Hardware & Technical Control Stick Project

When my HOTAS X pots freaked out I decided to tear down the joystick but keep the parts for a future build. So now I'm making a control stick for ED and DCS World.

I want to emulate the design of the UH-1H control stick, so I'm mounting the joystick handle on a 1/2" PVC shaft that is reinforced by a 1/2" dowel sanded down slightly to fit smoothly, and with a portion shaved off one side to allow the wires to pass down internally through the shaft.

The throttle will be wired up independently as another USB device.

I'll be drilling out the housings on both the stick and throttle to mount additional buttons, primarily to make the stick true to the Huey, but to also give me more buttons to work with without moving my hands. Between the stick and Voice Attack (plus the awesome HCS Voice Packs) I don't expect to have to touch the keyboard again while playing -- except to type in system names.

The microcontrollers are a 5V Sparkfun Pro Micro running at 16 MHz, and a Teensy 3.1 running at 72 MHz.
And there's a couple of Arduino Duos on hand for anything else. Like a rudder system.

Edit: Oh yeah, forgot something. The pots on the joystick are being replaced with Hall Sensors. So they'll operate by the movement of a magnetic field instead of the friction in the pots that always ends up getting a speck of dirt in it that messes things up.

I'll post the controller code on GitHub once it's built.

projectcockpit.jpg
 
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Cool.

How are you intending to control the additional pressure on the actuators from the lever action?

It should be an interesting project.
 
At the bottom the traversal of the stick will be measured by magnetic fields so there's no additional pressure on physical switches there. And it gives a better range than the pots did.

It will be like this version using a car's universal joint, except I'm still using the plastic one from the stick.
http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/content.php?r=88-Hall-Effects-Sensors-to-make-a-joystick

Thanks for the correction. I noticed the edit just now :rolleyes:

It does sound really neat.
 
The nice thing about the microcontrollers is that you can potentially code whole sequences into single button presses without needed macro software :)

There could be a button for retracting hardpoints, dumping energy back into engines and shields, boosting and jumping away.

If ED had Lua scripting like DCS it would be amazing for cockpit design. You can pretty much pull any element on screen or behind the scenes in DCS out via script and integrate it into your cockpit. So if you invest in physical dials and displays the data can be handed over.
 
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