Control Panel Electronics

13th OCTOBER 2013 

Electronics is something I've always wanted to have a go at but until this year my knowledge on the subject was minimal. A few months ago I decided dig out my old CD of X-wing Alliance and installed it ready to play. The X-wing games were pretty much unplayable without using a joystick, so I dusted off my old Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Joystick but to my horror discovered that since Windows Vista onwards, Microsoft have stopped supporting MIDI gameport inputs for PCs which is what the Sidewinder and all joysticks of that era used. This joystick is still considered by many to be one of the best ever made, so I wasn't about to run to the shops an buy a new one. You can get USB to gameport adaptors but unfortunately I discovered they don't work with the MS Sidewinder. I was about to give up when I discovered a project online to build a custom adaptor that makes the joystick work via USB. The project had plans and code to build the adaptor, so I ordered some parts and got my soldering iron ready...

Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Joystick.

They don't make'em as good as this anymore!

 

 

 

The main component of the joystick project was a very small development board called the Teensy 2.0. Its basically a very small computer that can be programmed. After much trial and error and bad language, I got the device to work and my lovely joystick was saved from the scrap heap and I was able to play X-Wing Alliance again. Wahey! Having not played any aircraft simulators for about 10 years I decided to see how much they had come on, and started playing IL2: Cliffs of Dover (A WW2 flight sim with Spitfires and things) and Rise Of Flight (a very accurate WW1 flight sim, wow those pilots were brave back then).

 

Teensy 2.0

Size isn't everything

 

 

Anyway, the point of all this is that having worked with the Teensy chip, I started playing around with it and seeing what can be done with it. It would be possible to make a pretty cool input and output controller using this thing. That and playing all these fairly accurate flight sims as well as the old x-wing games got me thinking... And that's why I'm here now!

 

 

Teensy 3.0

 

 

In the end I decided to use the newer Teensy 3.0 for my cockpit controls. It has a more powerful Processor than the Teensy 2.0 and is actually cheaper for some reason, I got my one for just over £20. Some of you may have heard of a series of successful development boards called Arduino. The Teensy is not an Arduino, however it is very similar in many ways and in fact uses the Arduino software to program the chip.

 

 

 

The greatest thing I think about the Teensy, is its ability to easily become many types of USB device with only a few clicks of the mouse in the Ardiuno software.

 

Here are some of the types of devices it can be:

 

Keyboard

Mouse

Joystick

MIDI

DMX

Serial

 

Teensy showing up as a Keyboard Device in

Windows 7 when plugged into a USB port

 

 

That means that by connecting a few buttons to the device I can make a very basic USB keyboard device in no time at all. That's cool! (Well, I think its cool at least) A few years ago doing something like that would have taken a hell of a lot of time and effort.

 

Here is an example of a DMX box I recently built using a Teensy 3.0 to control film lights.

 

 I built it to simulate blue police sirens for a film that I am the director of photography on. Previously I had to have a laptop with a USB DMX interface on location to do the same thing. This is much smaller and practical. 

 

 

 

I've decided to make the Teensy a joystick device as a way of connecting the many buttons and switches of the control panel to the PC for my software simulator to recognise. Every button would be treated as button on a game controller. I also have the option of re-programming it to be a keyboard and mapping some of the buttons to the correct keys for the X-Wing games.

 

 

 

Control Panel with some holes drilled ready for the components.

 

 

Some of the components that I will be using.

 

Starting to add components and wire them up to the Teensy

 

 

 

I also wanted to have LEDs on the control panel, to control these from the software, I decided to use a second Teensy 3.0 device setup as a Serial device. That way I can send commands to the device from the PC to turn the LEDs on and off.

 

Each Teensy has 33 input/output pins on the device, this sounds like a lot, but with all the switches and LEDs I'm actually nearly using all of them on the 2 Teensys, that's a hell of a lot of soldering, aghhh!

 

 

I'm mounting sections of LEDs onto copper breadboard.

 

 

 

Mostly done! Nice and neat..ish!

 

 

The big black thing in the middle is a 9inch video monitor that will be used for the targeting computer. I will talk about that in another post.

 

 

The 2 Teensy 3.0s are in there somewhere...

 

 

Everything in place on the front.

 

 

 

Close-up of switches and LEDs

 

 

 

There is still quite a bit of blank space that can be used in future if I want to add extra buttons, such as computer controls or anything else I can think of. For now though, I'm quite happy not to do anymore soldering for a while....

 

 

Control Panel Switches