So this was a fun little project I thought I would share with you guys.
I've spent the past few months looking for a good setup. Hoping to not spend too much money on a HOTAS configuration. Unfortunately everything out there is a bit expensive for stuff that wont fall apart on you. Now, I have a pretty decent Joystick, the Thrustmaster T.16000M. So far I've been impressed with how it feels and it's responsiveness. I'm by no means a "Joy-Stick Expert" but the one thing I'm not caring too much for are the buttons. So I started looking around for alternative input devices that could be used in elite dangerous, not finding much, the nicer Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog was looking more attractive, especially with those really cool toggle switches, but alas, still too expensive! I cant justify spending that much money on a controller. I still thought though, how cool would be to open the cargo bay doors, or turn the lights on, or deploy landing gear all at the flick of a toggle switch? So began my journey to making my own using an Arduino UNO R3, and come C# Programming skills. Here is what I made.
So I went to Fry's electronics and bought all the hardware I needed.
(one) Ardruino UNO
(5) (on) - off - (on) Toggle Switches
(2) on - on Toggle Switches
(1) on - off - on Toggle Switch
(2) on - on Toggle Switches (Large)
(one) project box of my chosing
Some wires and a breadboard.
This gives me 9 inputs as one will be the master on/off switch.
Here is the Box and the switches, I taped a piece of graph paper to it to get an somewhat rough idea of switch placement when I drill.
I know it's not very pretty, but this is a learning process for me so I'm not as eager about accuracy or aesthetics. Here is the result after drilling.
I set my Arduino setup along with the IDE. I use Notepad++ to code in, and only use the Arduino IDE for uploading the code to my Arduino. This part is to test to make sure I understand how to wire my device to work with my Arduino. Fairly easy to figure out.
Installed the buttons and begin the wiring/soldering process.
Not my best soldering job but it does the trick. Here I had to create a bridge for the ground using break-away headers for the breadboard.
Here it is all wired up and tested.
Finally the (mostly) completed unit.
It's a fairly simple design, not much to it really. I do plan on adding LEDs as well as an LCD that can read info from the game. Perhaps make programmable buttons. But so far so good!
Now comes the programming part. I was able to successfully make my app in C#. It reads the data from my controller via serial com port.
Works great! now I just need to figure out the sending of the keys to Elite Dangerous. Going to have to do this using the sendinput() method or perhaps emulating an input device.
More to come later...
I've spent the past few months looking for a good setup. Hoping to not spend too much money on a HOTAS configuration. Unfortunately everything out there is a bit expensive for stuff that wont fall apart on you. Now, I have a pretty decent Joystick, the Thrustmaster T.16000M. So far I've been impressed with how it feels and it's responsiveness. I'm by no means a "Joy-Stick Expert" but the one thing I'm not caring too much for are the buttons. So I started looking around for alternative input devices that could be used in elite dangerous, not finding much, the nicer Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog was looking more attractive, especially with those really cool toggle switches, but alas, still too expensive! I cant justify spending that much money on a controller. I still thought though, how cool would be to open the cargo bay doors, or turn the lights on, or deploy landing gear all at the flick of a toggle switch? So began my journey to making my own using an Arduino UNO R3, and come C# Programming skills. Here is what I made.
So I went to Fry's electronics and bought all the hardware I needed.
(one) Ardruino UNO
(5) (on) - off - (on) Toggle Switches
(2) on - on Toggle Switches
(1) on - off - on Toggle Switch
(2) on - on Toggle Switches (Large)
(one) project box of my chosing
Some wires and a breadboard.
This gives me 9 inputs as one will be the master on/off switch.
Here is the Box and the switches, I taped a piece of graph paper to it to get an somewhat rough idea of switch placement when I drill.
I know it's not very pretty, but this is a learning process for me so I'm not as eager about accuracy or aesthetics. Here is the result after drilling.
I set my Arduino setup along with the IDE. I use Notepad++ to code in, and only use the Arduino IDE for uploading the code to my Arduino. This part is to test to make sure I understand how to wire my device to work with my Arduino. Fairly easy to figure out.
Installed the buttons and begin the wiring/soldering process.
Not my best soldering job but it does the trick. Here I had to create a bridge for the ground using break-away headers for the breadboard.
Here it is all wired up and tested.
Finally the (mostly) completed unit.
It's a fairly simple design, not much to it really. I do plan on adding LEDs as well as an LCD that can read info from the game. Perhaps make programmable buttons. But so far so good!
Now comes the programming part. I was able to successfully make my app in C#. It reads the data from my controller via serial com port.
Works great! now I just need to figure out the sending of the keys to Elite Dangerous. Going to have to do this using the sendinput() method or perhaps emulating an input device.
More to come later...
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