Custom control panel - binding led switches

[al_kinnon]

Hi,

I use x52 pro hotas, and wanted to get away from using my keyboard. After a bit of googling I found out about joystick encoders sold on ebay. Spent 20 quid on an encoder, some buttons and switches, and a sheet of carbon fibre printed vinyl. Used some scraps of plastic sheeting I had to build a contol panel roughly inspired by the hand panel in game.

All good and well. possibility of 16 buttons/switches (15 added at the moment). My problem is, can I bind switches to turn things on and off? Fuel scoop binding can be set to toggle or hold, so I can bind that to a switch as hold on one of my green LED switches.

Problem is I dont get the option for things like landing gear, silent running, flight assist; which would be ideal bound to switches. If something on, the switch is lit.

Is there a way round this, or have i wasted my time adding LED switches?

Regards,
Al

 

[Kelster87]

Hmmm.. What switches are you using? What encoder did you use? Kinda need to know that to answer your question. But it may be the LED switches are not quite the right choice.

 

[Vedmo]

What you are calling a joystick encoder, does your PC recognize that as a joystick?

Assuming windows, can you type joy.cpl in start search box and verify it exists and is working there.

Also: nice job on the panel, looks great!

Edit: don't think I understood post at first. So these are locking switches? If you bind one to (I'm assuming you meant) cargo scoop, you push the switch to a position at stays at and so long as hold is selected in the game binding menu instead of toggle your cargo scoop stays deployed so long as you don't flip the switch back to the "off" position?

 

[xzanfr]

Are your switches momentary? (i/e like standard keys on a keyboard?)
I use 2 of these https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/202385339862 with standard arcade cab buttons - no where near as neat as your setup - and it works fine.
Possibly an incompatible button / switch.
great construction though, hope you get it sorted soon!

 

[al_kinnon]

Thanks for the prompt responses. The issue isn't the panel being recognised by my pc. Im using the same zero delay encoder as xzanfr, its recognised by Windows fine. 8 mo buttons, and 7 12 volt led car dash toggle switches which click on and off.

Windows recognises every one of them as expected and I can test each from the generic gamepad settings. I've wired the joystick up down left right ports to buttons too so I can bind. All works and elite recognises them, but... The led switches stay on, which I wanted. This is great with cargo scoop set to hold, and my led switch is lit to remind me it's still open. Flip the switch off and my cargo scoop closes.

I would like to do the same with other controls, such as landing gear, silent running, lights and night vision. At the moment I have to flick the switch on then off again, like a momentary button, which defeats the purpose of led switches. If there's a xml hack or way of using non-momentary switches I'd be chuffed.

Thanks again,
Al

 

[Vedmo]

So with that board you push the switch and it completes a circuit letting the board know that input is "on." Your switch is powering the LED through that signal circuit, so I don't see any way to get around it (other than of course the one you found with toggle/hold option on some in game settings). A programmable board with separate power to the LED could do it with some coding. Someone a lot smarter than me might be able to read info from the game about the deployed/retracted or on/off state of landing gear or lights for example, and use that with a programmable board to send power to an LED as well.

So far as a switch that would work with your board, I'm at a loss. It would need to be a latching switch that got separate power to continue to power the LED so long as it is in the on position as well as a momentary switch for the signal circuit that did not latch, both worked into the same toggle (edit: that would only work so far as turning things on, nevermind...). Even if you could find something like that, I'm not sure your board could support it (you'd need to steal power from it and run a resistor for every LED, and that sounds like a great way to maybe smoke the board without knowing more about it).

I'm no expert on any of this. I'm an amateur who has managed to use Arduino and Teensy boards/info to make my own controllers, for what it's worth (not much!). Hopefully someone can come up with a workaround for you!

 

[Ashnak]

Nice job on the panel - but probably bad news for your switches. When I did the round-up for my panel¹, I only found these functions to be toggle-able inside ED:
Flight Assist
Rotational Correction
Silent Running
Cargo Scoop
Microphone
CQC score
Headlook
Drive Assist
SRV Vertical Thrusters
SRV Handbrake
SRV Cargo Scoop
From those, for me, only Silent Running and the Cargo Scoop make sense (I fly in VR). Maybe the SRV Handbrake. Add one toggle for the secondary fire control (useful for scanners or mining lasers), and that's 4 switches I could reasonably use.

If you add an additional layer of control software (I plan on using AHK, AutoHotKey), you could make the change of the switch trigger a single button press to ED - but that invokes the risk of getting out of sync. Clicker has an interesting approach to this in this (currently running) thread, involving the use of another key as "reset" option.

¹It's going to be some time. Right now, that panel is a bunch of disconnected planes in Fusion360, a scratch sheet in Notepad++, some ideas about the controller, a rotary encoder on my desk and a possible distributor for the switches and buttons.

 

[Ashnak]

...Someone a lot smarter than me might be able to read info from the game about the deployed/retracted or on/off state of landing gear or lights for example, and use that with a programmable board to send power to an LED as well.
...

Nope. That kind of information is not available (at least as far as I know) outside of the game. Doesn't mean you can't get it, but it would be "hacking" under FD's definition. There's also a good reason for that: making this kind information available on some sort of API would facilitate creating a full auto pilot, with all the fallout that kind of stuff would mean for PvP.

