Tankstick - Worthy Upgrades? Ledblinky/I-Pac

2 years ago I upgraded my tankstick sticks and buttons to a sanwa style stick and buttons but they weren't sanwa. The buttons weren't as responsive as I liked and the stick was a IL Euro (og happ without the quality control issues) but has a custom shaft and ball top. Plus I added leds to the sticks and buttons. It's nice but the buttons aren't as responsive as real sanwas even though they have 20 gram switches and the stick sits up too high and feels like I am using an screwdriver rather than an arcade stick. So, I am back to looking at swapping out parts.

Questions:

Does the ledblinky work with hyperspin and every emulator? If I go with leds again I am going to have buy a led encoder and replace all the leds since the il euro buttons require a different led pcb. Going to cost nearly $100 to get the leds and ledblinky part of the encoder. Just want to make sure it is fully supported before I invest the time and money with that upgrade.

Encoder wise will I see a difference between the x-arcade encoder and the i-pac? I've heard the x-arcade is laggy and the usb had limitations input wise so I am using ps2 as the connection. I do have a xbox 360 adapters so I can do xinput for 360 controller type games which is a major plus but so can the i-pac with 60 bucks worth of adapters. Basically what I am asking is if the i-pac will function better than a standard x-arcade.

Just wanted to ask before I go an invest in a two player i-pac or ipac ultimate with ledblinky support and led buttons. If the i-pac isn't any better than x-arcade drive wise and the led blinky is only 50-85% supported I might just replace the buttons with colored il euro buttons, cherry switches, and re-install the bat tops I ordered for my sticks.

Hey Kadrik0,
Seems the Ipac ultimate might work for you. I used the LedWiz 32 LED Encoder from GGG arcade. My buttons are old school Happ buttons (no leds). Since I'm a DIY'er I drilled a hole in each button and soldered a led and resistor to each button. These connect to the LedWiz with LedBlinky and they work well for me. Marty

I have the IPAC Ultimate I/O and ledBlinky. It works great, plus use the hyper-speech as well, awesome. Use the custom configuration that James made and it sets it up automatically for you. For the Ledblinky Follow the PDF they have you download and you can setup some great designs. I hope this helps.

FYI this is even easier now... initial install will set up controls, or the Master Control Panel will allow you to change controls using a simple dropdown box. It can also install/set up LEDBlinky and HyperMarquee (if you have 2nd monitor).


Lastly, tankstick is really nice. You need to update the controls for it if you have a suuuppper old one from before 2010; but, otherwise it is very durable and good quality.

I recommend building a cabinet if you can, because you can add spinner and trackball... if you're doing LEDBlinky and led buttons, you might as well get those too.

But, the drive is also very well playable with a Generic Xbox Wired USB Controller for $10 from WalMart (US). I have one and it's pretty damn good, very responsive, clicky, the plastic is dimpled so it doesn't generate much sweat. That works for all but the computer based games, and really well too.