Project diva homemade controllers

(It feels like I am hijacking this thread more than I should LOL. Anyway here goes another post:)

Also an upgrade suggestion for fight stick PCB users (if your PCB supports true analog stick inputs):

Get yourself a 2-channel digital potentiometer (or two 1-channel digital potentiometers) and wire the potentiometer(s) to X-axis of the analog stick inputs. Also wire the Y-axis to two 50-50 voltage dividers (e.g. 10k-10k should work fine).

After that you got a digitally controllable analog stick emulation. Now you can connect the digital input of your digital potentiometer(s) to an Arduino and use the Arduino to scan the slider input (button presses or gesture detection). This offers two benefits: configurable button behavior and no more "sliding backwards has no penalty" issue for <--> and -><- slides.

For a 4-button slider setup, here is an example truth table for mapping the presses to sliding directions. Notice the mapping for <--> and -><- slides are more accurate than using the built-in macro feature in the game and both 1100, 0011 presses and 1010, 0101 presses map to <-<- and ->-> (unlike macros which you need to remember which is left and which is right).

(DC means don't care, or "fine if you don't want to handle them")

(Values for left stick and right stick are represented as 8-bit numbers. Change this if the resolution of your digital potentiometer differs)

Code:

0 1 2 3 | LS       RS       DC?
--------+----------------------
0 0 0 0 | 0x7f (|) 0x7f (|)
0 0 0 1 | 0xff (>) 0x7f (|)
0 0 1 0 | 0xff (>) 0x7f (|)
0 0 1 1 | 0xff (>) 0xff (>)
0 1 0 0 | 0x00 (<) 0x7f (|)
0 1 0 1 | 0xff (>) 0xff (>)
0 1 1 0 | 0xff (>) 0x00 (<)
0 1 1 1 | 0xff (>) 0xff (>) DC
1 0 0 0 | 0x00 (<) 0x7f (|)
1 0 0 1 | 0x00 (<) 0xff (>)
1 0 1 0 | 0x00 (<) 0x00 (<)
1 0 1 1 | 0x00 (<) 0xff (>) DC
1 1 0 0 | 0x00 (<) 0x00 (<)
1 1 0 1 | 0x00 (<) 0xff (>) DC
1 1 1 0 | 0x00 (<) 0x00 (<) DC
1 1 1 1 | 0x00 (<) 0xff (>) DC

Again if anyone wants more information (schematics, etc.) feel free to ask me :P

 

My friend showed me something he found.

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...vkvvlrHGwFJ38dH4zshdbMTPaJJQ_OkFXo5ilH7ptgsNw

Looks like a China-made pre-built FT controller w/ touch pad like the one featured previously in this thread. Quite expensive, but I'm pretty desperate to get my hands on one and see what they've done with it.

Here are some videos:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av33983442/
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av33983077/

Seems to be a complete FT setup with RGB lighting, "infrared" switches and even microphone input and headphone output among other features.

Edit:

There are comments that say they got them, with pictures. Looks pretty legit. Listing is for a run of 4 at a time with a deposit. Only two in stock so I'm going to order one tonight and see what I get. I can convert my controller I never finished back into a FT mini con and I have spare parts, buttons, switches and springs to swap out if they cheaped on this.

 

@LanDi I have been following this one for a while already but decided to wait for someone else to post it here because I already did so many posts in a row D:. Besides that, I saw some effort by the maker to push their controller to other countries beside China so someone here will eventually know the existence of it.

Based on information collected from several sources like owner's manual, product listing, demo videos and feedback from other buyers, I already know what to expect from this controller:

• Case is made from acrylic and high density styrofoam
  
  
• The "IR microswitches" are likely based on pol8139's design I shared earlier (photo-interrupter hacked on a Chinese lamp holder)
  
  
• Uses Brook PS3/PS4 fightboard (the cheapest one)
  
  
• Audio function is implemented using a separate USB sound card through a separate port (I was expecting a hub, or even better, the new Brook PS3/PS4 board with audio)
  
  
• Everything is made of Chinesium (buttons, springs, you name it)
  
