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Building a Cockpit Setup for Simulator Games?
Milo_Mindbender asks: "For awhile I've been looking at building a cockpit-like setup for playing simulation games. One problem is finding a way to hook up a large number (up to 100) of lighted push-buttons in the thing and interface them to a computer that would poll the switches and control the (Tri-color LED) lights. Since the buttons/LEDs won't be clustered together, it would be nice if each button (or group of 4-5 buttons) could be on some kind of multi-drop network so the thing wouldn't turn into a wiring nightmare. The trick is that you don't want to miss button presses and you want to let people hold down multiple buttons without the setup getting confused. The big problem though, is cost. Anybody got an idea of how this could be done, preferablly with off-the-shelf parts, for under $5-$10 per button including the button?" Combine this idea with the earlier article we did on LCD-screens-for-cockpits, and you might have a kick-ass setup! Networked mech sims, anyone?
Your problem has probably been solved, as there's a somewhat decent sized following of people who build their own flight sim cockpits, and I think I even saw one mech cockpit.
;)
Build Your Own Cockpit
That has a few links. Plenty more can be found with simple google searching. I had this idea a few months ago, and like any idea I have, I checked to see if it was done already, and sure enough
As for LCD screens, they've got that stuff figured out. Check it out, you won't be let down.
Take apart a standard AT or PS/2 keyboard. Now, inside of most of them are a few layers of plastic with electronic traces, and a small bit of circuit board with one big chip (the encoder). How a keyboard works is that the keys are arranged in a grid of wires, and when you press down on a key, you connect two wires in a grid. With a little bit of work recording the electronic traces, you can figure out what keys connect what pins on the encoder. Congradulations, you now have a 101 button method of input.
Now, if you want to be lazy, then here's this link: Happs Controls, which has less inputs, and only works on win9x/NT/Mac, but saves you from wiring. Even if you go with the homebuilt solution, Happs sells a variety of buttons, and gives a price discount for large quantities. (I believe the price drops happen at 10 and 100 unit quantities.)
(Happs, btw, is a supplier of arcade game parts.)
Something to think about.
sPh
I would think a dual processor Xeon system with 2 GB RAM and 3 video cards should have enough horsepower (sic) to handle this type of setup, but is there any software that can do it?
sPh
This is one of those instances where I really wish I had mod points to mod up the parent.
Noone else has mentioned this and this is really exactly what you want.
Without having multiple interfaces, you will not be able to handle 25 buttons and LED without using some sort of controller. I recommend purchasing PROGRAMMING AND CUSTOMIZING PICMICRO MICROCONTROLLERS. This book goes into great details (with good examples) on how to make button debounces. It even comes with a circuit board to build your own programmer (saving you quite a bit of money).
With a cheap breadboard, and a couple PICS, you could make a circuit that had a serial port that could address any number of buttons.
If your really ambitious and get the thing to work, you could make a small board run and sell kits on eBay and probably pay for the project while your at it. I'm sure there are plenty of geeks that would pay good money for a flight simulator console.
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