NeonNightRide

Just wanted to give a progress update. Got everything working as you described. That indeed crack it for me. Got the default layouts in and working. Now it's time to dive down into the custom layouts! Srfr, I finally got the Sinden's in and the 3D printed stocks attached. You were right, so worth it. Time to start getting into configuring these bad boys and getting into some games. Looking forward to it. Red, I also wanted to give you a heads up that I got the eclipse key caps working. As you know when I put them in it would continually engage the switch. What worked for me was pushing the keycap hard enough into the switch to make it fit perfectly. I think what was happening is the cap wasn't fulling "connecting into the switch so it was continually depressing it. Once I pushed the cap into it with enough force, it popped into place and works perfectly. Just wanted to share what worked for me in case you wanted to dig your eclipse buttons back out. Cheers!

Awesome. Can't wait to set them up when they finally get here. (they claimed 2 weeks, but we will see haha) Ahhh, I have been missing with LED Blink for the past 2 hours on and off and been having a heck of a time. You might have just broken the entire thing wide open now that I have dug into the config side of things. So for MAME, you make each button a gamepad button AND a keyboard button. In IPAC you set the button to the gamepad and in LED Blinky you set it to the keyboard if I am understanding correctly. If so, I will work on that tonight and see if I can get anywhere. I am just trying to make sure I have my mame paths and .xml paths configured correctly as well. Thanks!!!

Another update, I was able to achieve stabilized controller numbers via editing a cntrlr fileto assign each controller a number in Mame, then going to mame.ini and pointing the core inputs to that cntrlr file.

Just to Update. I took the USB Hub out of the equation and that seems to be what was causing the issue. I have everything hooked directly into the PC and all seems fine.

Wow, a lot to parse through here! Thanks for the tips on the buttons guys. I am going to try rotating and figuring out a workaround to get them to work. I was going to scrap them, but after seeing them on your setup, I am going to try and get a solution going. Also, that rug is amazing!! Totally worth it. I want to get the system stable and playable and then I will starting working on some of the Marquees, LED Blinky configs and such. Also, I order a pair of the Sinden guns a couple of weeks ago, so again thanks for some of the tips on them, even though I have no idea when they might show up. I already purchased some of the custom stocks very similar to yours. Do you think the mod is worth it? I may shoot over some questions when they get here and I have trouble setting them up. Red - I saw what you were talking about on reboot, where I got doubles of every device after reboot on x360ce. I went in and added the connected versions that populated, so hopefully those will stick. The issue I am facing now after I setup all four is that it seems the analogue sticks seem to not be working through x360ce. I did have to go through the ultrastik software to remap them to analogue, but hopefully after some tinkering I can get them all working at the same time. It also, might be that I am using a usb hub for both IPACS and 4 ultrastiks, so I will try and see if that is too much for the hub. Also, when you programmed your controls for MAME, it shows ALL devices when I go into the settings to reconfigure controls(emulated xbox controllers, ultrastiks, Ipacs, etc). Did you use HID Guardian to try and hide everything except the emulated xbox controllers? I tried it, and that seems to be where some of the issues started. It is hard to pinpoint, as I added the rest of the controllers in x360ce, tried running HID Guardian, and testing MAME all at once. So not sure if any or all of those had any impact. I ran out of time yesterday afternoon but hopefully will be able to make some progress this afternoon. Edited to add that I also ordered some of the octagonal restrictor plates you mentioned from Andy yesterday. Should be here by the end of the week.

Man, that is the route I am going to have to go. Sounds like it might take a while, but the journey is half the fun. That setup is incredible as well! I love those eclipse buttons you have on there! I bought them for my gold leaf RGBs, but every one I have installed so far must be made incorrectly, because when I replace the caps with the black ones, it forces the switch to be continuously depressed. I don't know if it is on my end or the buttons themselves. I will have to reach out to Andy and see what's up. I just got my first controller setup in x360CE. My son is giving it a shot with Shredder's Revenge! Time to start programming players 3-4 and then move onto LED Blinky. So much fun! Again, can't thank you guys enough for sharing your experiences and continuing to provide helpful feedback. IMG_3465.MOV

