Ultimarc Ipac Ultimate IO How to Set up
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We are attempting to use an Ipac Ultimate IO with 4 players, USB Spinner and USB Track Ball.
Running this on a Raspberry Pi 3We however Have no clue how to make this work. I'm striking out with finding Guides on how to set up the Ultimate Ipac IO. From what I can tell is we need to add some extra software to the Pi to make it work.
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@mrbouncyballs For a controller interface, you should be able to get it working out of the box. The only consideration for extra software might be for LED control, but I would consider LED setup secondary to getting it working as an input device. The IPAC is typically a keyboard controller (or can be configured as such via firmware). You may need a windows box setup so you can configure the IPAC as a keyboard, but my reading of this device's features is that it is a keyboard by default.
It can be handy to have an external ACTUAL keyboard also plugged into the Pi on first boot and use that to do your initial ES config. Others have noted that newer IPAC devices get mis-recognized by Emulation Station as a gamepad device. However, using real keyboard for the initial config for navigating in ES (and using the keys that correspond to your Player 1 stick and buttons) is maybe a one-time configuration step, and thereafter, you can use the IPAC buttons.
So, with the IPAC joystick and buttons essentially triggering keys, you can turn your attention to the analog inputs. These should show up to the Pi as a USB mouse.
You might find it worth the extra hour or so to setup an SD card with Raspian+Pixel, as though you are just setting up a Pi as a computer workstation. Then, once it is up and running the Pixel desktop, connect your IPAC and trigger some buttons and move your trackball/spinner. I would expect that triggering switches on the IPAC would seem like keyboard inputs. For example, Player 1 UP will be like pressing the UP arrow on a keyboard. Coin 1 and P1Start will be like pressing 5 and 1 respectively.
If you connect spinners or a trackball, you should be able to use these to move the mouse.
This testing is worthwhile to prove that you really have out of the box functionality, and that the Pi recognizes your device without any issues. That said, I have no idea how you would get the LEDs working. That probably will require extra software, especially if you intend to make them dynamic, unless the IPAC has some way of configuring the LEDs with the WinIPAC utility (windows).
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@mrbouncyballs Bottom line: Get ready and get enthusiastic about the work ahead of you. You say you have no idea how to get it working. Well, it won't be too hard, but you might have a lot to learn about the Pi, keyboard controllers, emulators, and so on. Nothing is plug and play, and almost everyone here as a different hardware configuration. A lot of us have IPAC devices, but yours is the first Ultimate I have heard of.
It can be a lot of fun, but you need to realize that "fun" here includes a seemingly never-ending string of configurations. For example, I have a working RetroPie setup built around an IPAC4 to primarily play arcade games, but I can think of about 20 things off the top of my head that I'd like to implement/improve. It is truly an iterative process where you make incremental improvements to your setup. Don't expect simple solutions for anything. The Pi is intended to be a learning device after all, and all of the software you can access is built and supported for free, so keep that in mind.
Finally, when asking for help, make sure you read everything you can find here, especially the wiki pages, and then do some relevant searches in the forums--chances are that someone else has had a similar question in the past, and answering the same stuff over and over gets pretty tedious, especially when it is obvious people are ignoring the documentation. If you do ask detailed questions, you will get pushback if you don't provide detailed descriptions, so read the link at the top of this page and provide all of the requested info and people will be happy to help!
Oh, and when you get your build underway, post something about it here. You will get lots of praise and feedback and advice.
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Thanks for the Reply
And I guess this is what I don't understand. Emulation station does recognize the Ultimate I/O as a keyboard. So that is good. But when Emulation station wants to configure the buttons you go through the steps and some of the buttons do not seem to work. so I know I have work there. But for example if you plug an Xbox controller in and you map it is maps correctly. the Ipac is not. button 1 you bush for "A" and then it does something totally not expected. However we will tinker with it some more.
My son has a Pi also so we will try to hook the Ultimate up to that and see what the Buttons correspond with a keyboard. I really like this idea thanks. This should help lots.
As for the LED. at this point we just planned on having them turn on. no RGB no Fancy blinking or anything just turn on. I think that will be easy.
Track ball and Spinner are both USB, so those should not be a problem.
We will for sure post pictures when this is working, as what I have done is fairly unique for the controllers.
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UPDATE.
Progress. Hardware issue Solved. We have a bad switch, it was always closed causing issues. That had solved 98% of our issues.
Our next problem to figure out is The Joystick works fine in All emulators except MAME. It kind of works. Might acutally work perfect for Q-bert as pushing Left, Right, UP, Down it will go diagonal in some games like commando and Gauntlet, Dig dug and MR. Do it is just hard to get it to change directions from left to up or up to down to right. going the opposite direction it will do most of the time. This just seems odd to us, but we will figure it out.
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@mrbouncyballs you might be having the common problem of using an 8-way joystick on a 4-way game. Take a look at your joystick when you are hitting the four cardinal directions. Are you also accidentally hitting two directions at once (effectively a diagonal?). For example, if you push up, it should only actuate the up switch. Does it also sometimes actuate a left or right at the same time? If so, it will be hard to play 4-way games like Dig Dug and Mr. Do because every time you are inadvertently hitting a diagonal (two switches at once) the game does not know what to do. It is impossible for the game to know your intentions, so it often sticks, or misses a turn.
Your joystick, depending on what it is, may have an adjustment, or allow you to flip the actuator around making it harder to hit the diagonals. The actual arcade games use restrictor plates making it impossible to hit a diagonal. That works great on a single game, but isn't very flexible for us who want to play Pac Man (4-way) and then play Gauntlet (8-way). Programmable joystick can help, or a switching restrictor plate, or a separate joystick for each type. The compromise I came to on my system which isn't perfect is setting up my joysticks such that they are 8-way, but that it is hard to get them perfectly in the corner to trigger two switches.
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@mrbouncyballs How did you determine that you had a sticking switch?
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@paulfecht he was not online since 16.04.2017. I doubt you will get an answer here, better start a new topic describing your issue.
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@sirhenrythe5th thank you will do.
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