bodnar chip

[colubridae]

:helpsmilie:Hi I am about to take the plunge and try building my own generic pit.

 

any advice welcome.

 

I am also thinking of starting with a bu0386 chip.

 

Am I correct in thinking that the game DCS or lockon will recognise several of these chips at once?

 

Any help welcome please.:thumbup::)

[Avilator]

Those boards are just USB devices, and the game recognizes multiple devices, so you should be fine there. However, if you want outputs for things like LEDs and so forth, idk if those cards support that.

[colubridae]

Those boards are just USB devices, and the game recognizes multiple devices, so you should be fine there. However, if you want outputs for things like LEDs and so forth, idk if those cards support that.

 

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

 

I'm not going for out LED's yet awhile. This will be my first venture and my funds are v limted.:thumbup::)

 

do you know how extra boards are 'seen' by the game?

[brydling]

Each board will show up as a joystick in the game. I have just finished the making of a joystick card that has 240 buttons and 13 analog axes. You would need seven BU0836 to get that amount of buttons. I developed this card because I want to make my own cockpit, and I like to do things myself. It works perfectly with BS.

[aaron886]

You can use as many as you have USB ports for. I'm using the BU0836A, it's an absolutely fantastic piece of hardware.

[colubridae]

Many thanks to all who replied.

 

I will charge ahead.:thumbup:

[shu77]

Leo's chips are great, I got one recently, easy to work with and to configure, Highly recommend it to you

[brydling]

Yes they are good joystick cards and really cheap if you want to try and connect a few buttons. The thing that was disturbing me however was the small amount of buttons. You would need three BU0836's just to make the A-10C CDU, so the money quickly adds up. I made my 240 button board for less money than one BU0836, and it has 12-bit resolution so it should in fact be compared to BU0836A. If anyone is interested, I may sell a few of them.

[Kuky]

Yes they are good joystick cards and really cheap if you want to try and connect a few buttons. The thing that was disturbing me however was the small amount of buttons. You would need three BU0836's just to make the A-10C CDU, so the money quickly adds up. I made my 240 button board for less money than one BU0836, and it has 12-bit resolution so it should in fact be compared to BU0836A. If anyone is interested, I may sell a few of them.

 

You got my attention there, any chance of making a photo of your board in finished state and basic diagram on how the pins are to be connected (is it matrix like in Leo's one etc) and how much you'd wanna sell it for?

 

PS. I am from Australia so also how much would shipping be (estimate)

 

Thanks in advance

[shu77]

I would suggest using a USB keyboard matrix for something like a CDU, they are quite cheap and easy to work with

[brydling]

You got my attention there, any chance of making a photo of your board in finished state and basic diagram on how the pins are to be connected (is it matrix like in Leo's one etc) and how much you'd wanna sell it for?

 

PS. I am from Australia so also how much would shipping be (estimate)

 

Thanks in advance

 

Add me on msn and we'll talk about it. farbror_brydling@hotmail.com

 

_Edit_:

 

Maybe someone else wants to know some of these things too. The buttons are connected in a 15x16-matrix and the connectors are eight 40-pin IDC flatcable-males (like the ones on a computer motherboard for an old IDE-disk). Connections are easier than BU0836/A, since there is one row-pin for each column. There are also five column-pins for each column, so you never have to share a single pin between alot of buttons. I was thinking of including eight females with a short stump (1 dm?) of flat cable attached. The connectors for the analog axes are 3-pin headers like the ones on Leo's cards. To be able to use all 240 buttons, the software must be able to handle 116 buttons from a single joystick. BS can handle 128 so there is no problem there.

 

The price is hard to estimate. It depends on how many cards that are going to be manufactured, since the PCB-manufacturing gets cheaper if you order more units. I would not order less than 10 PCB's, but I could use a few cards myself so I don't need 10 buyers to be able to pull it through. Since there are so many pins to solder it will take a while to do, and that is not something that I want to do just for the fun of it so I must use a price that will pay for all the components and the time spent. If I make 10 cards that would probably be about 800 SEK per card and 100 SEK shipping (~125 USD in total).

 

One more thing to mention. The card uses separate power. 12 V from the computer power supply will work fine. Any other DC-source between 8-13 V will also work fine.

 

 

I would suggest using a USB keyboard matrix for something like a CDU, they are quite cheap and easy to work with

 

 

I wouldn't want to remap regular keyboard commands. I want a joystick. I will also make a program for my joystick card that implements an IOCP-server so that the buttons can be read as with SIOC, if you want to do more advanced stuff than pushbuttons.

Edited August 6, 2010 by brydling

[Kuky]

Sorry brydling, I don't use MSN, just to let you know US$125 would be alright for me... if you do get more people interested in this and you decide to make a few PCB's for sale for about this price sometimes in the future I would like to get one.