Converting Electric Switches and Levers to USB

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Goldstar Interactive

Goldstar Interactive

Commendable
Jan 3, 2017
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Hello, Community. I am building a table PC. No, not a PC on a table, but rather a PC in a table. I got inspiration from Linus Tech Tips. (Video). I plan on taking it a step further.

Specs (Link)

CPU: Intel Core i7-6950X
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Riing RGB 360 40.6 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus Rampage V Edition 10
Storage 1: Intel 750 Series 1.2TB PCI-E SSD
Storage 2: (2X) - Crucial MX300 2.0TB SSD
Storage 3: Seagate IronWolf Pro 10TB HDD
GPU: (2X) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Xtreme Gaming (GV-N1080XTREME-8GD)
PSU: Corsair AX1200i
Optical: LG BH16NS40
OS: Windows 10 PRO
Monitor 1: Asus ROG SWIFT PG348Q 34.0" Monitor
Monitor 2: (2X) Asus PG279Q ROG Swift 27.0" Monitor

(I have left plenty of SATA slots for additional USB headers.)


I am creating an ultimate flight sim desk. I already have the design worked out. I'm going to add levers and switches and things like that and bind them to actual controls within the game. My only problem is, I wish to use these military bay switches for certain functions but I do not know how to use them with a PC. Does anyone know how to rewire the positive and negative parts to USB so that I can use them with my PC? Is Arduino programming required? Is it even possible? Thank you for listening.

 
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boosted1g

Titan
Jun 12, 2013
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You cant just wire a bunch of things together, plug it into a usb port and it work like that.

USB has a protocal for data transfer that it has to follow.
Thus (unless you are a seasoned electrical engineer and can build your own usb controller board and drivers) you will need to modify a pre fabricated device.

There may be some sort of driver support and capability for adrino/raspberry pi, that would be worth researching.
Otherwise the best route would be to take a pre-manufactured flightcontroller with the amount of switches on it that you want, take it apart, desolder those switches and solder your switches to it. Then it would be a mater of setting each switch's functionality in the game.
 
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Pinhedd

Champion
Aug 7, 2007
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You'll need something to break out each individual IO and give it a hardware representation which is accessible over a USB driver.

An Arduino may work for your purposes, but an Arduino has only 14 digital IO pins. You may wish to look at some FPGA development kits as some of these have copious amounts of IO pins that are easily broken out for things like switches. The difficulty is that you'll need to learn verilog and you'll need to learn how to write a USB driver.
 
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