  
• Probably custom-made input mux board that handles lighting and maybe also sends reports to PS4 like my setup (though I bet it doesn't)
  
  
• A separate power supply for LEDs
  
  
• Slider emulates LR (big "eww" personally. Made worse by the claim "completely reproduce the arcade feel" on their listing)
  
  
• English manual is so Chinglish to the fact that it is probably better to read the Chinese manual with Google Translate. No offense, it's the truth :(

As one can see it looks like they did quite a lot on cost-saving but not really for reducing the final price. So personally I wouldn't recommend it because it makes me feel like buying a Chinese Arduino Uno clone for $20 or more, something that one should avoid. However if you already bought it I'm more than happy to see the teardown ;P

PS: The maker has a youtube channel which has all the demo videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/iloveFLL/videos
PS2: DJDAO also announced that they are working on a full-sized FT controller. Judging by the fact that they developed their own encoder board for EZMax with some support on receiving the rumble reports, could this controller be the first commercially available controller to integrate Project Make-Slider-Arcade-Again? Only time will tell. (BTW I'm not affiliated in any way with them, so if they marketing-wanked their controller as "world's first FT controller" that has feature developed in Project Make-Slider-Arcade-Again, I will find a way to fight back :P)

 

Already ordered. Personally, not concerned with any of your points. I have the parts to replace cheap components such as the buttons, switches and springs. The fact it's a finished fully featured controlled with touch pad emulation is what is exciting to me. I still haven't had the time to make my case, I've been using that same plywood one this entire time and even when I did get back to it I never planned to sit down and make a touch pad work so getting some sort of touch pad emulation is worth the extra cost. I think the price tag is entirely fair for what they're offering, especially since they're the literal only ones offering it.

It's a really appealing product for anyone who wants to get into the arcade gameplay without building their own controller, a lot of folks would rather buy one than build because they think they couldn't or don't have the tools or time to do so. Assuming you can upgrade springs, buttons and switches which I'm certain you can it's a fine starting point for anyone who is willing to make the investment. Considering what I spent on mini-cons and upgrade to them and in switches and buttons etc. for my own build I wish this was available earlier I would've just bought one of these.

If DJDAO actually makes the PD controller, I'd be interested in taking a look and probably getting one of those as well.

Once I get it I'll have a detailed review and tear down.

 

Actually the only real concern for me performance-wise is that the slider uses the worst possible yet popular emulation method despite it being "completely reproduces the arcade feel".

The slider map swipes to LR, which means 1. -><- and <--> slides can be performed backwards without penalty, 2. hard to switch back to DS4 if one have macros configured and 3. does not have the linear feeling on chain slides like it was on the arcade thus short swipes may max out a longer note and long swipes may fail to max out a shorter note.

Price-wise it also feels a bit like "can easily shrink the price but decided don't". However as you pointed out that they are literally the only one who sells it as of now so still somewhat understandable. Otherwise I admit that it is a good starting point for ones who just want a finished product.

 

Found something interesting on twitter




The actual AC touch slider has 32 rectangular pads on a regular PCB and has a polycarbonate panel. The pads are connected to the pins of a cypress cy8c22345-24sxi microcontroller with plain resistors, with 16 sensors per microcontroller. It seems like it would be easy enough to make an exact replica. With a more modern Cypress chip, it can be done with a single chip.

Edit:
I've managed to attach a cypress microcontroller to a brook ps4 controller board. I can emulate the chip on the official brook touchpad and send the data to the main brook board. I'm going to try wrapping the coordinates over at 0 to get past the issue of the touchpad not filling up enough bars. This leaves the issue Doctopus mentioned with <--> and -><- but I personally don't think I'll notice that at all in gameplay.

Github:
https://github.com/azhao12345/testslider1

Links:
http://www.zeitecsemi.com/dokuwiki/doku.php - zet6223 datasheet
http://www.brookaccessory.com/detail/58690501/ - Brook board
http://www.cypress.com/documentatio...-145-40xx-psoc-4000s-capsense-prototyping-kit

 

Thanks for sharing the teardown!

Yes the newer PSoC should make it easier to design a single-chip solution thanks to more CapSense pins and better noise immunity achieved by using techniques like active shielding, etc.

