Project diva homemade controllers

So I kind of made large strides this weekend, here is the video of it working (enough to make the LEDs do something anyway)



Secrets of my slider design revealed, kind of just winged this but it works.







@Doctopus ,thanks. Tthe official slider appears to be a 2.5" x 21" or so piece of PCAP film behind a thick piece of smooth acrylic. The same type used in touch displays, which contains on the order of millions of sensors on tablets and phones. In the test menu, it sections this out to 32 areas along its length. As you move slowly from section to section, the sense threshold goes from 0 to 1023 as you cross each one. So really you have resolution of 32 x 1024 = 32,768. Like I said, WAY overkill. Makes it so that you can do things with even the smallest movements of your fingers I guess, but for this game play kind of crazy. My design uses 10 and so far its working pretty well from what I can tell.

 

As far as my "research" goes, they don't. There are typically only hundreds of electrodes (discrete sensors) in a smart phone or tablet, and achieved "millions of pixels" precision through interpolation (yes, the same technique used on scaling photos). But I have to admit that I didn't see anything that scales 1024 times on one dimension only through interpolation (phones and tablets did that because they are actually 2D sensors and each dimension only scaled up by ~100x maximum. 32 synchronized touchpads on a single panel sounds doable and matches what the test menu says (i.e.32*1024 positions), but still crazy). That's one of the reason why I'm curious about how they implemented the slider.

The other reason, as I mentioned earlier, is the noise. You are basically build an antenna and attract all kinds of noises from the environment if the traces for the electrodes are too long (even if the touch controller is on the center of the slider, the longest trace will still be 250mm minimum. FYI one of the largest vendor of capacitive touch controller, Microchip, suggests that the traces of electrodes for their touch controller should not exceed 150mm or signal quality will start to degrade, result in poor performance). Again if they built 32 touchpads this shouldn't be a problem anymore because they can place the controller near the electrodes (that's also where the multiple controllers idea poped up, but I only ever think about 4 controllers and believe that's already a lot so this still sounds crazy lol)

So yeah if someone have a photo of the internals it would be awesome

BTW @colonelmasako I also have some questions about your implementation. What are you using to drive the touch sensor (Arduino? external controller? any third-party libraries?)? Is your sensor glove-safe (i.e. penetrates non-touchscreen-friendly gloves) like the official one?

 

Did more things. Doing so found many issues to resolve but its built now, and works ok. Slider needs more work.





@Doctopus , my implementation is pretty simple. I'm using the Bare Conductive arduino board to interface to painted touch sensors. I took an existing project from them and modified it to act as a multi element slider design. As is, I doubt it is senstive enough to penetrate the acrylic to detect gloves. I haven't actually tried that on the official one, if that does work I'm even more impressed Sega.

My code, which I'll eventually share once its really solid, documents all of the things needed to make it do the slider and light control. I'm taking advantage of funky tricks to do multi-threading in a processor that can't multi-thread. The logic I used to differentiate between normal slides and double slides in any combo is insane too. But it works

 

Here's an action video of it. After this I'm probably done spamming the thread with my photos, sorry folks. I'll of course answer questions about it as it comes. Its not 100%, more like 95%, where I want it, for slides.



I have to do more work to make double slides in one direction work. Any other combo works very consistently now. Keeps you busy I guess :p

 

That touch sliders looks amazing.

I've been lurking this thread for months, but haven't made an account until now. I'm making my own controller, I've been waiting a few weeks for the buttons to ship but they should be here in the next day or so.

It's going to be a laser cut acrylic case with a Yowane Haku theme. Ultimately I'll do artwork on the inside with frosted vinyl graphics and some commissioned artwork for the main buttons. I have my own laser cutter, so hopefully I can prototype out some different things. I've been using the Hori FT Mini controller for months waiting for this, so super excited.

I wanted to see if you guys had any input; I'm going to be using the Hori FT Controller as the base controller, most of it really straight forward. But what I'm unsure is the placement of the analog sticks. I see a lot of people prefer buttons (usually four) to work inplace of the joy sticks for slides.

