Discussion Big News on NUON Controller Development

[The Helper]

So I was trying to do an exclusive here but I could not hold out on it so I spoke up on Atari Age in the NUON post. I hate that they have just one thread for this whole forum. So sad. I will change that. Promise

 

[The Helper]

So we are working on a new Controller and or a new interface how many people do you think want this? NUON controller prices are out of this world but I have not heard about them in a while. Nobody is yelling for new controllers now it is like those that don't have them are waiting but how many of those are there? I think 100.

 

[V-SNES]

100 sounds like a fair number given how many copies of Iron Soldier 3 have been sold. Although, I would be interested in buying two controllers if a rotary controller were made available. The arcade stick style build that Nick made looks absolutely sick. Also, does that estimate of 100 take into account people buying two controllers? I wonder how many people would be buying two controllers.

 

[despare1]

100 sounds like a fair number given how many copies of Iron Soldier 3 have been sold. Although, I would be interested in buying two controllers if a rotary controller were made available. The arcade stick style build that Nick made looks absolutely sick. Also, does that estimate of 100 take into account people buying two controllers? I wonder how many people would be buying two controllers.

101 with me 102, if you count the fact that I want two..

 

[The Helper]

Songbird is working on a new controller for the NUON. He has 2 of my controllers, a Stealth and a Logitech to grab the input stuff and he is trying to work it out. I think he is going to be able to do this but it might take a while. I am sticking this thread so people that are interested in a Songbird controller might say something here to try and motivate Songbird to move the project up on the priority list

 

[V-SNES]

Songbird is working on a new controller for the NUON. He has 2 of my controllers, a Stealth and a Logitech to grab the input stuff and he is trying to work it out. I think he is going to be able to do this but it might take a while. I am sticking this thread so people that are interested in a Songbird controller might say something here to try and motivate Songbird to move the project up on the priority list

Perhaps an interest form similar to what was used for Iron Soldier 3 would be helpful?

 

[The Helper]

Anything I would do would be unofficial though.

 

[songbird]

When I get to the point of having something ready for "mass production" (most likely meaning a few hundred controllers), I'll definitely make a poll to gauge interest.

We're not very close yet; we have some of the buttons mapped out but not the entire controller data packet. Once we have that, we'll still need to make a tiny board with a micro and write some code to map from an existing controller packet to the NUON packet. That will give us a functional prototype. And once we have a prototype, then we can start looking at which controllers would be the best option for this, or if we would just produce an adapter and let people use their own Sony/N64/etc. controllers. Then I can gauge interest.

 

[midnight8]

Hope to hear more soon

 

[Wire]

Your controller moved benches and this is most of my life lately when not fighting compiler issues.

 

[The Helper]

Awesome!!!

 

[The Helper]

Songbird... Wire.... you guys are going to have to mod the Logitech Controller to get a read on the full scale of the analog control. The current logitech is the only analog and it does not reach all the points so you have to mod it. You have my permission to mod it

NUON-Dome - www.nuon-dome.com

If you want to.

 

[The Helper]

We are using the Logitech Controller as our source to get all the inputs to emulate the NUON controller. We have already been through one homebrew lab at Songbird and captured some of the stuff now it is off to Songbirds new partner and he is getting the rest of it. Since the logitech controller is mis-designed on the analog I have given them permission to do the NUON Logitech Controller Mod so they can capture the full range and not reproduce a defective analog controller.

Attached is the setup. Go NUON!



Please welcome new NUON Forum member Wire who is doing this!

 

[The Helper]

How is this going? What kind of challenges are you seeing with this? I see a bunch of adapter like devices for like the SNES and the Atari Jaguar but controllers with custom chips in them I suppose pose extra challenges? Inquiring minds want to know...

 

[songbird]

We've got some of the controller data packets mapped out. The main issue so far is that our "snooping" code can't keep up with the baud rate of data packets, so we miss some of the power-up ones. @Wire is going to optimize the code, capture all the packets, then we should know exactly what the system expects from the polyface chip. Mimicking that on a small prototype board shouldn't be hard as long as we can match the baud rate.

We've talked about an embedded vs. external options, and embedded helps reduce complexity for the overall solution. That way you can map input wires directly to the polyface replacement, instead of grabbing for example a N64 packet and translating it into a Nuon packet.

 

[Hastor]

Thanks for this great project! I've been keeping up on it from a few places, and just found this thread. Where's the best place to watch to know when things happen? I follow Songbird on Twitter (just won a Lynx game from a retweet contest, thanks! Ponx is great!), and a thread or two on Atariage (not sure if I'm on the right ones). I just want to be among the first to know when something is happening here!
As far as interest in controllers, I'd definitely buy a couple! I am currently lacking analog with only a Samsung conroller!

 

[songbird]

We'll definitely post NUON controller updates on Twitter, on the Songbird email list, here, and AA. Stay tuned!

 

[The Helper]

Everyone who follows NUON should be signed up for Songbirds email list. He does not spam and all his emails are good stuff!

Songbird Productions

New Games. Old systems.

songbird-productions.com

All the way down at the Bottom Right Corner of the page enter your email in the Sign Up for Newsletter box and there you go!

 

[mb4478]

What about a spinner for Tempest 3000? It has a rotary controller setting in the game.

 

[The Helper]

They have to figure out the regular controller first. I am sure the rotary uses that somehow - and I believe someone already did a spinner by modifying a regular controller. Anybody who knows more about how rotary controllers work please feel free to chime in on this thread