Force Feedback Game Controller - The Electronics Inside
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2020
- Rewind to 1996 to find 10 year old me getting my first joystick, and playing Microsoft Flight Sim 95. Imagine how blown away I was when I discovered force feedback joysticks only a few years later! So - lets see what makes them tick! bit.ly/3huv9qZ
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Gave mine 10 years ago to my nephew, he still has it and it works pretty good today
I've experienced the lack of throttle sensitivity back in FSX with this model.
XT1 will be the clock :) looks like a ceramic oscillator which'll get "eh" accuracy, but is enough for USB 1.1 comms
God! He was saying "theres no crystal, no clock" and i was mentally shouting "you have a ceramic oscilator named XT1 RIGHT THERE!"
I know - my bad. I spotted this in a rewatch, but totally missed it on the day! Couldn't see the wood for the trees!
@@a531016Easily done! Definitely an interesting teardown
In my Logitech wheel the potentiometer have 270 degrees of physical movement, but the resistance only change in the 30 degrees in the middle.
Good work sir ❤
I Never owned one, but I miss these. The instore displays for the microsoft ones were amazing.
It's crazy to think how advanced the feedback was back then, yet there's pretty much no modern equivalent...
We've pretty much reverted to the far more primitive 'rumble' effects.
I realise of course that this particular tech doesn't work for gamepads, and sticks are a niche thing.
But you would've thought there'd be at least a single niche equivalent left, even if it costs a small fortune (ever tried to buy a virpil Joystick? Then you'll know what I mean about cost - so why haven't any such high end niche manufacturers attempted to bring this back?)
With todays possibilities in 3D printing at home, and simple HID USB devices everyone can click together on an arduino, it would not be that hard to make an open source project around a force feedback flight stick. You just have to find someone willing to spend the time, i guess. For me, the hardest part would probably be on the PC software/driver side. You need to have a way to talk to the game and get the right data to send to the stick, and i really don't know how that works, what kind of standards there are in the gaming industry for things like that... It sounds like an interesting challenge, but it's not for me as i don't have the personal motivation to want to have such a stick, and i guess you need that drive and energy to follow thru with a project like that.
Patents unfortunately killed ffb sticks
There are a couple of modern force feedback joysticks on the market but they are incredibly expensive.
Had not been using mine for at least 10-15 years so I decided to try it out again. And I could not get it to calibrate correctly it just seemed like there was no resolution between some axis (you could use it but it was almost binary in some axis). So decided to tear it down for at least a "clean" and see if I could check what was wrong to it. And this video helped me! But I could not fix it and I could not get it back together. That spring-clip in the handle part that makes it springy when you turn the joystick left/right is now stiff. So I guess I need to fix that.
Hmm... just did a calibration check and the x/y axis seems to be better now actually... but I can't complete the calibration because of the springy thing...
---edit
The thing you said yawcontroll that springy thing...
I still have 2 working ms sidewinder force feedback joysticks, always been tempted to open one up to see what's inside.
Is this compatible with ms flight simulator 2020
@@Chowder6486 I don't see why it wouldn't be as it's just a DirectX controller and works with everything I've tried.
@@TheDigitalAura thank you, I just bought mine for 9 bucks.
@@Chowder6486 Good deal, I got mine from goodwill a few years back. Think they only cost $2 each at the time. Hang onto it, I think they could become collectible.
You have amazing machine ❤
So is the correct way of opening the plastic case by unscrewing the five screws on the bottom and five around the stick, and then just using force?
For me it worked. Dumb as fck
So that ST part is their secret sauce. I've been looking around for micro-controller code that can read from computer what it needs to output into the h-bridge and I have no luck finding any (except for open steering wheel which outputs only 1 axis). People say that they won't let you know cause it's patented.
It's just simple PID code. You can use a arduino to control the h bridge. just look for a data sheet on the it so you know what pins do what.
That's the calculation part. But that is useless if you don't know what computer wants. Aka, the problem lies at making a direct X library
Hi
I have a Logitech freedom 2.4 cordless joystick but I loose the USB dongle
Can I make the dongle ?
I´d love to get some advice on the cheapest and easiest ways of refurbishing this model with a few higher quality parts!
My model had a very floppy Z-Axis probably caused by the center spring being worn out, and also the FFB had developed a huge dead zone around the lower left iirc 🤔
Apparently there´s a worldwide shortage on FFB Joysticks so i cannot be the only one eyeing his 20 years old Wingman Force 3D for some up-cycling 👍
Consider asking fellow engineers and makers on the e14 community: bit.ly/3FfHazj
If you have the driver suite for the force feedback feature I would really appreciate a copy, I got this from a neighbor last year and I'm trying to get it up and running but could only find an unregistered version of the software that was locked to french and super limited :))
doesn't it just use the old logitech gaming software. I have the same joystick and I never tried to use any software for it. what are you trying to do?
@@mr.simulator4724
You have to use the windows 7 64bit version of the logitec software (assuming windows 10 64bit), which they still have on their website
and it does actually work, though i never tried the button programming
It only works feedback wise though with DirectInput games.
MS Combat FS, or plain MSFS, and various driving games, works with Monster Truck Madness 2
Of course mine presently doesnt work as the cap blew off the dual h-bridge and resembles an IC decapped with a hand grenade.
Design not as good as the MS Sidewinder
The Wingman uses pots, and it uses those plastic 4 piece gimbals, which wear fast and get sloppy as hell.
The feedback side is floating so the stick itself only has 1 hard pivot on each axis.
Sadly, the games that can make the most out of a force feedback flight stick have kind of gone out of style for the mass market, so there is no profit in trying to design an affordable yet dependable stick any more.
Couple that with Gates stepping down from the captain's chair since things like the sidewinder were primarily through Gate's instigation cause he liked that kind of stuff, and the current people piloting MS decided to just go with Xbox input as the defacto standard with about 0 thought to directInput which what forced feed back operates on.
Was great fun playing things like warbirds back in those days with FF
Now days people complain how hard FF would make it to play, but that was the entire point, you were getting and fighting against somewhat realistic feedback
it added to the challenge and the realism.
Or can I directly attach a USB cord to my joystick and emmit the USB dongle?
that ST chip is perhaps a custom made ST7 micro from early 2000s
That would make sense!
It just like any other ST Microcontroller except it has everything integrated inside it to save cost. That's why the board looks so simple, only thing it doesn't have is a clock which is the blue blob named xt1 (Ceramic resonator about 5mhz) and the voltage comparator. The code on the microcontroller is for PID controll to keep the joystick centered and to communicate over usb, inputs and the occasional feedback received from the game which come as a square wave for a jolt and some other signal for shaking.
12:59 Aham, what's that blue blob labeled XT1?
It's a ceramic Resonator. Does the same job as a quartz crystal. Probably runs at about 4mhz.
still cannot beat the price of a DC motor FFB system in 2023
8:51 better not touch your nose then :)
Use couple of rubber bands And slip it over