Would you guys think it would be best to mount the joysticks below the buttons, above the buttons or higher up (Where the touchpad on an arcade machine would be) part of me thinks having it where the touch pad would be makes sense for that crossover between arcade/homepad muscle memory but I really have no idea. I'm not sure if that would be too clumsy to reliable hit those analog sticks and move between the buttons vs. how the touchpad actually works at the arcade which is so easy. What have you guys found in your experience works best for placement?

Edit:

Got my buttons early and put together a quick prototype to try different analog positions and stuff.

It's great having the giant buttons. I notice that a poster prior said they dampened the buttons because they were going down too far? I feel like I have this issue too and would like to know what they did exactly to fix it.

 

Yes i have dampened my buttons. I assume that you have the same kind of generics as mine and not sanwa.

I felt that the button had too much room for movement but also was not touching the bottom (the black part) when press so the button was not stable during the hold notes. All the weight was on the switch.
To fix that, I added some foam stickers that you can find in home supplies stores. I sticked 4 of those under each plunger. Now the plunger with the foam moves just enough to activate the switch and makes stable contact with the black part underneath. I don't remerber what thickness i used, the best is to buy different types and try.

Also, consider buying the 200g sanwa springs, it makes a HUGE difference.

I hope it is understadable. I don't have picture to show you right now.

 

Nope, I understand perfectly thank you! I actually got the expensive buttons, the OBSA-100UMQ ones everyone recommends and a new set of the Sanwa 200g springs to replace the ones already in the buttons (They were both 200g but the ones I bought felt better so I'm using those) but I'm trying to replacate that feel that I get when I play the real arcade machine. I don't really feel a click and the break point for the switches are almost nothing on arcade, you can delicately tap buttons so I was hoping to take up some slack on my controller to get them like that.

A good example is that technique arcade players can do where they sorta "swat/tickle" the buttons, I was hoping to be able to replicate those techniques on my controller.

Like the moves he pulls around 00:37

I used some double-sided tape since it's kind of a thin foam sort of material and I'll see if that works. So far so good though, I love the bigger buttons. It's going to take my mind some training to forget all the bad habits from the Hori mini controller. I think I'm going to keep the analog sticks below the buttons so I can use my thumbs to hit them. So I'll probably put together the final case in the next couple days, I'll post again when it's done.

 

You have the exact same button than the arcade cabinet, i think the difference is the switch that you are using. Sanwa sells different types and i believe they are using the most expensive OBSA-LHSXF.

I also tried that tickle move with no success so far ^.^

 

I think if I get good enough to tickle buttons it probably won't matter what switches I'm using in the end.

The Hori FT controllers use these sorts of switches:
https://www.akishop.jp/button-parts/152-mm9-4-microswitch.html##

Which feels an awful lot like the ones they have in the arcade to me, without a solid click and a low break point but it's mostly wasted on the 1" buttons. I'm just going to play with this controller for awhile and figure it all out.

If the OBSA-LHSXF is what they use in the arcade machines, I would potentially be up to ordering them. I can't tell by the pictures where the switch is or how it works with my buttons though. I can only find a few pictures.

These are the switches that came with my buttons:
https://www.akishop.jp/joystick-parts/114-ms-o-3r.html##

 

The OBSA-LHSXF is a photoswitch so there is no click i suppose. This japanese guy confirms that SEGA is using it :
http://meenia.jp/diy/controller/miku-pd

Yes i have MS-O-3 too, it is the most common and easy to wire.

 

So I too have the MS03 switch and OBSA-100UMQ buttons that you guys have. And yes, it doesn't quite have the arcade feel. But certainly the 200G springs and the MS03 switch is firmer than pop'n buttons and does have a click to it that is mostly fine. I was going to go with sound dampening, but after seeing @Tomtortoise's struggles on his instructable, haven't touched it yet.

I'm willing to upgrade to the optical switches IF:

1. I can find them. Akishop doesn't sell them. We have a ton at Round 1, but I can't take those, only study them. They are almost $35 each btw, according to the yen price on them.
2. I can determine what the header is. Its NOT JST. Its something close. Have to figure out the plastic shell and pins for the crimp work

For now, I just miss occasionally because my playstyle is too adjusted to the real deal arcade. Its so close...but I believe that optical senstitivy makes all the difference here. Not necessary, but a very nice to have.

