Building an axis and button box

[Jack_Aubrey]

As i like to fly the really big planes, i'm building a new controller from an Arduino Uno (it still has a long way to go) but recently i realised that i dont know how many axis, buttons and hats per controller admit the Il2... I thought it would be as directinput (8 axis, 128 buttons and a hat) but i found out that this could be wrong.
So anyone knows how many axis, buttons and hats per controller admit the il2??????????

[Bolelas]

I realy dont know. 8 axis it accepts, because i have leobodnar boards BU0836A, and all 8 axis work. About the buttons, not sure. Il2 1946 has a limit of 4 USB devices pluged, (but i gess you must know that). I am also builting stuff (my 2nd throttle quadrant, and plan to joystick and pedals in near future), and if you want we can share some ideas.

[Pfeil]

Originally Posted by Bolelas

Il2 1946 has a limit of 4 USB devices plugged

4 directinput devices. Whether USB, parallel or serial port, the physical interface doesn't matter, how the device presents itself to the OS does.
Any devices that don't use directinput(This includes HID devices such as mice and keyboards) shouldn't interfere with IL2.

The easiest method to find out if IL2 fully supports 128 buttons is to build your device and see if it works. How you plan to actually connect 144 inputs to an Arduino is up to you.

IIRC the standard allows 8 axes, 128 buttons and one 8-way POV hat per device.

[Bolelas]

Ok, understood, Mr Pfeil.

You (Jack) should do a test before assembling your box. Connect directly the board to pc ( with some pots soldered, etc). Be carefull not to short circuit any thing, of course.

[MaxGunz]

Arduino UNO has a safe USB connection but CDC (unless you do some major hacking) not HID.

Jack Aubrey, do you have some way to go from COM: to joystick? If not then check out the Teensy 2.0 or Teensy++ 2.0 that are very easy to code as HID. If you're not a solder-Ace, get one *with pins* as those holes are real close to little surface-mount parts. The ones with-pins plug right into breadboards.

http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/index.html

They are a bit non-standard (Arduino compatible) but you can still use the IDE you have (Teensy software gives more options in Tools) and practically all the UNO code will run correct once you change pin numbers to match.

http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/teensyduino.html

Teensy 2.0 has 12 10-bit analog pins as opposed to the UNO's 6.

[Jack_Aubrey]

The thing is that i'd been really slow as i'm almost noob to programming, there was the trouble for the HID part, that i've already solved using LUFA.
But then recently i heard that Il2 only manage devices with 8 axis, 32 buttons and a hat, thus make all my work almost worthless (ok that's not completly true but it wont help either).

Now a little bit of info on my device, actually is a single joystick HID that has 6 axis and 56 buttons. Buttons are going to be 13 momentary, 26 are going to be "fixed position" so they only send button pushed when a change of state is sensed , and lastly but not easier there are 14 that would be from 7 rotary encoders. What i was aiming with all of this was to make my heavy pit so i could fly the Pe-8 (for an official example ).

The thing is that i try to think a little bit forward and i recently learn that 4.12 would have a axis for mix, so it would be an axis for every motor (that's my own thinking).... that give me 4 new axis and take out 12 fixed position (the one i would use for setting the mix through a 12 position switch)....

And yes i've already known that the il2 only sees 4 usb devices, and there's trouble again beacuse i own a G940 that already show up as a 3 devices to the il2

[MaxGunz]

You can make the thing HID as joystick, keyboard and mouse at the same time (at least with the Teensy). So you can move your extra buttons as keys and combo-keys and make your own head tracking too.

LUFA, now I know what Nick Gammon's sig is about!

I still like the Teensy's better. They are not limited to 115,200 baud since the USB is built right into the main chip. They get far higher data rates.

[DD_crash]

Originally Posted by Jack_Aubrey

And yes i've already known that the il2 only sees 4 usb devices, and there's trouble again beacuse i own a G940 that already show up as a 3 devices to the il2

Hello, I have modded the 940 throttle using a Leo Bodnar board. I have connected the hats, buttons and axis on the throttle plus the pedal axis directly to the Bodnar board so this shows as 1 input I have lost the ability to use the logi software so I plan to use joy2key.

[Bolelas]

Dont know if we are getting 4 axis for the mix, probably we get only one as we did for radiator. (of course i would love to see 4 axis for radiators and plus 4 axis for mixture).

Let´s wait for 4.12 to come out...

[Jack_Aubrey]

Thanks for your replies, lets see ...
MaxGunz it's true that after fighting this hard with arduino i should have been more conservative and buy something like the teensy as it seem to be more focused on the device/controller stuff.

DD_crash.... that's some thing i'been thinking, but right now i will keep working with what i have right now... what i mean is that is just a future thing whenever i get enough money... also you still have one axis unused and a few buttons so you can use the empty handle or the base for a few extras...

Bolelas yeah thats right, we would only have one axis for mix but as you almost say dreaming is free