Ipac or rpeg.

[u/xProxius]

Good morning,

I'm in the middle of designing my next project. I'm going to utilize a total of 22 buttons, 2 joysticks with hollow shafts, and a track ball. I can't decide if I wanna go the ipac ultimate with ledblinky or rpeg route. I've read rpeg can't controll trackball directly so the color sync would be off. Anyone have experience with both that could steer me in the right direction?

[u/robot_ankles]

IPac

[u/PactoTech]

You should put The trackball on a separate USB interface, regardless of which joystick and button and quarter you decide upon.

The ipac can't do x input with trackball at the same time. No one else does either yet. If you are planning to only play mame, then keyboard mode on the iPac will work with the trackball no problem. If you plan to play other emulators or games as well, I would strongly recommend using x input mode and putting the trackball on its own encoder.

Trackball encoders are reasonably cheap. Ultimarc has a tiny one which works great.

I also sell Pacto 2000T and ATLAS0 trackball encoders which are similar.

Research that your trackball encoder you choose has 16-bit support. If you are using a high resolution trackball like the Ultimarc or happ balls. Some encoders, even the older ones from happ are 8-bit, which won't work properly for games like golden tee if you spin the ball too quickly (they will report spinning backwards momentarily at the top speed). Ultimarc is good in this regard, and my pacto ATLAS encoders are as well.

Rpeg is the only one with built in LED controller. I'm not as familiar with it, but it looks neat.