Hello Commanders o7
as most of the Joysticks out there have just too few buttons for Space Sim, are of a really shocking quality (x56) or use toggle switches who are useless in most games (Thrustmaster Warthog) and as I do not like to use lots of multi button combinations I decided to build my own small cockpit panel, to get more functions ready to use.
I used Cherry MX Blue for the push buttons and bought some kill switches, the casing and the button caps for the Cherry switches are 3D printed.
The device connects via USB and gets recognised as a HID joystick with 26 buttons and no axes so I did not need to write a driver. Internally it runs on a STM32F4 with an ARM Cortex M4 (I know, WAY to overpowered for this kind of work, but I still had a development kit, so I did not need to build a PCB on my own
)
The toggle switches are submitted as a single click on every toggle, so it will work in all kind of games (and the ED landing gear and hardpoints buttons do not support "hold" mode).
Especially I like the safed push buttons made of small cases for SMD parts (in germany we playfully call them "Mäuseklo") with Cherry switches underneath.
Sadly the blue buttons got a bit too dark as the fillament I've been using is pretty dark. Some day I will buy brighter fillament and reprint the caps, also the clearance on the top is a bit to big as I did not bend the plastic properly but I think for the first version it locks pretty good.
Here is what I build (high resolution can be found here http://imgur.com/a/ScK3O ):
as most of the Joysticks out there have just too few buttons for Space Sim, are of a really shocking quality (x56) or use toggle switches who are useless in most games (Thrustmaster Warthog) and as I do not like to use lots of multi button combinations I decided to build my own small cockpit panel, to get more functions ready to use.
I used Cherry MX Blue for the push buttons and bought some kill switches, the casing and the button caps for the Cherry switches are 3D printed.
The device connects via USB and gets recognised as a HID joystick with 26 buttons and no axes so I did not need to write a driver. Internally it runs on a STM32F4 with an ARM Cortex M4 (I know, WAY to overpowered for this kind of work, but I still had a development kit, so I did not need to build a PCB on my own
)The toggle switches are submitted as a single click on every toggle, so it will work in all kind of games (and the ED landing gear and hardpoints buttons do not support "hold" mode).
Especially I like the safed push buttons made of small cases for SMD parts (in germany we playfully call them "Mäuseklo") with Cherry switches underneath.
Sadly the blue buttons got a bit too dark as the fillament I've been using is pretty dark. Some day I will buy brighter fillament and reprint the caps, also the clearance on the top is a bit to big as I did not bend the plastic properly but I think for the first version it locks pretty good.
Here is what I build (high resolution can be found here http://imgur.com/a/ScK3O ):