Building my own Rudder Pedals!

[Dowding]

Not having the money to pay the exorbitant prices for CH pedals in the UK I'm gonna build my own.

I got all the info I need, but just wondered something about AH, before starting. Does it recognise two joysticks (i.e. input into two ports). Will it recognise input from ports on different cards (e.g. gameport and souncard port).

Thanks for any help on this.  

[Westy]

 I can't find the link but there was a guy who flew WB's that had made his own and had the instructions on the web to follow.
 Ask in the "general" forumn as you may get more people reading there that may recall who it was.

  -Westy

[SOB]

 http://mypage.direct.ca/b/bsimpson/mrty.html  http://www.ozemail.com.au/~peril/wbraaf/pedals/index.html

[Rock]

I'm using a modified version of Peril's pedals. The second link in SOB's post takes you there.

I first made them with the pedal movement turning the shaft of a 50K long shank pot from Radio Shack. One Saturday the pot took a dump on me. 15 minutes later I calmed down and stopped shaking.  

I then started looking through my junk pile. My old $20 K-mart joystick caught my eye. I removed the grip and buttons(using that part on my homemade throttle). I removed the bad pot from my rudder and stuck the joystick shaft through the hole. I had to open the hole up to get room for the full stick movement. After getting the clearance, I took the stick completely apart and mounted the top of it to the back of the rudder and reassembled the stick. I then hooked the pedal cables to the stick's shaft. Works much better than before.

I use a Y-cable from Radio Shack, plugging the joystick in port A and my rudders into port B. Tell WinDozz you have a rudder and there you go. Works in WB, AH, F4, Panzer Elite and some old A-10 game I have.

Save some money build your own.

[Dowding]

Thanks for all the advice guys   .

I was gonna use an old joystick, but decided to buy a pot instead, sice they're quite cheap. One guys design used a 500k pot., but he said this was risky - gonna try a 250k first. Using a y cable is the only option i have at the moment; thing is my joystick has a throttle and 27 programmable buttons (3 hat switches) - will they all work with a y-cable?

Thx.

[This message has been edited by Dowding (edited 09-02-2000).]

[SOB]

It all depends on how your stick was designed and how the Y-cable is wired.  If your throttle is analog, then using the Y-Cable may cause a problem.  If it were me, I'd call up CH Products tech support and see if I could talk them into selling me the cable that they use on their regular pedals.  That'd take only 2 wires needed for the rudder, and everything else for would simply pass right through to the game port.


SOB

[Dowding]

Thanks SOB.

My understanding of electronics is pretty limited, but is it true that digital joysticks require less connections than analogue ones? My joystick is a wingman intercpetor (digital) so I suppose if the x and y axis are digital, the throttle should be also.

Might as well give it a try making my own y-cable using the guide in the links u gave. Thx for the help  .

[Rock]

I use a logitech interceptor with my setup. 3 8-way hats and 9 buttons and throttle. No problem when using the y-cable.

BTW, wait till you see what I've done with my throttle. Made 2 more levers today but, left my 8-32 tap at work. Going to get it tomorrow so I can mount them. Including those it's got 5 levers/knobs not counting the throttle it's self.

[This message has been edited by Rock (edited 09-02-2000).]

[Dowding]

Thats great news rock! What do you use all the levers for - do you know something about the game that the rest of don't?!  

I've started soldering today using the wiring described in the second link SOB gave me. Hoping my soldering is up to the job!

Thx again everyone.  

[Rock]

The throttle and 4 buttons are connected to my Logitech Interceptor. The rest are tied into the keyboard.

I call it my engine/flight managment module. It's seperate from my joystick. The throttle handle has 6 buttons. There are 2 side levers, one is RPM control and the other is flaps. If someone ever comes out with advanced engine controls they could be used for mixture or prop pitch. One 4-way does head movment, in F4 it slews the radar. Another 4-way does elevator and aileron trim and a 2-way for rudder trim.

Still working on it,
 

[This message has been edited by Rock (edited 09-04-2000).]

[Dowding]

I've soldered a y-cable together and soldered up a 100k potentiometer. The y cable works because my Wingman Interceptor still works in AH. However, if I delete the Intercpetor profile in game controllers ,and add it back in again (this time with the rudder/pedals box checked) AH doesn't recognise the joystick or rudder and the only control open to me is the mouse.

I can get the Interceptor working again in AH if I replace its profile with one which doesn't have the rudder/pedals option checked.

Rock - have you or anyone else experienced this problem or has any advice. Cheers  .

[Rock]

Well, it's been a while since I've had any problems. But I do kind of remember loosing my joystick in AH.  Either I deleted the stick software or AH and did a reinstall.

The fix was to reinstall DirectX.

And to get the rudders working you need Wingman software version 3.20 or 3.30

Hope that's some help.

Can't you got into
Game Controlers/General/Properties/Settings and turn on rudders in your curent profile?

[This message has been edited by Rock (edited 09-05-2000).]

[Dowding]

Thanks for all the help Rock  . As soon as I updated the drivers to 3.30, the whole thing worked like a dream  .

I might up rate the pot. to reduce the small amount of spiking I have.

One other thing - AH seemed to partially recognise a Intercpetor profile I had created for the game (when I first downloaded it). It didn't work then, but with the new driver it seemed to partially work with the stick mapping I now have. This was sorted when I wiped the profile I had for AH.  

All that needs to be done now is to mate the electronics with the mechanical set-up and then I'll be away!!

Thx again for the help Rock, and everyone else who gave me advice  .

[Renfield]

Hey guys,

I designed a set of pedals a number of years back for a guy that took a try at selling them. Did OK, but this was before the online sims or really any sims were too popular.

Anyway, a couple of bits of info....

A Y cable is really easy to make if you are wiring up your own pedals - just get some ribbon cable and insulation displacement DB-15 connectors. As long as your joystick doesn't have a rudder channel, then you can just wire up to the rudder channel on the connector for your pedals. No need to cross wires/channels as if both were wired as primary sticks.

A second bit of info is on the pedal assembly. The mechanism isn't realistic for most planes but it works like a champ - I used a lazy-susan bearing for the pedal pivot and put the pot inside the center. The pot is mondo protected and a susan is an extremely strong bearing. Even the medium small ones will handle 300 lbs. Out on the ends of the rubber bar, I put plastic glides in to take and force and just ride on the bottom plate. A couple of springs and eyescrews provided the centering.

I used to have the drawings and think I still do on tape somewhere. Been meaning to yank this all out and post them if anyone was interested. But they were strong as hell - you could literally jump up and down on them and not hurt them in the least.

On pots - the stock joystick resistance is 0 to 100k. When picking out a pot, you need to match the resistance / travel to give as close to 0 to 100k as possible. I.e. if the angles work to where you use 1/3 of the travel, consider a 300k pot and set it up so you get the 0 to 100k section. You really don't need to worry about anything electrically as at one end of travel, it is the same as a direct short (current is limited at the game port) and the other, too much resistance is just interpreted as 100k - the other limit.

Where it gets bad is if you run out of travel early and essentially dead-band the ends or if you don't have enough travel and the software can't compensate.

[Dowding]

Thanks for the post Renfield!!!  

I've check my pot with AH and it only uses about 150 degrees of the 270 degrees available. Its a 100k pot, and there are some spikes in the readout - guess I'll have to uprate the pot then!