My wife sometimes comments that I have too much time on my hands considering that I have not yet finished writing my thesis.
Perhaps she is right....yesterday I came upon a Saitek AV8TR joystick which has 5 axis and 18 buttons. I picked it up for 23.00. I already own a Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS and some of you have seen the thread that I posted about my rollout simpit. What do I do with this thing? Well....tear it apart and make a flight control button box of course!
The box is 1/2" (12mm) high density baltic birch plywood, the removable control panel itself is 1/8" (3mm) Baltic birch plywood with a 1/4" (6mm) removable bottom. The control panel was cut out on my CNC router table, the vinyl lettering and borders were made on my vinyl cutter. The entire thing was sprayed in black latex paint.
There is a good reason that I have no pictures of the insides, it looks like a rat's nest in there. I am not a great wiring engineer, it looks like spaghetti but at least it does work.
I wish that I had the knowledge and could make my own electronics but the occasional joystick guts work just fine for now.
The box is recognized in windows as the Saitek AV8TR, it would be nice if I could program my own, etc.
Obviously I do not need this box, so it will be up on Ebay in a few days or weeks, whenever I get around to it. I just wanted to share my latest project.
I could label each button, switch and axis but I do not know what they would be used for at this time. Hate to use up label tape and have it all removed by the person who gets it as they want the buttons to be something else. Maybe I will let them know I will make some labels for them and they can put them on themselves.
Thanks for looking,
David