Update: in the currently ongoing thread mentioned above @Clicker mentioned a few very interesting things... leading me to this dev thread about the player API and the API manual. For some of these events - especially the landing gear or weapons deploymenrt states, there is an accessible API in the form of a status.json file in the "saved games" directory. There remains, though, the problem of sending that status to the LEDs of your (or any) panel - but the problem of getting out of sync could be handled with the information form that file directly on the PC. In theory.

 

[Dagwit]

Remember you can bind two-button combos to commands: I have one button on my joystick and one on my throttle reserved as a shift key for use with the buttons on the other controller.

On your keypad you could bind any two-button combo you wished for, potentially, and if I can still count, 120 (15+14+13...) different pairs.

 

[al_kinnon]

Thanks everyone, lots of helpful advice.

The video that started this is here:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsSUUdw4bTY

Pretty much what I did, though looks better in the vid.

I've got a bit obsessed and going to try making a tilted lit panel with frosted and black acrylic and some larger size tactile buttons (another £10 fed into ebay). The arcade style momentary buttons feel a bit clunky but i'm keen to keep digging regarding the switches, and maybe find or make ones that have a little more style.

Ashnak thanks for the list. the compatibility is more comprehensive than I thought; and I'll look into the suggestions you've made. I'd be interested in checking out your panel round up but couldn't find a link.

All the best,
Al

 

[Ashnak]

No link yet - that panel is pretty much WIP and mostly exists only as some notes.
The possible bindings is what I copied from the ED bindings in the game. And as I play in VR, I'll skip the lights completely .

 

[al_kinnon]

Not sure if this is of interest, but after a lot of revisions over the last 9 months obsessing, I gave up on using switches and went for 12x12mm momentary tactile buttons. much more sensistive and compact with a satisfying little click.
Designed and 3D printted the panel with clear PLA and the box with black PLA. LED's under each button, and graphics printed on printable white vinyl, cut to fit the panel.

Mounted using vehicle light bar clamps from ebay (£13) old Hifi speaker wall brackets from a charity shop for a quid (with knobs for adjusting position!), some plastic pipe from a plumber I know, and a bit of fiberglass effect stick on vinyl

 

[Vedmo]

Not sure if this is of interest

It is! You did a fine job, that's beautiful.

 

[Caydran]

I'd be interested in what is holding the stick and throttle to the chair?

 

[Retropolitan]

I'd be interested in what is holding the stick and throttle to the chair?

View attachment 200429

It looks like that chair's a lot like mine, with two bolts holding the armrests to their supports - so you can remove and replace the arm rests, as I did, or use longer bolts to fasten the platforms and arm rests in a sandwich. That's what I think we're seeing there. Assuming the throttle and stick have mounting holes, you'd be good to go.

 

[MarkAusten]

I use an X-keys XK-16 Stick from P.I. Engineering which gives me a total of 60 possible combinations if I program it correctly. It's expensive but worth it as far as I am concerned.

However, I don't interface it directly with Elite but use it to trigger VoiceAttack macros allowing me to make complex actions available to me.

For example, I have one button to trigger the transfer of Tritium from my ship to my Fleet Carrier. I dock with the carrier, press the button and the stick and VA do the rest. It's about 20 separate key presses and saves me a lot of hassle. I have macros for most multiple key-press actions such as docking requests, launching, opening the internal and external panels to any of the tabs... you get the idea.

tl;dr worth looking at using your new key pad and Voice Attack and EDDI to allow complex macros.

 

[al_kinnon]

Hi,
Thanks for the feedback. In response to Paul..

I dont have a lot of cash to spare, everything is on the cheap. My wife and kids baught me the chair (amazon JL Comfurni Gaming Chair ) because my old chair was super cheap and killing my back.

The shape if the arm was challenging, but found the car lighting clamps on ebay (search for "2 Pack LED Off-Road Light Vertical Bar Tube Clamp Mounting Kit Roll Cage Holder" ) which fit really well with allan key bolts provided, and allowed for a single bolt through the large hole to remove my HOTAS gear easily when I'm working. These were about £13 when I bought them.

The brackets are old speaker wall mounts, as mentioned earlier. I took out the regular box steel bar that fits to the wall, and after getting some plastic pipe cut-off's that fit snug on the lighting mounts on the chair arms; i used a hole saw to cut the plasitc part of the speaker brackets to take the pipe.

Drilled holes to fit it all together, and the bolts to secure it all to the chair are just old things lying around in a tool box that happened to fit. beacuse the brakets can be rotated so well i dont need to worry about the whole thing being level due to the uneven angles of the arm rests.

Sticky back velcro strips are all i use to fit my HOTAS to the speaker brackets. My button pad has a slot designed to fit onto the edge ot the bracket at an angle.

I'm sure the plastic pipe will wear over time, but can be easily replaced. Its actually two pipes jammed one inside the other. the outer is water pipe, the inside piece was off an old kids garden toy. Think it was a basketball hoop stand.






My 3D prints wern't great, as you can see in the images, but do the job and good enough for me.

A lot of effort, but big result for not a lot of cash.