The Kaimana should work fine with that Chinese usb controller but you should know that the Chinese thing is horribly slow at polling the buttons. I think it only scans all of the buttons like 8 times a second where the better controllers scan at 500 or 1000 times. You might want to look at something better for your cab than the cheap Chinese model if you are a serious player.
The Chinese thing aside…
The Kaimana has inputs to monitor 12 switches without any extra wiring or hardware. Both the left and right side of the Kaimana headers are tied together so they are effectively the same thing. I think the secondary header is there as an optional convenience connector to help keep wiring simple but it’s not really required.
Your cheapest option is to pick 12 switches you want to monitor and connect those to a Kaimana board. The Kaimana can drive a nearly infinite number of LEDs (let’s keep it practical though) so even with 12 input switches monitored, you could light up all of your panel.
Option 1 - Simple
Off hand I would recommend connecting the 6 buttons on the left and the 6 buttons on the right to the Kaimana board. You can still connect LEDs to the P1 start and P2 start so they have idle animations but these two switches would not be monitored so they would not light up when pressed.
Option 2 - Slightly more expensive but way, way cooler
Purchase two Kaimana boards and have 24 inputs to go crazy with and monitor both joysticks (8 switches) as well as all of your buttons (14 switches) !
There are lots of other things you COULD do but I would not recommend any until you have given this more thought. Once you know WHAT you want to do, there are many here who can show you HOW to do it.
I don’t know if anyone else is updating the Kaimana Wiki but I followed the link that @pcornejo posted and the info was out of date. I went back and added the Kaimana class references, a link to the SRK forum and fixed a few other little things. I thought all of the Kaimana class stuff was up there but I had not looked at the wiki for a couple of months so who knows.
Thanks @ZonbiPanda, i have made a drawing of how i understand that could be the wires connected to kaimana.
Please tell me if this is ok. I would use the left side for P1 and the right side for P2, but only for the buttons. The sticks must be connected to the kaimana too? i wont iluminate the joysticks.
So im trying to find which page in the program that lets me set individual buttons to colors of there own. So i want P1 to always be white and K1 to always be blue when pressed. Then just trying to figure out how to make the LEDs be active at all times. So far ive just gone to the random select on Kaimana.custom and changed all the randoms to 000,000,255(blue?)
@Mr Oso The easiest option would be to use Wahoo747’s latest file and use the simplepress header (.h) and source file (.cpp) file.
In the simplepress header tab you can define the colors for each attack button that is located in the simplepress source tab.
So for example, in the simplepress header tab find: #define P1_COLOR_SP BLUE and change BLUE to WHITE #define K1_COLOR_SP GREEN and change GREEN to BLUE
To access the simplepress settings on your Kaimana, you can access the menu option by holding down, start, and select for two seconds, and then selecting the third option (HP).
Thanks liquidcourage. That sounds easy enough for me to do hah. The dropbox link in bryans comment is not working for me. Anywhere else i can grab his latest file?
@pcornejo that will work. You only need to connect the controls that you want to use for input, even if you are not lighting them. The board will monitor these inputs for combos, even if those combos are only displayed on the buttons.
Also remember the Kaimana has a passive pass through. So you don’t have to Y connections like you have drawn, you can have the line come from the button to the left side of the Kaimana and then run to the controller from the right side.
Thanks @armi0024 but the right side will be occupied by the wires for the Player 2.
Another question, if both sides of kaimana are the same, and i have connected on the left side the wires for P1 and in the right side the wires for P2 how kaimana Knows im pressing the buttons from P1 or P2??
Sorry if this is a silly question but i dont understand.
Hmmm, i think i understand now how it works input connections.
You have 14 inputs for control buttons joysticks or whatever, they are named on the board up, down, p1,p2,p3… but you can use as you want, so you if you want to control 6+6 buttons for both players you have to use 12 of those imputs and i should use for example UP input for Kick1 button and later when i program the routines i have to tell kaimana that up is really kick1. Then i must use one side of kaimana for my imputs and the other side to connect to the buttons.
Is this ok?
@pcornejo Listen, I’m late to the party here but I’m going to tell you flat out that you cannot hook up two different PCB’s on both sides of the Kaimana at the same time. Both sides of the Kaimana are linked, the same exact circuit; so don’t do that because I don’t know what the heck will happen. Also going forward I can’t personally recommend that any thing will work the exact same way as it has with my setup since those PCB’s that you are going to use I’ve never seen in my life. So assuming you have Cthulhu or MC Cthilhu PCB’s then you can take my advice. If you want to do this with one Kaimana then you must understand that you are sacrificing LED driver support for the joysticks. You CAN still illuminate joysticks with only one Kaimana in this dual PCB setup fashion but you really wouldn’t be using the Kaimana at all, you would bridge the connection with the joystick input on the signal PCB and that would generate light but it would only be one color of your choosing. However with my setup one input is left on the Kaimana so there is a possibility of LED driving one joystick but that makes no sense with a dual setup so I just left it alone.