 

Try harder. I saw them on the official Sanwa Rakuten shop (and they ship outside Japan)
https://global.rakuten.com/en/store/sanwadenshi/item/ilumb_301/

Well then it might just be JST. JST is a family of connectors vary on different sizes, pin pitch, shapes, etc. If by JST you mean the JST XH series (2.5mm pitch, the most common type used by Chinese arcade buttons, encoder boards, cables, etc.), then it might be JST SH or so. (And in case that you really cannot figure it out, Sanwa also sells the assembled cables under the part number LHSX-H in their shop. They are not really cheap though)
​

(Well I guess my next plan after I finish my controller will probably be homebrew opto-switches for Chinese buttons then)​

 

I wish there was a diagram for those OBSA-LHSXF switches.

Either way, I'm going to order a set with harnesses and a spare for sacrifical purposes to try and get it to work. So I'll report back, and if we can figure it all out we'll make a diagram and tutorial here for you guys if you're interested in doing it too.

I gotta ask too because I was looking at the other controllers. Why do so many of them (nearly all of them) use buttons in place of analog sticks for sliders? I'm actually rather fond of the analog sticks, but there must be a good reason. I was thinking about getting a set of those rectangle buttons so I can set them up that way too but it's an expensive additional cost ontop of FIVE of those LHSXF switches and you guys are the only ones I can ask about them.

I'd love to incorporate a touch panel into my controller too like Colonelmasako's but that may have to wait until the future.

 

Perhaps they are relatively easy to make and use?

Also there are lots of articles on how to design and make fighting sticks, and fighting sticks use joysticks instead of thumbsticks like DS4. So basically my guesses are:

1. not everyone who make fighting sticks have thumbsticks and using 2 joysticks for the slider would be weird
2. there are fewer tutorials mention how to mount and wire thumbsticks
3. fewer shops who sell fighting stick components sell thumbsticks

So unless someone wants a true touch slider (CM's capacitive (BareConductive self capacitance) slider or my resistive (SoftPot) slider), the option that most of people would think of immediately would be use a button array as the slider.

Anyway that's just my guess. Don't take it really seriously :P

PS: I do want more photos and measurements of the Sanwa opto-switch. It's hard to tell about what connector they use just from a single photo (I guess JST SH or ZH according to the photos of connector on the harness and the switch from their shop).

PS2: Seems that adapting Chinese buttons to use opto-switches are actually somewhat hard. First due to the structure of the lamp holder I'm not sure where to place the opto sensor. Second, the actuator of the button only moves ~2mm on presses which are enough for microswitches but probably not for opto sensor. (Looks not enough for typical interrupter type, not sure about reflect type)

 

Having this photoswitch functionnal would be a good reason to finally upgrade my controller with genuine Sanwa. Looking forward to it. I'll try to find informations also. I have just tried shortly the arcade cabinet in Japan before i built my controller so i don't remerber how it is different.

Concerning the thumbsticks, the method that seemed the most accessible to me was using the PCB from Hori mini fighting stick. And the possibilities were limited to buttons. I agree with doctopus explanation.
I am playing with HORI mini controller on PS3 and thumbsticks under buttons are fine. But i think having buttons lined up in the same place as the arcade touchbar gives a better feeling of playing like the arcade, the same movements. I hope i can be as good the next time i can play in japanese arcade! But ultimately, choosing a controller you are comfortable with is the most important.

 

Some high quality pics of the opto switch:







@Doctopus thanks for the link, good to know they sell them. Another ghetto way you can make this work is with dupont 0.1" center wires houses, probably glued together and taped in, but again quite ghetto.

For those wanting a touch slider: it is my full intent to share the details more when I'm finished, so that others can replicate it. It is not good enough to do so yet. If you want one, make room for it on your controller. 2.5" x 20.5" is the arcade size.

 

Do you know how the wiring works with this switch ?

