My Insane Arcade System Build (Part 4)

Since I decided to go with the U-HID for the primary control method, it seemed that my best option for a trackball and a spinner was to just order them from Ultimarc.   Groovy Game Gear had a much less expensive spinner, which was enticing, but it was unclear how hard it would be to hook to the U-HID, so I decided to pay a bit more and go with the spinner from Ultimarc.   The Ultimarc spinner appears to be the same price as the one at Groovy Game Gear until you realize that you need to purchase the spinner cap in addition to the spinner at Ultimarc.  Then it becomes more expensive.   If you are more confident in your wiring abilities than I am, you can save yourself some money here and order from Groovy Game Gear.

For the trackball, I really liked the idea of not having to deal with a top mount plate.  Ultimarc has a track ball kit that doesn't require a top mount kit.   However, if you go back and look at the pictures for the Ultimate Quad control panel at North Coast Custom Arcades, you will see that it is clearly cut to be used with the top mount plate.   Reading through the various bits of information that I could find, it also became unclear to me if the ball on the Ultimarc U-trak would be too big to fit in the control panel.   It was also unclear if using that track ball would be considered "custom" by North Coast, which would add an additional charge to the purchase of the control panel kit.   However, after talking to the guys at North Coast, I was told that it was not an additional charge, but to get the panel cut for the U-trak track ball, I needed to specify that I planned to use that track ball in the comments section of the order.  (Which is a good reason to know what you are ordering before you do it!)   They also told me that the U-trak is what they used in their own builds, so it should work great.

So, we now have the leg work done for all of the controls except the RGB LED buttons.   Finding the right buttons ended up taking a lot more time than I had expected.   First, I had to try to track down who I could actually order the buttons from, and what kind of buttons are available.   Ultimarc, Groovy Game Gear, and Paradise Arcade Shop all had RGB buttons.   Ultimarc and Groovy Game Gear also appeared to have controllers to run the LEDs.  (Paradise Arcade Shop appeared to sell a controller as well, but it wasn't in stock.)   Ultimarc and Groovy Game Gear sold the complete RGB buttons as a kit, while Paradise Arcade Shop sold the buttons and the RGB lights separately.   With Paradise Arcade shop, they sell at least two different types of RGB LED inserts.   It was unclear to me which inserts went with which buttons.   However, a quick e-mail to them asking if a certain button and light worked together resulted in an answer that I had picked the correct light to match with the button.

I quickly discovered that I had too many choices of buttons, for my desired goal.   So, I set about trying to narrow down which ones I wanted.   Paradise Arcade Shop has a video on their site about lighted buttons that shows the difference in how buttons can look based on where the LED inside them is positioned.   This was good information that I had not considered previously.   After watching the video, I decided that I wanted buttons that didn't have a significant "hot spot" in the button.   Having a hot spot when the button is pushed is probably less of an issue, since it will be under your finger, but having hot spots when the button is not pushed could result in the buttons not looking as good as I would like.

So, how do I figure out how the different buttons look?   Fortunately, someone on the Arcade Control Forms had the same question, and did some testing to find out.   You can find the post about the different buttons here.  As a quick aside, there seems to be a lot more than just how the buttons look that will factor in to how much you like them.   As I was researching everything there was a lot of discussion about the different types of switches that were used in the buttons.   If you think you are going to be picky about how your buttons respond, I suggest you do some reading on that.   For me, I figured I would go with whatever the default is with the buttons and replace the switches later if I don't like them.

After looking at the forum post, I came to the conclusion that I didn't want clear buttons.  This shrunk my choices a little bit.   However, after looking at the site for Paradise Arcade Shop, I discovered that the non-translucent buttons weren't in stock, which basically brought me down to a decision between the Groovy Game Gear, and the Ultimarc buttons.   But, like the controller for the buttons and sticks, it makes sense to understand how we are going to control the LEDs before we make a final decision.