Now with the ONE Kaimana and TWO MC Cthulhu PCB’s I had the signal wires going from the buttons directly to one side of the Kaimana (doesn’t matter which side) and then those signal wires exiting on the OTHER side of the Kaimana from the same named points of entry (if you choose to put the player two jab through the P4 terminal on the Kaimana it must fit through the P4 terminal on the other side) but going forward to the MC Cthulhu PCB’s you can place them anywhere you want. Point being the labels mean nothing, you can do whatever you want within the limits of the Kaimana, which is pretty unlimited in its own right.
@pcornejo Cool. I’d personally buy a few extra LEDs just in case shit happens. I bought two more just for the hell of it because shit does happen and I didn’t to have to pay for shipping just for replacements. Having spare parts of the delicate stuff is always good. I will tell you to measure very carefully to make sure you get the right lengths of wires too.
Spoiler
In the spoiler above is a picture of my setup from a previous post, not totally clear but just to illustrate the idea. The red and blue bundles of wires go from Player 1 and Player 2’s buttons respectively to the left side of the Kaimana while the black wires on the other side go to the MC Cthulhu PCBs. Those white buttons are PS Home buttons on the underside of the control panel, they are not illuminated with the Kaimana so they don’t need to go to the Kaimana at all. If you look closely you can see that the white (signal) wire from those buttons go straight to the MC Cthulhu PCBs. That’s what I mean about illuminating the joystick, you can still do it, you just won’t get the LED effects since it would bypass the Kaimana completely.
Thanks @Zensouken i have ordered the kaimana board and extra leds and wires. but something wrong happened to my order because my order history is empty ¿? i have paid with paypal.
I sent an email to paradisearcadeshop asking for my order. someone else had this issue buying at paradisearcadeshop?
I have checked my paypal account and the payment was done.
This is my purchase
2x IL-lumination RGB 5VDC LED $3,50 USD
1x 16 Wire Rainbow Pack™ with .110" Quick Connector $7,50 USD
1x Paradise Kaimana LED Driver PCB $39,95 USD
15x Paradise Kaimana J RGB LED $48,75 USD
15x Paradise Kaimana 3" Wire Harness $7,50 USD
4x Paradise Kaimana 6" Wire Harness $2,20 USD
2x Paradise Kaimana Adapter $3,00 USD
1x Shipping $48,00 USD
Total $160,40 USD
Something weird is going on with my board . After loading “example” and changing the number of menu items to 3 and clicking on the 3rd menu item on my stick all the LEDS just started lighting up in what seemed to be the most random colors and com3 disappears . All my buttons keep flashing Red Blue Green etc and wont allow me to pull up the menu again using down+start+select(also wont load default “kaimanacustom.h”). Not sure if i need to reset or what but now it wont let me load up wahoo’s at all D=. What i was wanting to do is add “simplepress.h” to the menu as the 3rd item with #include on the 1st tab and menu tab. I will keep working at it in hopes i can figure out whats goin on.
depends on the silencer and LED you plan to use it with. Kahunas should be good for everything;Peles, Uilas, Kaimana Js, etc. but the LED cut sanwa ones are for 3mm LEDs. I guess you could try to use an LED board that mounts under, but due to the limited exposure of the LED from the cut silencer I doubt that’d go over so well. Other Sanwa silencers are a no go unless you attempt to mod the button or make your own LED setup, who knows what you can do with a bit of creativity.
Also @Armi0024, when can we get the ball rolling for the other fun stuff?
You might be stuck in one of the idle animations. Since you reduced the MENU_ITEMS by one (from 4 to 3), you’ll have to delete one in each definition from the categories MENU_BASE_FUNCTION_NAMES, MENU_IDLE_FUNCTION_NAMES, and MENU_ITEM_COLORS. Otherwise, you can just change the MENU_ITEMS back to 4.
To get the COM_3 back, try unplugging the Kaimana completely and closing out of Arduino. Once you reload example, replug the USB and check to see if your port is back online. If everything is good, go ahead and reprogram the Kaimana and you should be good to go.
There Sanwa buttons with the these: http://www.paradisearcadeshop.com/home/989-little-kahuna-seimitsu-silent-button-pad.html I think… Anyways, I got whatever the first set of silencers was on the first day they released them. If these ARE it, i’ll probably just take them out. I love them and all but I don’t see it working with the LEDs and cutting into them will probably defeat the purpose of the silencers.
someone else had this issue buying at paradisearcadeshop?