Hello everyone,
I’ve been watching this forum and others learning a lot from everyone. I have purchased an old CH Products rudder pedal Pro on eBay with the Game port connector. Using MMJOY2 and an Arduino Micro I was able to rewire the three potentiometers to work as a USB joystick (X, Y & Z). I ended up having a control issue that consistently caused my P-47 (DCS World) to veer left and crash on takeoff or spin. Frustrated with the potentiometer’s ability to not properly center and after spending way too much time in MMJOY2 trying to isolate and/or eliminate the problem, I decided to spend my time on a better solution. I endeavored on designing a drop-in Hall Effect based replacement for the rudder’s pot. After many hours of design work with CAD and 3D printing prototypes, I have finally come up with the final drop-in design with a 10-bit resolution. Configured the Micro for the Hall Sensor and calibrated it and so far it is working great. I know the wiring is a bit sloppy but I went through several builds and disassembles until I found a design that worked (so far) to my satisfaction.
Thank you! I got my inspiration from the bearing-ball point pen tube configuration. My engineering mind took over from there! I did read many of your posts as well! Some very talented people in this community!!
So true… the hard part is that I have open and closed the Rudder Pedal’s casework so many times that I’m not very motivated to open it up one more time just to make the unseen wires neat.
I did leave the two pots in place for the right & left wheel brakes. Although, I had to add a ground wire and re-wire it from a two-wire to a three-wire config (no big deal). So far, I haven’t had any trouble with the wheel brake pots.
Most of my time was spent positioning the Hall sensor and magnets to get the strongest signal.
The rudder pedals from full left to full right only turn the pot 30-50° so you’re only using a small portion of the full range.
Thanks. I wanted a ‘drop-in’ replacement and I did not want to have to modify any of the internal structure of the pedals. I paid $15 for the pedals and yoke. Maybe $30 in parts. A lot of time in Fusion 360. The 3D printer did most the work. I was surprised at how well it turned out. The most time was spent on positioning the hall sensor and magnets. Now, I need to make sure I adjust the pedals properly to help avoid PIO (pilot-induced oscillations) and PIS (pilot-induced spin). I can easily make another one now that my design is done and tested.
Con1995GT Great work! Would you be willing to share any 3d printed parts on thingiverse dot com and the wiring schematics and parts list for folks that would like to give the upgrade a shot?
