Modular Control Panel

I started like most other people and wanted to have interchangeable control panels. The concept was not new, and I had seen it done on many other cabinets. Since I had a similar style cabinet to Mr.Salty, and his cabinet was the first one I really studied, I made (i.e. copied) a modular control panel similar to his.

After I made the first control panel I quickly realized that I was going to have to buy a BUNCH of stuff to make all the panels I wanted to have. Buying a bunch of extra buttons just because you wanted a different joystick did not really fit my budget so I decided to make the control panel REALLY modular.

I started with a panel "base" witch was basically just a rectangular ring with the start buttons on either side and some metal rails mounted to the top and bottom of the under side of the hole in the base.

Next I made "modules" for each kind of joystick, buttons, track ball, ect. the modules rest on the rails so everything is flush and you don't even notice the seam between the modules and the base.

The next problem is how to make sure the joysticks don't come out in the heat of battle. I added clips that overlap the metal rails on the bottom of the joystick modules. This kept the joystick in place but made them rather impossible to remove, so I cut notches in the metal rails in the middle where I thought a joystick would never be placed.

Now changing to a 4-way stick or twin sticks or whatever is quick and easy and adding any new control will be easy.

The next problem is wiring, I had an 25 pin D-sub connector for the old control panel and this was not going to work with the new modular panel. At the time I was using a hacked keyboard and required quiet a few connections on the 6 button modules (12), and I did not want a bunch of huge 15 or 25 D-sub connectors inside so I decided on high density 15 pin D-sub connectors (same as a VGA connection). Pictured is the adaptor I made.

I have since switched to an encoder so I don't need quiet an many connections but I already had the connector so I kept them. I need to use the same connector for buttons and joystick so I could plug any module in any position and wire the accordingly. This did not happen the first time...or the second time, but on the third time I got it. I can plug a 6 button module into a joystick connection and the first 4 buttons work and I can plug an joystick in the button connection and get up, down, left, and right from the first 4 button connections.

There are a total of 5 connectors for modules in the cabinet, 2 for joysticks, 2 for 6 button modules, and one for a track ball or a spinner hooked to the mouse port. The track ball port is different because the other modules would not work on the mouse port and vice versa

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