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Train Simulator Controller
- lbriner 2mo agoI love this stuff. Seems like a massive untapped market if you get in partnership with a manufacturer. There are enough train buffs around the world, although I guess the tricky bit is that the dashboards are all different. I found it surprising that despite having amazing international supply chains, it can still be hard to source electro-mechanical parts. I wondered about knocking up an NX signalling panel as a nice to have to my layout but sourcing those latching push/pull buttons is equally difficult although maybe they were only really used on the real thing and the demand has disappeared along with the supply.
- Grombobulous 2mo agoIt’s not really as complete of controller as it’s mostly just one lever and some standard controller buttons, but the Zuiki Mascon is reasonably decent for Japanese market sims and the game Running Train on Steam. It’s also very affordable and compact which is a plus. Train controller database: https://traincontrollerdb.marcriera.cat/index.html https://traincontrollerdb.marcriera.cat/index.html
- alnwlsn 2mo agoIn many ways this project is more difficult than building a professional train simulator (I've worked on one). 1. Professional customers are willing to pay for (and usually have an in) on getting genuine parts. You usually don't have to worry about scouring ebay for a authentic throttle control lever and hoping one turns up. There is some challenge in interfacing the controls to your system, but you probably don't have to start from scratch. Even if you do, you might be able to access drawings. You might get protocols documented and not have to reverse engineer anything. In our case, we didn't have to make those custom panels, we could just get real ones. Sometimes, you do get nothing though, so you have to have those skills. 2. You aren't building a sim necessarily for how accurate it is to the real vehicle, they are ordering it because they have operators they want to train. So if a LCD screen behind a bezel provides the same training value as interfacing a real gauge, you might well go for a screen. This one varies by customer, but generally they care more about having the correct buttons, switches, anything you touch more than something you look at.
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- Liftyee 2mo agoWow, really clean design. I'm surprised that you could get hold of original hardware. Not sure how much of it is commodity industrial equipment Vs bespoke buttons, etc.
- ddevnyc 2mo agoI would love a controller like that for my editor, or my LLM. That would make coding so much more fun.
- cryptopian 2mo agoI can't find it sadly, but somebody made an 80s style industrial control panel for a SQL server deployment, with all the clicky radio buttons and 7-segment displays you could wish for.
- m463 2mo agomaybe only "the sign" remains... ACHTUNG! ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENSPEEPERS! DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKEN. IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS. ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights
- warpech 2mo agoYou can control your computer using MIDI interface. Sometimes we demo our JavaScript UI components using AKAI LPD8 MKII
- ddevnyc 2mo agoHaha really? How do you hook up midi to the UI?
- warpech 2mo agoWebMIDI: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_MIDI_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_MIDI_AP... It turns state changes from any MIDI device into JS events that you can handle any way you want. I use Claude Code to wire it up