Hardware Buttons without IO Boards

[ellie]

How would I go about hooking up mini momentary push buttons to act as the User/OSD/Reset buttons? I think they’re on pins 13, 15, and 17, and then they all go to ground?

Additionally, how useful are these buttons in reality. Reset seems redundant to being able to reset from the OSD or just hard cycling. What does User do? Is there a way to actually navigate the OSD once you have it up? Sorry if these are dumb questions and feel free to throw a guide at me. I have my build pretty much done, but I was deciding on whether or not to add the buttons.

[jrronimo]

This is a great question! I've been meaning to figure it out, too. If those pins are correct, then all you need to do is connect one of the button's connectors to the appropriate pin and another one to Ground. Pushing the button 'momentarily' connects it to ground, which closes the circuit and tells the DE-10 "Do whatever you're supposed to do when that pin is grounded", which in this case is "Open a menu" or "reset" or whatever.

If you get a button with an LED in it (and why wouldn't you?!), you will need to separately connect its power to the appropriate power on the board. iirc, MiSTer has 5V available on the board, so you'll need LED buttons that can power on 5V.

Typically I navigate the OSD with my gamepads once the OSD is up, so that part is easy usually.

Welcome to the forums and to the MiSTer community! It's been a load of fun for me so far.

[ellie]

Thanks so much! The only place I’ve seen User used is dirtying the define joystick procedure to skip a button. While I love the idea of it being 100% self-contained, I’d always still need something to navigate the menu with, so I think I’ll just keep it with no buttons and use a keyboard if I ever need to.

Do you happen to know if you can turn off the LEDs on the board, and if not, if I wire up external LEDs do the ones on the board turn off? They’re super bright, and don’t provide enough information for me to want to put up with them .

Thanks again for the response and warm welcome!

[aberu]

I would check the I/O board schematics if I were you, trace which buttons go to which GPIO pin on the DE10-nano. Might be the quickest route to figuring out what you need to know.

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Hardwar ... r/releases

Like for to the IO Board 6.1:

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Hardwar ... rd_6.1.pdf

I *think* this is how you'd trace it, but I'm not an expert, just trying to help point you to where you could go to finding out on your own.

This does indicate that at you are right, 13 (OSD), 15(User), and 17(Reset).

[ellie]

Thanks for that schematic!

It looks like the LEDs come off 1, 3, and 5, but is anyone able to confirm if the LEDs on the DE-10 are on or off with the IO board attached? My thought is I could wire lower wattage LEDs to the 1, 3, and 5 pins in order to turn off the DE-10 LEDs.

[jca]

Thanks so much! The only place I’ve seen User used is dirtying the define joystick procedure to skip a button. While I love the idea of it being 100% self-contained, I’d always still need something to navigate the menu with, so I think I’ll just keep it with no buttons and use a keyboard if I ever need to.
.....

you can always use your controller to navigate the menu. Define a controller button to popup the OSD and use the DPAD: up and down to move one line, left and right for page up and down and A button for Enter.