Programming hat on secondary DX device
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Hey gents, I am in the process of building my own throttle to emulate the functionality of a cougar throttle. I’m doing this by using an Arduino Uno running a USB HID firmware called UnoJoy, and so far its been exactly what I need. I recently bought the electronics needed and everything is hooked up and working fine in game…except for one little bump. The arduino takes 4 of the inputs as a hat switch. I figured this would be good for the comms switch on the throttle. Windows detects all the inputs fine, but I am having issues getting BMS to work correctly with this hat.
BMS does not accept inputs from this hat unless the arduino itself is selected as the main controller. Is there any way to program the hat so I can use it even though my joystick is the primary controller? All the other inputs work fine with the joystick as main controller, its just this hat that doesn’t function properly.
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I use 3 controllers…. A trustmaster tflight hotas x and a game pad. The game pad has a hat switch and 2 thumb sticks The thumb sticks are recognized by falcon with no problems, and I set the radar cursor to one of them, the left one, and the right one is set to range knob, and I am testing brake to it as well.
The hat switch is not recognized as the primary is the thrustmaster, so I use Joytokey to emulate the hatswitch, and I can make it to work as CMS.
Maybe you could try it, it is easy to use, and I can give you some tips if needed.
Now, related to your project: I would like to make a hotas for me as well since I can’t afford a new one, which has all the functionalities of the cougar, or warthog.
I have been looking for tutorial on the net, and found some interesting articles related to it, using arduino, but first, I am not experienced on electronics, and I belive it will be Xdifficult, and the articles do not explain well all the schematics for building that, instead they prompt us to other websites being worse to undestand ( at least for me). So, could you share your project with the community?
Is it possible to add the stick (ssc) to the project too?
This is the question I input on google: “how to make a stick hotas” and this is the page I am talking about:
https://www.simplicate.info/building-my-own-hotas-controller/
Best regards Metalhead -
Hey gents, I am in the process of building my own throttle to emulate the functionality of a cougar throttle. I’m doing this by using an Arduino Uno running a USB HID firmware called UnoJoy, and so far its been exactly what I need. I recently bought the electronics needed and everything is hooked up and working fine in game…except for one little bump. The arduino takes 4 of the inputs as a hat switch. I figured this would be good for the comms switch on the throttle. Windows detects all the inputs fine, but I am having issues getting BMS to work correctly with this hat.
BMS does not accept inputs from this hat unless the arduino itself is selected as the main controller. Is there any way to program the hat so I can use it even though my joystick is the primary controller? All the other inputs work fine with the joystick as main controller, its just this hat that doesn’t function properly.
Nice effort, I was looking at the Arduino the other night.
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I am looking for a solution to do a metal casting on aluminum for the stick and throttle grips. Have found some pics from the ssc to start a 3d model, but not so much detailed
from the throttle…. -
I am looking for a solution to do a metal casting on aluminum for the stick and throttle grips. Have found some pics from the ssc to start a 3d model, but not so much detailed
from the throttle….Wow, take no prisoners Metal.
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Since I started this little project it was always my intention to release this stuff to the community. I have no use in keeping it to myself! But I thought I should have some solid proof of concept before showing you guys what I was working on. Once I iron out the kinks on the software side I’ll make a separate thread for this project.
I have a commercial software called Xpadder that I use for emulators and things. I think I could take the hat inputs and emulate keyboard commands (will try this later tonight). But my intentions for this project was for a completely plug-and-play controller, where no additional software is necessary to use it. Its just cleaner and easier for the end user if they don’t have to mess with additional software for what should be a straightforward, budget controller. But that’s just my opinion.
Truthfully, I have no plans on making a SSC. I already have a TM T16000m, and for the price it is a wonderful stick. It just has a terrible throttle and lack of hats. I pretty easily made up for the lack of hats using TARGET, so the only issue to tackle is a standalone throttle. In the end I personally will end up using Xpadder because my throttle will have 2 extra buttons that will emulate the shift and alt keys which is something I can’t do from the arduino (as far as I know). But, doing the SSC shouldn’t be all that different in terms of the software. You could either use another arduino uno, or if you want them to be one device you could look at the arduino mega, but I don’t have one of those so I wouldn’t be able to test it.
I am looking for a solution to do a metal casting on aluminum for the stick and throttle grips. Have found some pics from the ssc to start a 3d model, but not so much detailed
from the throttle….That’s pretty ambitious. I’m not quite at the physical construction stage of my project, so I haven’t given it too much thought but it sounds kind of pricey for me. I was thinking of 3D printing as I don’t really care for construction quality, and I want this to be as low-cost as possible. As long as it doesn’t fall apart in my hand and works as it should, I’m not complaining. I’ve tried looking for a model of the cougar throttle as well, but no luck there. I was toying with the idea of just taking reference pictures of the throttle grip and trying to recreate it myself, but I’m not 100% sure on that one yet. Hoping maybe someone else in the community can help us out there.
Anyway, for the purposes of this thread I am still looking for an answer if I could somehow program the hat through BMS so it is recognized even though its on the secondary controller.
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The arduino takes 4 of the inputs as a hat switch…
BMS does not accept inputs from this hat unless the arduino itself is selected as the main controller.Hi,
from what I understand you have wired the Comms switch as a POV hat, no?
If this is the case be advised that BMS can just handle POV hats from the primary input device, which is usually the stick.
So if you set your stick as primary device, the POV hats of all other devices will not be recognized by the sim.The solution is to wire the Comms switch as pure buttons, not pov. Then it should work.
Good luck with your project. Some pics would be nice
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Hi,
from what I understand you have wired the Comms switch as a POV hat, no?
If this is the case be advised that BMS can just handle POV hats from the primary input device, which is usually the stick.
So if you set your stick as primary device, the POV hats of all other devices will not be recognized by the sim.The solution is to wire the Comms switch as pure buttons, not pov. Then it should work.
Good luck with your project. Some pics would be nice
Unfortunately that is indeed the case.
As for the cougar key layout it’s not really required for a custom device,
but this is how the keys are connected in the cougar.
Falcon limitations for devices are 32 buttons. windows HID limits the number of axis on a single device to 8.
HAT is separate count, but falcon as kolbe said, only recognize HATs on the primary device (up to 4 of them) -
Yeah, after reading the key file manual it seems to be that way. Oh well. Right now, using Xpadder all the keys are working fine in BMS. I will have to poke the firmware code a little bit (actually a lot) to see if I can make those hat keys into regular keys. Should be doable, I’m just not very literate with programming and I won’t have the spare time to work on it for a little while. Also, I’d like to investigate a different arduino firmware I found to see if that’s a bit easier to work with. The installation looks more complicated but if it means less hassle with programming then I’ll take it.