you get an idea of price, let us know.