suzo inductive in a xarcade tankstik

[cwrenlmi@gmail.com]

I build myself an arcade cabinet with a pc for mame and a ps2. I mostly play sf3s on it. When I was building it I was unaware of huge difference between sticks and buttons. To make things simple and save time I ordered the tankstick since its all one piece looked easily modible, has a built in mouse and worked both on the of and the ps2. Since I built the arcade machine I've noticed how sloppy the sticks are and wanted to change them out. I did alot of reading in here and decided on the suzo inductive stick. I ordered 2 and went to install them. Getting 5 volts wasn't a problem. What is a problem is that the stock stick has microswitches that when activate send .5 volts to the board and inturn activate the direction. The suzo is wildly different. When no direction is pressed the lines output 5 volts and when a direction is pressed the line drops to 0 volts. The only solution I could come up with is to use 5volt spdt relays to take the 5 volt output of the suzo to activate the relay which inturn connects the leads like a microswitch would. If anyone knows a better way to make this work or if anyone thinks this will cause lag please voice your opinions. I will be posting pics of the mod once its done.


here are the pics of the cabinet before the mod http://picasaweb.google.com/cwrenlmi/ArcadeMachine

[cwrenlmi@gmail.com]

Does anyone have any experience with these sticks that can give me some advise.

[xqoole]

Hey, don't worry about what the voltmeters read for the suzo when testing it out. I do recall some confusion when I was checking out the output of the suzo with a voltmeter. I don't remember what conclusion I came to, but basically, just hook the thing up. It will work fine, just treat it like a microswitch. Suzo ground to ground on the pcb (and whatever power source's ground is) and the abcd to the directions on the pcb. Should work just fine.

[cwrenlmi@gmail.com]

incorrect. I hooked up power and ground to check the operation of the stick. I found that it outputs 5volts at rest. Just for shits and giggles I tried just hooking it up like you described. Depending on what direction input you hook it to tou will get carrying different results. If I hook it to down everything on the screen gets highlighted and the computer starts beeping luke you are just randomly mashing buttons on the keyboard. If you hook up left it repedidly hits qcfr qcfr basically the 5 Volts at rest that comes from the suzo just overloads the xarcade board and you get crazy random results.

[Jamezorz]

Your cabinet looks nice man. Great work I am going to start on building one myself.

[xqoole]

incorrect.

Ok guy, forget trying to help you. Figure it out, it's not that hard. Maybe your xaracde pcb just sucks, or more likely than that you have no idea how to troubleshoot a simple little circuit.

[cwrenlmi@gmail.com]

Ok guy, forget trying to help you. Figure it out, it's not that hard. Maybe your xaracde pcb just sucks, or more likely than that you have no idea how to troubleshoot a simple little circuit.

why do you have to be an ass hole? I am verry experienced In low voltage electronics. That's why I broke out the multimeter before I just started hooking things up. Yes the xarcade board does suck but electronics dont just work if you plug in wires. They require proper polarity and proper voltages and proper amperages and resistance. The board is designed to respond to a specific signal had I purchased a stick that uses standard microswitches it would be a simple drop in. The suzo outputs 5 volts at rest and drops to 0 when a direction is pressed. the xarcade rests at 0 then sends .5 to activate a direction. This is an obvious problem. Anyone with any sort of electrical knowledge would know this. I have found a posible solution which I outlined in my first post I was simply asking for some input or advise. Your sugestions was to ignore the obvious conflict and just hook it up. I did connect it briefly to see if the xarcade board would adapt to a different input signal but it obviously doesn't judging by the eratic response when I tried it. So thanks for being an ass but I was looking for some advice from someone with some knowledge or experience in this area.

[xqoole]

why do you have to be an ass hole? I am verry experienced In low voltage electronics.

Good, you should be set then

[cwrenlmi@gmail.com]

Good, you should be set then

yes and no. I have come up with a possible solution which I outlined in my first post. I would still like to know if the relays will cause noticeable lag or if anyone has a better solution to my problem. It would be unwise of me to assume I know everything that's why I created this thread, to get advise from someone with experience with this particular problem.

[speedsterharry]

Why not use transistors rather than relays ? It should be quicker to react, plus the currents in the pcbs do not require the use of relays.