And I saw you also reversed the Brook touchpad protocol. Nice! One thing, though. Be careful when you do coordinate wrapping. The game may think you swiped backwards by 20 bars on the wrapping point. I am not sure whether or not this is the case (I didn't bother to do the testing) and how big the impact will be if it actually behaves like I said. I suggest you to make some extra experiments on this to make sure it will not affect the gameplay significantly.

 

Trying out making a circuit board for the sensor. Seems like I'm not very good at making circuit boards. This design should be uploadable at the chinese PCB shops offering $5 pcb deals. I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know if it works

https://github.com/azhao12345/testsliderpcb


Edit: pcbs are made and they seem to work

 

Firmware seems to be working for the touch slider. I still need to tweak the capacitive parameters but it works most of the time. See the github for the code and schematic.
https://github.com/azhao12345/testslider2

Since the PCB maker has a minimum order of 10, I have a spare set of PCBs. If anyone is interested and in the US, I can drop them in the mail. Psoc not included but that is only $10 on digikey or mouser.

 

Taobao "Zhou Sensor" Project Diva Controller First Impressions.



Description:
The Zhou Project Diva controller sold on Taobao is a fully featured Project Diva Future Tone arcade controller. It is full sized with four standard 100mm buttons for the symbols and a touch slider. Extra buttons include L1, R1, L2, R2, L3, R3, Share, Home, Options, Padkey and four directional buttons for up, down left and right. All four buttons and the touch pad are RGB lit and are dynamic and programmable through a button combination.

Purchase, Cost and Shipping:
The Zhou controller is available on Taobao via this listing:
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...vkvvlrHGwFJ38dH4zshdbMTPaJJQ_OkFXo5ilH7ptgsNw

The cost of the controller is 1988 Yuan, or approximately $300 USD. When I purchased mine I only paid a 388 Yuan (Approximately $50) booking fee as a reservation as they're done in batches of five at a time. Once production begins, you will receive notice from the seller to pay the remaining fee. Shipping was an additional $50USD. The rough total comes out to be $350USD for it to your door. The new listing appears to be for the full 1988 Yuan amount, so the reservations may no longer be applicable.

There was a minor delay in my shipment when I tried to use Taobao World's forwarding service to ship it to me and the forwarding service was unable to ship it for some reason, the seller contacted me and provided me with a new listing to use so I could provide my address to him and he shipped it himself and this was much faster than using a forwarding service in the end. It was shipped SF Express with tracking and handed off to UPS once it reached the US.

I placed my order on 12/26/2018 and I received it 02/26/2019





The package didn't seem to be roughly handled any more than a typical package and the controller came well packed in packing foam and inside of a plastic bag along with it's accessories.



Contents:
Inside the box you get the following items;
x1 Zhou Controller
x2 USB Cable
x1 Power Adapter
x1 Power Adapter Extension
x1 Set of Rubber Feet
x1 Ziptie
x1 printed instructions in Chinese & English
Inside the controller it's self if you remove the seven screws that hold on the top face plate there are additional items;
x1 extra ribbon cable
x2 screws
x1 foam blocks



Setup:
Setup of the Zhou controller is pretty straight forward. On the back of the controller are ports for two USB's and the power cable. The USB's are connected to the PS4 or PC. One is for audio, the other is for the buttons.

To use the built in audio and microphone jack you need to go into the PS4 settings and change the output of the audio and in the PS4 dashboard select the controller audio.



Audio:
The Zhou controller includes built in audio and microphone functionally via two audio jacks inset into the front of the controller.



The quality of the audio that comes out of it is okay. It's not very loud at it's highest setting on the PS4 and lacks decent depth of audio. I would use it over the speaker on the TV if no other option was available but prefer to take audio straight from my receiver to a set of headphones over the controller's built in option. It's nice that it's included though and it has a little more functionality on PC where you can increase the volume beyond the limitation set on PS4.

