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And so it begins!


engg100

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I have been talking about building a cabinet for years and finally have started. I will be building a 4 player control panel style that hooks up to any TV with an HDMI cable. One cool thing about my cabinet is that I designed my own controller. I want to be able to light all my buttons and joysticks with an RGB LED and configure my buttons and joysticks as keyboard inputs, mouse inputs or joystick inputs but there was no controller that could do everything an it would have cost over $250 to get what I wanted and required 5+ circuit boards. I am an Electronics Engineer so I said screw it and I designed my own! So the Howler Controller was born:

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Here are what the specs WILL be for my controller (Hardware 100% operational, working on firmware now):

4 Joysticks (each with RGB LED drive)

- Each joystick consists of 4 inputs and 3 LED drive outputs (for RGB lit joysticks). Inputs can be configured as buttons if joystick operation is not needed.

- Each joystick can be configured as a USB keyboard, USB Digital Joystick, USB Analog Joystick, USB mouse (for spinners and trackballs)

26 buttons (each with RGB LED drive)

- Each button consists of 1 input and 3 LED drive outputs (for RGB lit buttons)

- Each button can be configured as a USB Keyboard keypress, USB Joystick button press, or USB Mouse Button press

Other features:

- Each LED has 255 levels of brightness for 16 MILLION color combinations!

- Working on config program which allows unlimited configuration combinations of USB Keyboard, USB Mouse and USB Joysticks (multiple).

- Requires only 1 USB connection per circuit board.

- USB controller is powered from USB and LEDs are powered with external supply (+3.3V to +12V, whatever user chooses)

- Total number of LEDs that can be individually controller (255 levels) is 92! 3x as much as other controllers!

- Working on command line program to set LEDs so that it may be integrated with Hyperspin to set button/joystick colors for each individual game. (NES games will light up 2x RED buttons, TMNT arcade will light up each controller as the original arcade did (purple, blue, orange, red!).

I will be posting more pics of my cabinet as it gets built. If anyone is interested in my controller, let me know!

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I think $100 for one is a great price. ipac-4 and 2 "LED-Wiz 32" boards would do the same thing.. and that would total about $200. So saving us half the price would be pretty amazing. If you made a 2player version for $75 and 1 player version for $50 that would be great also. I think you would sell many more 2 player versions than the 4. Ill even sell them on my online store for ya if you need another distributor.

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I made some progress on the machine! One question I have is what is the best height for a machine both for standing and sitting? Mine is currently 36" which is too high for sitting. I was thinking maybe 30"? Any suggestions? I also have some pics of my controller driving a joystick RGB LED.

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I could probably get the price down to about $90 per board if I had enough interest. Price depends a lot on quantity.

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I made some progress on the machine! One question I have is what is the best height for a machine both for standing and sitting? Mine is currently 36" which is too high for sitting. I was thinking maybe 30"? Any suggestions? I also have some pics of my controller driving a joystick RGB LED.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]23741[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]23742[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]23743[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]23744[/ATTACH]

I could probably get the price down to about $90 per board if I had enough interest. Price depends a lot on quantity.

I'd probably pick one of these up. I'd probably be a little hesitant until more people use it, and we get more feedback on how well it works. Don't get wrong, I'm sure you know what you're doing. How long have you had it up and running? I always wondered why nobody has made one of these before? Good stuff! I'll be following this thread. Good luck!

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I think one of the reasons more people haven't made them is because of the keyboard ghosting and limitations. I think you have to have special software on the chips on the board itself to stop that from happening. I could be totally wrong though.

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I really like the design of the CP... This is exactly how I should have done mine because I wanted to have pinball buttons on the side and having them on the outside of a quad panel is just way too wide.... are you planning on putting buttons on the side for pinball games ??

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Yes that is the plan! I have to redo the base though because I wanted to make it shorter and the stupid jigsaw blade slipped out of the arbour and screwed up the base :( Now I have to redo the whole base... Maybe I should stick to electronics! I am just gonna go with the base I have for now (made for midgets...) and get my board 100% operational.

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Finally got all the pieces together. Just need to finish the base and prime/paint/get graphic overlay for the control panel! But I will be keeping it like this for a bit to get the Howler controller working 100%!

Here are the specs for this 4 player cabinet:

- Total 38 RGB buttons (7 each for players 1 and 2, 4 each for players 3 and 4, 4 for coins, 4 for player starts, 2 for mouse buttons, 3 for pinball games,and 3 for hyperspin control or whatever.

- 4x Happ Competition joysticks with RGB lit Ball tops

- spinner from GGG (will have a RGB lit ring under it when cabinet complete)

- RGB lit trackball from GGG.

Final colors I was thinking black with red T Moulding and custom graphic overlay for control panel.

Here is a pic (it will be like this for a while until I complete the Howler controller)

post-23258-142870584968_thumb.jpg

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I would move the spinner over to the left so that it is just below the single button which is above the player 1 Buttons.

Oh and are you sure you really want to angle your P3 & P4 Joysticks.

I have played on both non angled and angled, for me straight up is the way to go. But that is just my personal opinion.

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He is right about the angled joysticks. I have angled mine in the past and it was a big mistake. Your brain just doesn't allow you to play correctly when they are angled. And I would make the spinner closer to you. Those are my opinions. :)

I would move the spinner over to the left so that it is just below the single button which is above the player 1 Buttons.

Oh and are you sure you really want to angle your P3 & P4 Joysticks.

I have played on both non angled and angled, for me straight up is the way to go. But that is just my personal opinion.

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I have player 3 and 4 angled I personally don't think it's bad... I will say from aesthetic stand point angled looks way better for a quad panel, especially the way you've designed yours. Besides if you were to just do all players straight it would be crowded when playing multiplayer games IMO... by the way I love how the CP panel came out look's great.

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I have player 3 and 4 angled I personally don't think it's bad... I will say from aesthetic stand point angled looks way better for a quad panel, especially the way you've designed yours. Besides if you were to just do all players straight it would be crowded when playing multiplayer games IMO... by the way I love how the CP panel came out look's great.

Um, Other then possibly the artwork how would the angling or non angling of the joysticks make any difference to the aesthetic of the panel?

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I don't think it would make a difference to the aesthetic of the panel, it would make a difference to to functionality of it. I can see where they are coming from, unless the 3 and 4 players are at a 45 degree angle to the table it might feel a bit weird playing a game. If they were straight on to the controller, up is not up, it would be up+left. and down would be down+right.

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  • 4 weeks later...

It's been a few weeks but I finally got the Howler controller hardware up and running 100%! Currently I have the LED colors hard-coded in the firmware and the buttons and joystick are seen as a USB joystick. I now have a lot of firmware to write, getting the USB LED driver going and the ability to configure the buttons/joysticks to be either USB joystick presses or keyboard presses. I am also working on a configuration program to make it easy to configure!

What would be the best way to control the LEDs: Virtual comport or generic HID? I am leaning towards generic HID because that is how other boards do it and I would like to get it working with LEDBlinky. Anyone have any suggestions on how it could be better?

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