Add an extra pedal to your car...

wolfebaine · 05-01-2006, 12:03 PM

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...&cpc=SCH&srm=0

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GIRDER

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Foot pedal control...

This footswitch is basically an office joke. Click the button and it minimizes all the screens on your desktop. Well, I got my hands on one by accident and a managed a nifty little addition to the car.

When you plug it in, don't install the software, just let xp identify it as a Human Interface Device. Open up girder and hit it and it actually registers a single code. Now, by itself one button doesn't do much. But tack on this modified GML file which performs different actions based on the number of clicks per second, and you have a nifty way to control your music/video/whatever.

Mine is setup to control winamp and is placed on the far left from the brake pedal. One click=Pause....Two Clicks=Next Track....Three Clicks=Previous Track. I don't think you can really go above that and have it be effective, but the GML file can hold up to 9 actions.

Just reset the Events in the Action directory to do what you want and redirect the actions in the cyclic event folder to target your new events. Viola! Makes it very easy to skip through music while never even taking your hands off the wheel!

P.S. - You'll need to enable the keyboard and alarm timer plugins for this to work properly

Bugbyte · 05-01-2006, 01:03 PM

Pretty cool. Nice out of the box thinking. The old American cars used to have the high beams on a foot switch. I always thought the should have kept that.

I suppose you could mod a Powermate to do the same thing.

wolfebaine · 05-01-2006, 04:51 PM

It was alot of fun when my girlfriend got into the car and I told her I could change the song with my mind....=-)

She screamed and got out of the car. See? It's not always about functionality...sometimes it's just about fun!

seanz0rz · 05-01-2006, 05:17 PM

or making your girlfriend jump from a moving vehicle.... ill have to try this with the ex some time....

i am building a 14 button serial interface for my car, i could easilly locate one of them to the pedal area. for me it would be useful as a "next track" as that is what i usually press.

gizak · 05-02-2006, 12:07 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by wolfebaine

It was alot of fun when my girlfriend got into the car and I told her I could change the song with my mind....=-)

She screamed and got out of the car. See? It's not always about functionality...sometimes it's just about fun!

Lol, nice one - that idea alone makes me want to do this setup.

DemonBob · 05-02-2006, 12:14 PM

Wouldn't work for me, i have a habbit of tapping my foot, with or with out music, i could imagine how crazy this would drive me having a song change every time my subconsioius mind decides to tap my foot.

gizak · 05-05-2006, 12:35 PM

So I did it, well not completely yet...but I bought the hardware, and it's actually pretty nice!! I havn't installed it into the car yet, but I played with the software it came with and it's pretty snazzy, although it doesn't work with WoW lol - as a side note, it did activate one of my hotkeys so this leads me to believe you can use the software without the hardware peice.

In any case, the foot pedal has a nice weighty feel to it, I expected some big hollow cheap plastic thing, but it's pretty decent. I have yet to put it into the car as I'm just too busy (and lazy) to get working on car stuff right now, but I wanted to give a heads up to anybody who does this, or anything similar - make sure you mount it securely! The last thing you want to happen while you're driving is have this slide under your brake pedal and prevent you from being able to stop!!! (happened with me b4 with a soda can, tip: e-brake).

Anyways, Thanks for the tip on this easy mod wolf!

lez · 05-14-2006, 03:59 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by seanz0rz

i am building a 14 button serial interface for my car, i could easilly locate one of them to the pedal area. for me it would be useful as a "next track" as that is what i usually press.

emm, interesting, how?

I am just about to duplicate my keyboards numberpad buttons around my TS as its shot, so I thought 4 on each side, 4 top and bottom, 16 buttons, take a cheap usb keyboard, hack it up, connect my buttons to scan lines for the numeric keypad, hey presto.