I got a few jobs done in the workshop. Added the gearstick to my racing setup. This required another cam-lock under the desk in the left slot. That went better than the one in the large centre slot, I might have another crack at that one another day.
Have rarely used the gearstick with my wheel. The table clamp is terrible and the extra wire is just the last straw, such a pain to set up. But now it's just one more thing to slot into the desk and off we go. Played Dirt Rally 2.0 using the gearstick as a handbrake. Worked a treat.
A pic of the underside of the gearstick. Added an extra board so that I had something to screw through. It's super secure.
And now the moment literally nobody was waiting for! Time to start the arcade panel!
Went through the process of cutting and sticking and planing bits of wood to fit in the desk slots. Using the middle and left slot with the intention of making this a one player module that I can add a player two module that will attach to the right side of this.
In a high-tech fashion, I propped a bit of wood up to get a feel for angles. I tried all of one angle and this I deemed suitable and good.
This arrived! It's a Mag Stik. Not a Mag Stik plus. Now the difference is quite important, I shall explain. The name, Mag Stik, is referring to the fact it has a magnet inside that brings the stick back to centre, not a spring. It has a very short throw and is really chunky. The Plus model allows you to lift the stick up and give it a twist, this will change the gate below the panel from 8-way to 4-way, or vice versa. This is cool. I have very rarely played games like Pacman or its like with a 4-way gate. The only reason for this is that my previous sticks required you to open your control panel, remove some screws and a plate, then either move that or swap it out for a different one, then replace the screws and the control panel knowing that as soon as you get bored of Pacclone you will need to do all of this again to switch it back. So you don't.
This solves that.
I thought the difference between the Plus and non-Plus version was the plus had a magnet and the non did not. That is incorrect. The difference is that the non-plus requires you to move a white switch (you can see it on the side of the black part of the underside) to change the gate. I was a little disappointed.
Then I saw that Ultimarc do an upgrade kit for £8 (with free delivery!) so I have ordered that. It does require some alterations to my stick but I am pretty confident I can manage a little DIY :D
Keen to try out the stick I drilled a hole into a bit of board.
The Mag Stik became lonely. So I drilled some holes and put in the new buttons I had bought with the Mag Stik. Gold leaf buttons. GOLD! They are really nice, very quiet and very responsive. I am very pleased with these. Microswitches have their place, but I grew up in old fashioned arcades and all the switches were leaf type.
A better idea of the angle. Probably not as steep as this in the finished article.
Plugged in a zero delay encoder. These things are built to a budget, and that budget is bugger all. The first one I tried was faulty. I had a spare so that went in and enabled me to try out the stick and buttons. They are FANTASTIC. Once they are in a solid panel that doesn't move about I will be in arcade heaven.
On a side note: the zero delay encoder has more than zero delay. Total marketing scam that name. There are videos about that show they have a whole frame of potential (not consistent) latency when compared to something like an Ipac. I am far too cheap for something so professional and so I dug about for alternatives.
First was hacking up an old USB keyboard, but that has some problems with multiple button presses. I went down that road before and its difficult and fiddly to get everything soldered to a keyboard encoder.
The one I have gone for is an Arduino Pro Micro. You can pick clones of these up from fleabay for around £5 delivered and they make (so I am told here) excellent, very low latency encoders. So I ordered one and it should be here tomorrow. Very exciting!
And the only other thing I have to catch up on - I dug out my old spinner!
This was made for me by my very lovely Step-dad. He is a precision engineer and knocked this up for me out of solid aluminium (sorry 'mercans, that is how many i's it has ;) )
The centre part is the spinner, the top pokes up through a control panel. The bit on the left is a VHS tape head. The bearing of which is SUPER AMAZE (check out the vid on my tweet here) The spinner attaches to the top of this with a couple of screws.
Then the part on the right, which is upside down in this pic, attaches to the square bit on the left with the spinner going through that hole. This allows it to be attached to the underside of a control panel.
I will need a mouse, this one, to attach to the side of this to read the spin. This is a really nice, but well-loved and used, Microsoft Sidewinder Laser mouse I used for many years.
I brutally gutted it and stripped out the bits ready to attach to the spinner.
But that is where I finished. The spinner is going into a box, for now, I will revisit it when I find a place for it in the control panel scheme (it will need a trackball to keep it company).
And that is where I shall leave it for now. When it rained particularly bad one day I made a couple of hangers for my headphones and vive. I hope to be a bit more productive this next week!
Thanks for reading. If you came here from twitter don't be shy, say hi, make rude comments, tell me what I'm doing wrong, suggest cool stuff I could do.
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I will see you there!
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