Reddit mentions of Emakefun Nano Terminal Expansion Adapter Board for Arduino Nano V3.0 AVR ATMEGA328P with NRF2401+ Expansion Interface, DC Power Supply Interface (2PCS)

After seeing a couple posts of people's custom button boxes on reddit I knew I had found my next project. I've been doing quite a bit of Arduino and small electronics lately, and this was the perfect fit. So off I went to Amazon, ordered a bunch of stuff I thought might be cool / useful and started piecing things together. Took a few weekends of working on it here and there, the most time consuming part just being tediously soldering and wiring the 38 inputs.

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Was originally going to set it into some sort of project enclosure, but ended up getting impatient and just mounting it to two pieces of plywood with some feet. It added enough heft to it that I can lift the switch guard and rotate the somewhat stiff selector without issue. Eventually I'll get a better enclosure for it, probably grab one off of Hammond mfg or get someone with a larger 3D printer to make one. The Engine Start and black/red button (that I'm going to use for quantum jump) have leds in them that I don't currently have hooked up to the Arduino, but once we get some sort of API into Star Citizen hopefully I can tie them to engine state and jump spool/ready state.

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The controls are:

Power on, flight ready, 3 misc buttons, zoom rotary encoder, 3 misc buttons, quantum spool, quantum jump

Hat switch + center for shield distribution and reset, engine, shield, and thruster power switches, power distribution profile selector, misc selector

Flare Fire button, flare select, 7 misc toggle switches, self destruct switch, eject switch.

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I mapped everything to a button in the Arduino code (no rotary encoder as zoom in this screenshot) so that I can easily bind to functions in Star Citizen. Unfortunately without an API this means the switch positions can get out of sync with the actual ship status easily. If by the time of release / they make an API there still isn't a way to read / set state by API then I'll probably make a new version with only toggle buttons.

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Code Libraries

PCF8574_library for interfacing with the IO expanders
- https://github.com/xreef/PCF8574_library

ArduinoJoystickLibrary for emulating a joystick on windows
- https://github.com/MHeironimus/ArduinoJoystickLibrary/

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Useful Instructables

Joystick Library
- https://www.instructables.com/id/Create-a-Joystick-Using-the-Arduino-Joystick-Libra/

PCF8574
- https://www.instructables.com/id/PCF8574-GPIO-Extender-With-Arduino-and-NodeMCU/

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Parts List

1 Terminal Expansion Board - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PGDWJ2V

3 PCF8574 IO Expansion Board - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B95LMLQ

1 Rotary Encoder - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DM2YMT4

1 4 Position Rotary Selector - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JN2967L

1 Red Ring Momentary Push Button - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017ILTX60

1 Engine Start Momentary Push Button - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MK2394L

5 Heavy Duty Toggle Switch - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078KBC5VH

1 12 Position Rotary Switch - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074WMC9C8

1 5-Channel Rocker - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K5PFPNC

1 Arduino Micro - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AFY2S56

7 Red/Black Momentary Push Buttons - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BD2D96W

2 Red Cover Toggle Switches - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BD2D96W

8 Small Toggle Switches - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013DZB6CO