 

Touch Slider:

The biggest draw to me for the Zhou controller was a built in touch slider like the one found on the Future Tone arcade cabinets. The touch slider is RGB back lit and reactive to touch. The touch slider has five sections, the material feels like some sort of plastic but it works perfectly fine. Your fingers can easily glide across it from one side to the other and back again with the lighting tracking your fingers. All variations of slides work on the slide bar and they work flawlessly so far.

I'm most impressed with the touch slider. I play a lot of FT arcade and have been dying to get a home controller with that functionality but short of making one myself it probably wasn't going to happen. The Zhou emulates the slider very well. It should be mentioned that FT on PS4 does not handle sliders the same as the FT arcade cabinet. Slides on PS4 only need small amounts of input to accomplish with the analog sticks, DS4 touch pad or a button binding. The FT arcade cabinet measures the speed, position and duration of your slides; this does not nor does it need to considering FT on PS4's more simplistic slider dynamics.

As far as the specifics of the touch slider operation, I don't know much about these sorts of things. The slider seems to be bound to "R1 and L1" according to the instructions

For a FT arcade player with a touch slider itch to scratch, it does the job and would definitely benefit the player in learning muscle memory in slider heavy charts to use on FT arcade (Example: Ghost Rule, Tokyo Teddybear etc.)



Buttons:
Naturally, one of the most important parts of the controller are the buttons. They're generic 100mm buttons. Their dimensions are standard, meaning you could swap them out for Sanwa or other variations of the same design of 100mm buttons and I've tested this to confirm.

The housing is a little different from my sanwa housing and have clips that the photo-sensor clips into that are absent on sanwa housings meaning that the zhou-photo sensor that come with these buttons can only be used with this type of housing.




The photo sensor is branded "zhou sensor" and is activated by a piece of foam glued to the end of the bumper. I had heard about this before I received my controller and was skeptical but it actually works very well. Compared to my Sanwa OBSA-LHSXF switch I actually prefer this one. This is odd to me, since the LHSXF is what comes on the Future Tone arcade cabinet, but my previous setup with the LHSXF felt sluggish compared to the zhou sensor. The zhou sensor allows me to drum one note at a time for example, something I could do at the arcade but not on my previous setup.

Originally using the buttons for the first time I was not very impressed. There is more side to side movement in the buttons than my Sanwa buttons. Additionally, I felt that they were VERY sensitive to a detrimental degree. While playing it felt like the the most minimal amount of force would activate the buttons and during fast spams it caused problems, the break point was very short so while performing spam a complete reset did not always occur resulting in a broken combo.

It is possible to swap the zhou sensor with a LHSXF if you wanted with a bit of work. I don't see a need to do that at the moment so haven't looked very hard at it.

After a few hours of playing with the stock set up I entered the controller to see what I could do. Instead of going straight to the foam blocks that activate the sensor I decided to swap the springs first.



On the left is a Sanwa spring, on the right is the Zhou stock spring. The zhou spring is quite long and very soft. Unfortunately I don't recall the Sanwa spring strength but will edit this post in the future if I can find out. Once I swapped the zhou stock spring for the Sanwa spring I experienced the closest to 1:1 arcade cabinet emulation so far. The button feel is much better from stock, where I was hitting notes too early because the buttons were triggering too early they now offer just enough resistance to get those Cools I needed. The reset is a lot faster, saving me during those spams. Perhaps because of the zhou button being so lose, I didn't experience any issues doing two handed drumming on a button like I had on my previous setup so with a simple spring swap I was able to get the best of both worlds. Enough sensitivity to accomplish tricky techniques but enough reset and resistance to keep long chains consistent and spams reliable.

Build Quality:

The top lid is some type of acrylic, with beveled edges and vinyl artwork printed under the acrylic. It's very nice and from the top it looks like a very professional product with nice artwork just like a FT arcade cabinet may have. Beyond that it's a little bit different of a story.



The body is constructed out of a thick foam core or something like it. The controller doesn't weigh very much but can easily be held still on a table with the rubber feet included even under aggressive playing. Even so, lifting and setting the controller down is not a very comfortable experience. The sides are held together with screws and to gain access to the internals you remove seven screws that have their own threaded stakes under the shell. The seventh screw directly in the center of the controller above the touch pad appears to be drilled directly into the foam core which would concern me if you're planning to be in and out of this controller frequently that you may strip out the hole it sits into. For now it seems fine, but something to look out for.