Wow, that's an incredible setup. I am planning on doing a second screen as well for marquees as well, but wanted to get the main screen and cab setup first. The eventual plan is to be able to use the second screen in front my racing cockpit so that I could play some of the arcade racing games as well. Quick question you may or may not know the answer to for when I get to the pinball setup stuff. It appearsLlaunchBox can support 1 extra screen for marquee and such. It looks like LED Blinky can control a Pixelcade LED marquee on its own. Here is my thought, and let me know if you think this is possible.... The main TV as my playfield, launchbox would control the 2nd screen for marquees and such but when it comes to pinball it could be the back glass. I would also use LED Blinky to control the wall mounted Pixelcade that could show logo art for mame and such then be used as a DMD for pinball. Here is an example of someone using just the wall mounted Pixelcade as a DMD. My goal would try to add a second screen to this setup as well. https://creativeartsandtechnology.com/product/pixelcade-wall-mount/# This may not be possible, but tell me your thoughts on if you think it is configurable. Now about the LED Blinky setup. I have RGB buttons. I think I understand you correctly when it comes to the programming, but wanted to double check what would happen on the backend. I have today off and I am going to start programming LED Blinky as I finally got the trackball setup with the lights and such. But to reiterate... for player 1 setup WinIpac for P1 buttons 1-8 to be gamepad buttons 1-8 ( we will just start there and not worry about coin/select or admin buttons for the moment). Then in LED Blinky configure Player1 buttons as a-h. Now my question is with using Mame and the color ini file that tells LED Blinky what colors each game uses and for which buttons. If programmed correctly, I am assuming the color ini file will be able to be configured using the new control scheme somewhere in the setup process? Or did you have to manually configure every game after changing the control scheme? An addition question I forgot to ask last night about configuring using Xinput through X360ce. Were you able to set it up so that each of the virtual joypads can be "stuck" as P1 P2 P3 and P4. I am just worried that the controller IDs might get swapped during reboots and such. This maybe simply how x360ce works my default, but figured I would double check before I start programing a bit later after the LED Blinky config. Again, thanks so much for your time, and you really do have an awesome setup! You have definitely inspired my and got me thinking of some bigger ideas as the project unfolds. Edit: As I am trying to configure X360ce, it looks like you can only select the keyboard for one of the controllers (i.e. using numbered buttons as start and select) did you not configure start and select for x360ce and just configure mame to use a keyboard command? Thanks!

I'm sorry to hear about your health problems and hope everything is ok. No need to try and dig too deep and bother yourself with plugging a bunch of things back in, but I will ask a couple of questions, and if you just happen to remember anything from your setup... cool. If not, please don't worry. After finally getting some time to tinker and talking with Andy, I figured out I could only configure one board at a time. Did you setup all your main player buttons as gamepad buttons in WinIpac, then use x360ce as a Xinput emulater, then configure mame to be used with the gamepad buttons as opposed to keyboard buttons? Were you able to utilize the ultrastik's ability to download controller maps (e.g. 4 way, 8 way, etc) if you were using it this way? Or was mame able to just handle them as an analogue stick? I had planned on letting LED Blinky handle the joystick mapping for the ultrastiks, but didn't know if this was possible while also using x360ce. Just to be clear, I am going through all this trouble because I am trying to have a setup that I am able to play my Mame roms, Steam games, AND use LED Blinky. After stumbling across this post, It seemed exactly what I was going for! I am thankful you guys got off topic and started sharing tips as it gave me so many idea to work off of and helped solve a lot of issues/potiental problems. I just got everything wired up, except the trackball, which I just mounted and hopefully going to find some time tonight to get hooked up and the LEDs for it setup. ( I still need to mount the IPACs and do a ton of cable management!!) Not that you care, but here are a few shots of the pedestal I am attempting to build. It'll be set in front of a 65'' rotating display that I am hoping to use for a vertical Mame setup and landscape for everything else.

Thanks for posting this and this thread has been invaluable to me planning my setup for my new cab! Long shot, but I had a quick question if you are still lurking.... I installed this firmware on my second board and wanted to make sure i did it correctly. On the bottom left corner of WinIPAC it states Board attached: UIO and not UIO 2. Is this normal behavior for this custom firmware for mixed mode on my second board? Also, did you connect your UltraStick 360s via USB only or via both USB and the IPAC ultimates. Thank you so much if you see this, and both you guys have been awesome in my new journey!!!