Updated on 12.05.02 10:58 AM

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Here you can see the four opto switches that control Left, Right, Forward and Backward. Each switch has an LED on one side and a infrared sensitive transistor on the other side. When the switch is powered on it sends a infrared beam across a gap and the switch will not flow any current. If a solid paddle blade type object passes through the gap, it will break the infrared light beam. When the beam is broken the optical transistor turns on and flows current. The optical switches are each connected to a small 5 volt relay. When the optical switch turns on it lets current flow through the coil of the relay. The relay then turns on and can short two wires together and do whatever you want it to do. In this case each of the four relays is triggering a directional arrow key on my keyboard. You can see the paddle blade clearly that triggers the Left and Right movements. The paddle device has two blades and is set screwed to the rotating Left/Right shaft. The paddle has two ends and can trigger Left or Right. Only one switch can be triggered at a time. The Forward and Backward paddle is harder to see and only has one blade. It is set screwed to the Forward/Backward shaft. Either the forward edge or back edge of the paddle blade can trigger one of the switches. Both switches can never turn on at the same time. You can have Forward/Back and a Left/Right combo but switches on the same paddle can never be on at the same time. The opto switch is a Fairchild H21LOB.

This is the power supply for the opto switches and relays. It accepts a DC voltage from a wall wart up to 35 Volts DC. There is a radio shack 5 volt voltage regulator (A) that converts the wall wart input DC voltage into a steady 5 volts (part number 276-1770A). Then the 5 volts DC is sent to the 4700UF capacitor (B) to keep it steady and to have some voltage on tap in case of high current demand. The four relays (C) are Radio Shack part number 275-232 and they have a 5 volt coil. I put a small diode (D) across each relay coil to reduce kickback. When a relay turns on and off it can send current spikes into the voltage system. A diode lets the current travel in only one direction.

The new Super Panther is dialed in pretty nice now. After a year the stick/Gimbal assembly (A) is still tight with no slop what so ever. The keyboard direct drive is working beautifully and it is so nice not to have a joystick/soundcard situation. Here you can see the Gimbal (A), the optical mouse board (B) and the power supply for the optical switches (C). The board in the middle is a turret board where all the wires from the keyboard come in. Each turret lug is a convenient solder point for internal wires that need to be connected to an external cable.
The schematic	The DC In is from a standard wall wart power supply. It can be up to 35volts DC. Make sure the power supply is DC, not AC. The large 4700uf/35v capacitor can be found at Radio shack. The 7805 - 5 volt voltage regulator is RS part # 276-1770A. The four 5 volt relays are RS part # 275-232. The four IR opto switches are Fairchild part # H21LOB. Mouser electronics part # 512-H21LOB. The DC voltage comes in from the wall wart and enters the 7805 voltage regulator. The voltage regulator keeps the outgoing DC voltage at a constant 5 volts. The 4700uf capacitor stores voltage on tap for the circuit and smoothes out the 5 volt DC voltage coming out of the voltage regulator. The IR opto switches have a 180 ohm 1/2 watt resistor on the back. The resistor limits the current to the IR LED on one end of each switch. The IR opto switches are shown with the back facing up. You are looking right down on the back of each IR opto. The 5 volt DC voltage goes to each relay and is attached to one side of the coil. How the circuit works: When there is nothing blocking the gap in the IR opto switch, the middle connection is not grounded so the relay coil can not turn on. When something blocks the IR beam in the IR opto switch, the middle contact then flows current to ground and the relay coil now turns on. When The relay coil turns on, the reed switch makes contact across it's points. In the last relay on the right you can see the word switch. This is where you would hook up whatever you wanted to switch on. In my case, I have the switch trigger an arrow key on my keyboard. I have my Joystick set up so that Either the Forward or Back can be on, not both. The same is true with Left and Right, only one can be triggered at a time. You can have a Forward and the Left on at the same time or any other combo of Front/Back and Left/Right.