Looking for New Stick with Hall Sensors

[Warty]

I have a 12 year old Suncom F-15 stick which I absolutely love. It works great almost all the time. But every once in a while, it loses calibration in pitch, and I can't pull up or put nose down. Usually I dont have time to do inflight calibration before I auger. And it loses the right 25% of the roll axis quite a lot. I can make that better by recalibrating every session in Windows. Anyway, great stick, LOVE the feel, love the button arrangements, but I think the gameport > USB adapter solution, or maybe the pots, is a bit unreliable.

I don't want to spend $400 on a TM stick. I only need the stick, the pedals and throttle I have are perfect. Are there hall sensor-based sticks on the commercial market? Higheye and TA recommended a $30 TM stick which does have hall sensors. I'm thinking about that, but I wish it had more buttons. Is there anything else out there? I'm also thinking of the CH products stick, CH products always seem to inspire pretty fierce fans. I would love to NOT have to worry about calibrating pots and dealing with pot noise though, so I thought the magnet based sticks would work well. But I don't have much confidence in my ability to rewire the Suncom stick to use magnets (although it WOULD be an awesome project if I had the time).

[The Fugitive]

I use to love my Suncom stick too. I think it is the lower voltage available through the DIM connector to the keyboard that causes the problems. I had an extension cable rigged up and when I lost an axis I could unplug it and plug it back in and it would be ok, until the next time.

I now use a CH stick and wouldn't look back. I never have to calibrate it. In the years I've had it I had one button get flaky and I just swapped it out.

[Mygg]

Warty, look into a cheap and older soundcard with a gameport; some of them are still lying about. I bought one for use with my Sidewinder 3D pro a few years back and I remember it working perfectly.

In any case, it might be around $15 at most, and if it works, it will save you a bundle.

[Noir]

Look up the Trustmaster T16000 - 50$ and hall sensing effect...13 hit% and 2 digits sorties certified 

[DREDIOCK]

I remember those sticks. At the time I always wanted one but coudnt afford it. Then the one time I managed to scrape the money together for one. And the store that used to sell em stopped selling them. LOL

[Reschke]

Warty if you don't want to drop the money on the Warthog from TM then get the T-16000 that they make.

It is on Buy.com for $29.99 plus shipping.

http://www.buy.com/prod/thrustmaster-t-16000m-joystick/q/sellerid/2083092/loc/108/210732564.html

I have used one and its a great stick. I bought one to try and am working on trying to make some pedals and other switches using the guts of the stick now....since it is a twisty stick it has a way to sense that with the Hall Effect Sensor system they have inside it....just a hammer of a time trying to get it to work though.

[Warty]

Thanks for ideas guys. The T16000 looks great for the price, I almost bought it. But I found a easy hall sensor hack for the suncom stick that will give me 12 bits of resolution of each axis, and it's only 6 wires to solder, so I'm going to try it. I'll post some pictures (if it works!). I'm only getting about 100 "notches" on the stick in the horizontal and vertical right now, and I get that "don't move your stick so fast thing" sometimes when I'm not doing a thing. (note to self: adjust the deadband space again).