Does this make me weak?

Hey, look who it is. It's my custom joystick. But wait, what's he sitting on?



It's an Amazon box! What is he hiding from me? Better open it up and find out!



Hmm, kinda hard to tell. I kind of feel like I'm looking at...



What the WHAT!?! That's right! =D



Enough with the suspicious stares! Enough already! I caved, alright! I'm weak!

But what's to come of the custom joystick? Well, unfortunately, it doesn't work very well. And at this point, it's not really worth fixing. I think what I plan to do is save up my money again, buy another joystick (the Hori Real Arcade Pro EX), and replace all of its buttons with the Sanwa buttons that I already own. That seems like the best plan so far.

Sorry custom joystick. You were fun to build, but the number of things I did wrong are not worth trying to fix. Maybe next time.

Are you serious?

Typical! That's the only word to describe it. This is the story of my life. Less than ten days after I finish building my own joystick, what happens? That's right, the MadCatz joysticks are now back in stock and ready to be shipped out to all who want one. Dang it!

So now I'm torn. Yes my joystick works, but it lacks quality and functionality compared to those made by, well, any retail manufacturer. I can now completely appreciate the $150 price tag on the Tournament Edition FightStick as I know the parts alone will run you over $100. And the retail sticks will last, which is very important.

I don't know. I just don't know. I'll hold off for now and live with what I've got. I'm just afraid this may be my last chance to snag one of those Tournament Edition joysticks.

Ugh, the choices life presents us.

Here it is!

Here are those pictures that I promised. I ended up taking quite a bit less than I had originally planned, but you'll get the basic idea for how this project progressed. Enjoy!

It's finished!!

Oh my God, I'm finally finished with the joystick. And guess what? It actually works!! Who-da-thunk-it?!

I'll post some pictures of the finished product soon. It looks good on the outside, but being able to see the wires on the inside, as well as how I chose to lay it out, does not look so good after all. If I ever decide to make another joystick, the design I chose this time will be the last on my list.

Live and learn, right? =)

Progress Report

It's been a while since I mentioned anything regarding the joystick project, so I thought I'd do that now. It's coming along. The box (case) is assembled, the polycarbonate has been drilled and the Sanwa parts are all in place. The case didn't line up as well as I had hoped, but it's not that noticeable with it all painted black.

The soldering of the arcade parts to the Xbox 360 controller's PCB is an entirely different story. Talk about having zero luck. The solder never sticks; never, ever, ever! I even resulted to only hot gluing the wires in place, and while it works, it's not reliable and the wires still pop off.

What makes matters even worse is that the controller that I bought had the old PCB in it. Why is that bad? There's about 8 common grounds. What does this mean? I have to solder (or hot glue) quite a few more wires to the circuit board. I also had to damage my Sanwa joystick and solder extra wires to it in order to make it work with this PCB. Had I gotten one of the new PCB's, the entire board is wired to one common ground, which means you can daisy-chain all of the grounds and only have to solder one wire.

Bottomline is that I'm having a really hard time right now actually finishing this project. It's very frustrating spending about 12 hours in one day and not being any further along than when you started.

Why does 2009 suck so much?

Is this some kind of sick, f*cking joke? I mean, really, what the hell? 2009 has thus far built itself up to be the year where nothing seems to go right. What now you ask?

My Xbox 360 just red ringed!!!

First we lose almost all of our money because we moved to a new state and the economy went to sh*t. Then I get a kidney stone and now have $2500 in hospital bills to pay. Then our cat gets sick and we have to pay $450 to find out he'd be better off dead. Next came the realization that Wife had accumulated far more in school loans than we had expected and it's now time to start paying them off.

AND NOW THIS!!

Here I am, building a joystick for my 360, and the damn thing breaks before I even get to use it. CRAP!! This is ridiculous! Now I'm going to be without the 360 altogether for a few weeks while I sit and wait for Microsoft to fix it. We're already hurting for funds as it is, but I know they're going to make me pay to send it in. THIS SUCKS!!

AARRRGGG!!!

UPDATE -- I tried the famous "towel trick" on my 360 and while it appeared to work, that wasn't entirely the case. The console will now turn on and get into the dashboard, but it locks after about a minute. I'm just going to send it in. Oh, and it looks like I don't have to pay for shipping, so at least that's something.

Prime, paint, drill, screw.

Progress on the joystick has been slow, but anything is better than nothing. I've primed and painted all of the wood, and I recently screwed the frame together. It looks alright, but if this was a project for wood shop, I'd probably earn a C- at best. It pretty much boils down to one piece of wood that got cut at a slight angle, causing about a 1/8" gap in the final product. It's not really a big deal but it is noticeable. If I ever make another joystick I'll be sure to use a table saw.

