scott_fx

Hey everyone,

I am playing with the idea of having actual buttons to select the different apps/screens (i.e. radio, gps, mp3) to give my install a more 'factory' look.
something along the lines of this:


So I was wondering what would be the best way to do this with centrafuse.


Thanks in advance,

Scott

viguera

Well... you could get some phidgets and have a VB daemon running that would capture each button press... then "tell" CentraFuse to change the screen to the matching button or something. I don't know if it's possible to talk to CF like that, but the rest of it should be fairly straight-forward and relaitvely cheap to accomplish.

Scouse Monkey

there has been a fair bit of discussion on adding buttons, interfacing with oem stereo controls etc.

Possible solutions are direct serial interface (or using a serial button control board to add more buttons),
Hacked game pad
Joystick port (anologue - possible volume, high speed scanning implications)
Also look up girder and the girder HID (human interface plugin) which can be used to get signals from joysticks, gamepads etc.

As for direct with centrafuse maybe you can make a plugin to bypass girder.

There is lots of info ont he forum if you do a thorough search on soem of the things i mentioned (look in input devices)

Andy

__________________
If you want more answers on anything I have posted you can find me at digital-car.co.uk

or skiing or diving or doing somthing else fun!

veetid

CENTRFAUSE supports configurable hotkey's for just about every action in the application. You would just need to make your push buttons send a key sequence and CENTRAFUSE will do the rest.

david

__________________
__________________
CENTRAFUSE http://www.centrafuse.com
01 Jeep Cherokee Sport 4x4 Installed
M10000/512Mb/20GB, Lilliput 7", Holux GM-210

viguera

Doesn't look like a big deal then... maybe build a minimal skin with nothing on screen (well, maybe an exit button or something ) and bread-board a few of these puppies in there...

http://phidgets.com/index.php?module...iew&CID=6&KID=

A joystick/multi-turn and a few pressure sensors going into the USB port, then some quick VB work to read what's being pressed, and pass the commands to CentraFuse via SENDKEYS from VB, I guess... sounds so cool it makes me even wanna get involved with it.

scott_fx

This is really cool, centrafuse never stops impressing me!

If you want to get involved with this it'd be awesome! I don't know anything about code, so that would be the hitch in this for me.

Would the easiest way be to hack a 4 or 6 button game pad and then map it to hotkeys in centrafuse via vb? (does this make sense to anyone but me :-D)

scott_fx

maybe something like this:



or



http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html

scott_fx

This is cool, it can be wired to your keyboard input and it sounds like it can just replicate key strokes.... so this would be pretty easy to do with out any programing

viguera

Well to tell the truth I have NO use for this at all... my console is pretty packed with buttons and I'm going another route right now with the screen. But it should be really easy for you to pick this up... and if you want I can help you out with the VB code for the phidgets. The stuff is dirt cheap, so if you want to try and get a couple and mess with them as a test, I'll help you out with the code. If I get bored enough over the next week or so, maybe I'll do something myself and let you know what the code looks like.


Well hacking a joystick/gamepad is easy... and there are people that have done it already if you search around.

scott_fx

or would it be better to just hack something like this:

scott_fx

thanks for your valuable input. I think i'm going to try the ipac controller or the keypad hack first since this is definately in my skillset. I just needed a kick in the pants to get the ideas flowing!

viguera

Good luck either way...

And I don't mean to take away from CentraFuse, but maybe you could document your whole experience from a more "modular" approach (read: not built around just CF, but as a solution for everyone). You could use that controller with the software they provide to program it, so that each input represents a button, and you could use any front-end with it... so it might be a good idea to document everything and probably try to get it stickied in the Hardware or Fabrication forums or something, for the next time somebody thinks about doing it but using Frodo or some other front-end.

Incidentally, I see they also have a USB version, which might be better if you don't wanna lose your keyboard -- or if you're not happy with the OSK that the frontend has. It's cool that they also have a Linux/Mac version of the programming utility as well.

Have fun.

scott_fx

I'm going to go with a usb keypad and if the other programs are hot keyable then it should be pretty universal. I'm documenting my whole build for the corvette forum because there has been a lot of interest in this project so i will definately do a 'how to' if it works like i plan.

Thanks again

silencery

actually, i used the OEM buttons for inputs via a custom built serial controller. With girder, you can map those inputs into any combination of keyboard/mouse inputs you want (in fact, its not restricted to those either). I mapped those inputs to hotkeys in centrafuse and the result is awesome =)

Check my sig for more details.

__________________
Stealth OEM spyder
1204 dot net!

scott_fx

I checked out your setup when you first posted it, very cool! but that girder program isn't an option for me becuase I have no oem buttons :-( to interface with. This will all have to be custom built by me, which is gonna be tricky to make it look oem.