The construction is probably the most disappointing thing but considering the cost and features, I think you could easily make an argument for this.

PPD Functionality:
This controller can be connected to a PC and be used to play PPD. The built in keybind program will allow you to set it up within a couple minutes. The touch slider does work for right and left slider inputs in PPD but for more complicated sliders ( > < ) and ( < < ) slides you'll need to use a program to further configure it to accomplish these. The audio functionality built onto the controller works much better on the PC where the volume can be adjusted much higher than the PS4 limits USB headsets.

Conclusions:

The Zhou Controller is a fantastic Project Diva controller. I would recommend this to players who are looking to get into a full sized arcade setup. The cost ($350 USD with shipping) is the best value I've seen so far. If you lack the time, skills, materials/tools or patience to create your own controller this will easily satisfy your needs for a very economic price and leave you with a base to upgrade in the future if it becomes necessary with name brand buttons, switches, springs etc.

Out of the box the zhou controller is ready to play. I've spoken to others who have purchased Zhou controllers in the past, one of them brings his to conventions and lets the public play FT with it and he says it's still holding up fine despite any initial reservations of build quality.

The slider is implemented very well and is a ton of fun, the buttons even out of the box are serviceable and with a cheap and simple spring swap can be brought closer to arcade button feel.

The only available alternatives on the market for sale are the Hori mini-cons. The F mini-con's are plentiful on Japanese auction sites very cheap and can be used on FT with a brook PS3 to PS4 adapter. They can be modded with new springs and switches, but they're ultimately mini cons and not full sized pads so their utility ends there. The FT mini con and X mini con are very rare and very expensive, even on Japanese auction sites making them undesirable for most players.

The economics and availability of the Zhou controller is the best on the market right now. Until another individual or company offer their own arcade pad the only alternative to the zhou for a full sized pad would be to make your own. With these considerations in mind I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this controller to anyone who wants an arcade pad for FT.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

Additional References:
The Official Youtube and videos of the Zhou Controller being used are below.




Early production videos before the design was finished (old touch slider, lack of RGB etc.)

 

PS4 touchpad can also do this, as long as the controller is sending the correct signal. This is also why I am spending so much time on it, to attempting to "recreate" the "real slider response".

As I said previously, the thing they can definitely do better is to map the slider to analog sticks. Brook PS3/4 board has the ability to do this, thus it could be done with simple firmware change to the slider sensing board (and maybe also in conjunction with some wire re-routing and/or adding inexpensive components). This would save *a lot* of hassle of re-setting the macros *every time* if the player switches between DS4 and arcade play styles very often.

This is a quite interesting construction. I thought they just hacked an existing lamp holder but it doesn't look like one. Is it a soldered-on lamp holder? Also how did they attach the holder+switch to the button? Standard twist-and-fit?

BTW Chinese buttons are not compatible with Sanwa button accessories (and vice versa). Therefore if you want Sanwa/ZhouSensor experience you need to swap the whole button to Sanwa/ZhouSensor and not just the lamp holder.

Actually the store/studio is named "ZhouSensor". It's not the name of the switch. The controller is not named "Zhou controller" either, but "ZhouSensor controller".

Also more pictures about the motherboard would be appreciated. I wonder what kind of chip they are using for the slider?

 

@LanDi h anon

 

I just looked at those videos of the zhou controller, and it seems like contrary to the manual, the touch sensor is not mapped to L and R. For example, see Envy Cat Dance at 3:09.

 

@phailyoor Hai wa hai ni (the last video) @ 3:29 clearly shows that it is not touchpad-based. Also at the beginning of the GTT video (the third) you can clearly see that they use slider to change the difficulty filter, which is L1 R1 on a DS4.

 

I've never handled generic buttons honestly. I've always purchased Sanwa's. As for how the zhou sensor attaches, I would take pictures if I could but it's inside the holder and it's got like a shelf that you slide it in and twist it into but it's not the same as the way Sanwa sensors attach to Sanwa buttons, it's just different.