What's next? I'm still waiting for my joystick and buttons to arrive from Lizard Lick. They are still trying to catch up on old orders, so I won't start asking questions for at least another two weeks. Once the parts arrive I'll start drilling holes in my sheet of polycarbonate. I want to make sure the buttons are spaced far enough apart before I start drilling the rest of the holes. Once everything is in place I'll move on to soldering the arcade components to the Xbox 360 controller.

There's still quite a bit to do, but I'm getting there. It may look like ass when it's finished, but I'm confident it'll play well.

Handsaws = Stupid

Okay, so far I've had two "if I could go back and do it differently" moments when it comes to building this joystick.

1. Cutting/snapping the sheet of polycarbonate was dumb. It's not accurate at all, which ends up leaving an edge that is crooked enough to be noticeable. And you have to score it so much before it will even think about snapping that you might as well just cut through the whole thing with a circular saw. Which brings me to the second item on my list.

2. Handsaws are stupid. I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe it'll be a good thing to own one day in the future, but right now it feels like $15 down the drain. Had I known ahead of time that I could actually get a circular saw for only $40, I probably would have just spent the money. Luckily the in-laws have one.

So half of my wood is now potentially ruined, not to mention the polycarbonate isn't sitting well with me. While I did manage to get the base of the joystick cut with the handsaw, I think I'm going to start over tomorrow and just cut everything with the circular saw. This should help it all line up better when I actually start piecing it together. And if I decide that the polycarbonate isn't good enough, I'll probably special order a piece from OnlineMetals.com and just have them cut it for me. That or maybe switch to aluminum since the cost is about the same.

Live and learn I suppose.

I can almost stop spending!

I'm starting to feel almost sick to my stomach with how much this joystick is going to set me back. I have to keep reminding myself that had I already owned all of the tools, this project would have only cost around $100. But as a result of me not owning any tools whatsoever, it's going to cost around $325. That really sucks, but I still think it's going to be worth it. I have quite a few fighting games on the Xbox 360 that I don't play very often simply because it's no fun with the default controller. I hope this helps.

Today I purchased the actual joystick components. The total came to about $80, but I also ordered a few extra buttons just in case. Had I not, it probably would have been closer to $65. Here's what I bought:

- (1) Sanwa JLF-TP-8T Ball Handle Joystick (green)
- (9) Sanwa OBSF-30 Pushbuttons (green)
- (4) Sanwa OBSF-24 Pushbuttons (white)
- (2) Sanwa OBSM Series 30mm Hole Plugs
- (40) .110 solderless quick connects

All of this came from Lizard Lick Amusements. Thankfully they reopened their store today. Even with all of my planning, I didn't noticed that they weren't taking orders while they tried to catch up on past orders. I'm tellin' ya, Street Fighter IV has literally taken every possible niche in the fighting game community by storm.

It's crazy I tell ya!

Power Tools

Today marks the dawn of a new era in my life. That's right, I now own a power tool. A Ryobi drill to be exact. This actually came as part of a long list of items I decided I needed to purchase. Home Depot provided me with just about everything I was looking for and for once I didn't hate my experience there. I guess when you're actually excited about building something that store doesn't suck quite so much.

Building something I say?

That's right! And since you asked, I am building an arcade style joystick for the Xbox 360. Ever since Street Fighter IV came out it has been next to impossible to find any type of joystick; good or bad. They're all gone! Well, almost all gone. You can always pay a little extra and buy one from a seller on eBay, but why pay a little more for something I know I'm paying too much for when I can just pay a lot more for something that may not even work in the end? Exactly!

Anyway, the standard Xbox 360 controller is just about the worst controller you can find when it comes to playing fighting games. It has horrible precision, which makes executing most moves almost impossible. So I've had enough and I want a joystick. I've been researching like crazy this past week, learning everything I can about building joysticks. And let me tell you, the community is out there and the information is not hard to find. In no way will my joystick be as amazing as some of the ones posted over at the Joystick Vault, but for now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I can even get it to work.

Tools and materials. I'm just about ready to start building. Along with my drill, I purchased drill bits, two hole saws, screws, hinges, wood, Lexan (polycarbonate), a hand saw, sand paper, a soldering iron, solder (obviously), and a wire crimper. So far I've spent around $175 (yikes!), which is of course way more than if I had just bought an overpriced joystick on eBay. But the bulk of my purchase was tool related and those will come in handy as time goes by. Had I already owned most of the tools, this project would have been a bit more reasonable. Not to worry, I plan on making more than one joystick, so they'll only get less expensive as I go along.

What materials do I still need? Crafting-wise I still need wire, primer and spray paint. Then comes the actual joystick components. That will probably run around $100, which I'm not ecstatic about spending, but at this point there's really no turning back. I need to buy an Xbox 360 controller that I can take apart and use as the guts of the joystick. Then the most obvious components: buttons and the joystick. I'll probably also buy a bunch of "quick connects" which are extremely cheap and will minimize the amount of soldering that I'll need to do.

All in all, I'm thinking this is going to be pretty fun. I've never done such a crafty project, so I'm looking forward to it quite a bit. Stay tuned.