My guess is :
+ : powering the LED only (5v USB or 12V or 24V from another power supply)
- : ground for LED
5V : powering for the optical switch. Is the 5V from USB ok to be used ?
out : to the corresponding input in the controller PCB (circle, cross, triangle, square) ?
gnd : ground for the optical switch part

To have LED off when pressed, i think you need external component like @PlayerOne showed in post #34 of the topic. I would need to see an exemple of someone doing that. My electronic skill is really basic...

Thank you for sharing your touch slider. I will take a look at it when it's done !

 

@colonelmasako looks like some variant of JST PH connector Nope, PH has the notches over pin 2 and -2, not between pin +-1 and pin +-2 (interestingly XH has the notches on the right place, but the connector looks smaller than XH, also you do mention that it is not XH (assume that's what you mean))

Can you also measure the approximate size of it? (Also the pin pitch if possible)

 

I haven't cut out my final case yet, so I may keep enough space clear for a touchpad. How difficult for a novice do you think it'll be to set one up with your plans? Once you've worked out all the bugs I'd like to buy one from you if you were willing to sell one complete as a kind of drop in kit. I hadn't thought a touchpad would be part of my build before because it all went over my head but I'd love to have one.

Also those pictures are great but I wish I could find pictures of the top of the unit. How exactly does it work? I know it's a photosensor, but how does it know the button is being activated and how does it interface with it? I was looking at pictures of the arcade unit under the controls and the buttons look like regular UMQ100's but they just have those fancy LHSXF instead of the switches we've all been using so I'm not sure how the switch knows anything yet.

I successfully placed my order for five of the LHSXF units last night and six sets of harnesses. Assuming the supplier ships quickly I could even have them next week and I can start to tinker with them. In the meantime I've been breaking a lot of records with my ghetto wood case controller.

Sidenote; Drek says he still uses the Hori mini-controller, and I did as well for almost a year before this project. In your travels are a lot of people still using them? We're on backorder for a proper, business grade vinyl printer and I wanted to make graphic skins for mine because I never liked the FT artwork on it so if anyone wants custom graphics cut for their mini controllers I should be able to do that in a month or two.

 

I'm pleased to announce that my code base is ready to be shared and looked at by others. After months of tweaking and development, after a few compromises, it works well enough to work in other contexts.

Important caveats:

1. Due to the fact my implementation is much lower in resolution (1x10) vs the real thing, extra motions are needed to determine slides correctly. Basically, in the arcade if you have double slides, you can barely graze the slider and it will see them. With mine, if you move your action just a half inch in any direction, it works. But if you graze it, you'll miss. Just follow through with the double slides and my code will catch it correctly.
2. Short slides for left and right are treated the same. In mine, you can slide right on a left and still get it correct. It was the only way I could get it to keep up with the pace of the game. Essentially, normal slides are dumb and fast, complex slides are just a hair slower and smarter. This, in my experience, does not detract from recreating the arcade experience in my gameplay at all, if you are playing it like you do there. Just don't develop bad habits :p
3. Slides that double up on each other (Ghost Rule, Secret Police) are very difficult to hit fast enough with my implementation. The arduino can't quite keep up with the touch, release, touch, release of one hand, at least not without moving your hand ridiculously faster than in the arcade. A compromise is to do it with 2 hands. A quick left with one hand and right with the other hand gets around this. Or move your hand really damn fast, up to you. With this I don't miss things.

I commented this code EXTENSIVELY to explain it. Including modifications you'd need if you were to put it to use.



Considering how long it took to make this work properly, it would be a monumental task to sell a prebuilt slider that would work in other controllers. At least with this method. It depends upon certain design elements to function, such as the use of acrylic for the top and a thicker piece of wood or MDF below to mask your hand movements so that the wires can be routed to the control board. This employs a use of a combination of copper strip tape and conductive ink. Not impossible, but pretty hard. There is also some fancy electronic fenagling I pulled off with an inline optical isolator circuit. I can build those no problem, others wouldn't without some trouble.

Overall this method is bruteforce and easy to use once built right. But building it and calibrating it took some serious effort. IF you want to use this method, make room for it and we'll see what happens. I'd be willing to assist in getting it working for someone who wanted to adopt it.