[xqoole]

Ok, admittedly, I didn't read your entire post thoroughly before offering my suggestion, and I thought your response was a bit snappy, but you probably didn't mean to come off that way, so anyway, who cares, it's the internet.:china:



I don't know much about the xarcade pcb, so I was wondering about a few things and trying to see if I am reading your info right. The thing I think is weird here is that the xarcade pcb input goes high (.5 volts) when the circuit is connected. So in a normal pcb (I'm sure you know this), a direction is off when the input is high (some voltage), and no current is really flowing. Then when the circuit is connected, all the current flows to the ground and the voltage drops to zero. But the xarcade confuses me, I'm guessing it's zero with no current when the switch is unconnected, but when the microswitch is switched on, the "ground" in this case is a +.5v that flows backwards from the way a normal pcb would do, from the "ground" to the pcb. Does this sound right?? I could be be totally off in my understanding of the xaracde pcb. If it is this way, there might be some weird effects with having the suzo ground being a +.5 volt, in addition to the problem of having the +5v at the inputs when the joystick is centered. I don't know, let me know what you think.

[cwrenlmi@gmail.com]

k thanks for the help, let me try and explain the situation better. On the xarcade its a regular stick with 4 microswitches each has a common wire and a direction input wire. The common wire mesures .5 volts and when the stick is at center its an open circut so the direction wire sees nothing. The suzo has a 5 volt and a ground these are strictly to power up the stick. Then it has 4 dirction wires that output 5 volts when the stick is centered and drop to 0 volts when a direction is pressed. There is no place on the suzo for the common wire. So if I were to hook up the direction wires coming out of the suzo to the direction input wires the thing just goes crazy. So my idea was to take 4 -5 volt SPdt relays which will act like an electronically activated microswitch. I plan to wire the relay N/C so that when he stick is at rest the relay is activated and the input wire on the xarcade sees nothing, then when I press a direction the relay deactvates and the common line is then connected to the input line on the xarcade. I called xarcade tech support they are no help. I dont understand how I could use transistors to acomplish this so if you could draw up a diagram on how that would wok I would appreciate it. I hope this gives you a better idea as to what I'm dealing with.

[xqoole]

Is the xaracde baord really necessary for this application? Seems to add a layer of complexity to things, and I've heard of lag on certain xaracde boards, so you might wanna search that on the forums in case you haven't.

But back to the probelm, I agree with you, this is a very tough application for the suzo. There are two big problems you have to overcome, the 5 volts on idle at the directionals, and the common line (normally the the ground line for a regular pcb) needing to be at .5 volts instead of zero, which is what the suzo pcb wants for powering it. I'm sure you know this, but the suzo just creates a low (basically zero) resistance pathway from the directional input line of the direction moved on the stick to the ground line, which is usually connected to the ground on a regular pcb. So obviously this works fine with normal pcbs, but not with the xaracde, as it needs the .5 volts coming back.

I think you had it right first with the relay switch. If indeed you can turn these switches on by sending the voltage from 5 to 0 or ground, that would be perfect. I have no experience with using these though. Can't say I know about what kind of lag they would have, but I'd imagine it would be pretty low. Don't know if you have access to a college electronics lab, but you could easily use an oscilliscope to check the lag on these switches by making up a little circuit on a breadboard and noting the outputs on the 'scope. Kind of like testing slew rate for digital IC's. Anyway, good luck man.

edit: btw you have my apologies, you definitely know what your talkin' about :angel:

[cwrenlmi@gmail.com]

I aplogiz e for calling you an ass and thanks for coming around. I have a new developement. I ordered the relays and they came in yesterday. I tried hooking them up but the direction line doesent output enough current to activate the relay. So that idea is out the window. I found that the relay has a 5 milisecond activation time so if it would have worked I dont think the lag would be that bad. The reason for the xarcade board is I needed something that would work with a pc and a ps2. So I did some searching and came across the tankstik that also has the trackball that acts as a mouse and the side buttons are mouse buttons 1 and 2. So in the begining it looked to be a perfect solution. The only real downside is the sloppy sticks. I wanted the suzo because of the lack of microswitches, but it looks like assed out. I can either rebuild my entire pedistal with new guts and new buttons and buy new converters to get it to work with my setup. I really dont want to do that so it looks like I'll be returning the suzos and getting some sanwas. I really appreciate all the help and about my electronics experience I am by no means an expert but I was an mecp 1st class installer for 4 years so I had alot of experience in low voltage in vehicles and I do some computer moding and repair as a hobby. I own an ocillascope but it looks like I won't be needing to break it out for this project. The other problem I have is that when sf4 comes out I will want to play it in hd. My ps3 and hd tv are in my bedroom. So it looks like I'll be modding my arcade cab with a high def tv and buying a second ps3 unless they come out with a of version of the game. God my life sucks right now.