Everyone in my circle of friends has just been called it a Zhou Controller, it's faster. I guess the guy has made other rhythm game controllers but I only play Diva so that's all I'm familiar with so. Here are some pictures. Not sure it if helps. It took me awhile because I was pretty content to just play it this entire time and didn't feel like reopening it.









As far as continuing impressions having played it for a few weeks. Still largely positive. Today I swapped out the 200g springs for 400g which I think was the right call. Basically, the buttons are a big weakness in this controller. There is a ton to side and side play and the downward travel is way more than a Sanwa and that results in bad button reset behavior even with 200g springs. 400g helped tremendously. As soon as I swapped out the 400g I was able to break several records and nearly full combo a song that before I was struggling with but I was able to easily play on arcade.

Some examples of the difference; Summer Idol has a Square and X spam right in the beginning that was practically impossible on a Zhou with stock and 200g springs unless you use speed tactics like spamming the notes with your finger tips. With 400g you can hold the O and use your right thumb and left hand to to drum out the spam like you can on arcade and how I'm pretty sure you're supposed too. More success doing two-hand-one-button drums with 400g like on Common World Domination and a lot of my records I broke were purely because with the better reset my "COOL" ratio shoot up astronomically high suddenly.

I'll probably buy one of these as well when they release so I can do a side by side. They were talking about releasing this controller over two years ago and now that the Zhou is out and selling I think it lit a fire under their ass. I have no idea what the status of their development is though because they're on their Twitter asking poll questions about the touch pad like how many fingers people typically use to trigger a slide so I can't tell if that's them still working on it or if that's a question to build up a little hype but either way, looking forward to finally seeing this.

 

Sounds like a question I would ask a year ago. So I guess Soon™?

BTM my answer is "doesn't matter on capacitive touch panel". :P

Hmm SOIC-16, traces under chip :(... I hate to ask but is there any chance that I can know more about the markings on these chips?

Or you just prefer to play it the "hard" way? I mean the "arcade combo" i.e. Sanwa photo-switches+buttons+200g springs feels worse than the arcade to you IIRC. Same with the Zhou controller, but somehow 400g spring gives you a boost. Do you have a "frequently played" machine and does it use 400g springs by reasons like damage control?

 

Confused by this question. Everything I compare the controllers to is compared to an actual Future Tone arcade cabinet at my local arcade. So those are where the comparisons are coming from and it's my standard or control for everything I experience with controllers.

Like, what do you mean by damage control and arcade combo and hard way? I'm not familiar with the terms or what you mean by them at least.

The Sanwa buttons with 200g springs on my old controller were closer to the arcade cabinet than zhou buttons with 200g because the zhou buttons have more throw and travel than sanwa's so 400g in a zhou increase button resistance and improve reset to be more comparable to the arcade cabinet. The 400g springs make the generics feel closer to 200g Sanwa's in their operation if that makes sense. My old controller setup with the Sanwa buttons and LHSXF sensors I still felt wasn't right because there were things I found myself incapable of doing but now I realize I had been handicapping myself because my FT config had a 12+ delay on it which was why things like two-hand-one-button spams were absolutely not working previously. Now I play with 0 lag config which was what I should've been doing from that start.

I think that's the gist of what was being asked. Basically, I think the 200g springs with Sanwa buttons and photo sensors which was the best I could do to mimic arcade was the best replication of the arcade cabinet but because my lag config was wrong I thought something was wrong and drove myself up a wall not realizing what it was. I couldn't understand why I could get difficult songs like Common World Domination on extreme at the arcade with relative ease but on the home arcade why I'd fail at them miserably and it's because the lag config was sabotaging me.

 

I heard that there are some arcade machine operators/manufacturers who like to use harder (i.e. require more force to activate) spring since they believe that it will reduce the damage to the microswitch, etc. if newbies slap the button VERY hard.

The "hard" way of playing means the same thing: get more used to a 400g setup than 200g.

The "arcade combo" is basically a "Sanwa LHSXF+button+200g spring" combo since that's the default setup for an official arcade cabinet.

I see. So my assumption is completely wrong. I thought that you might just simply prefer 400g springs over 200g.