Simple Joystick Mod


rautiocination

Still Fresh
Joined
Nov 15, 2005
Messages
13
Location
Crooklyn, NY
Website
www.erautio.com
I messed with my stock joystick to the point where I pretty much destroyed it. So I scavenged for parts and built a pretty decent stick for my gp2x. It's built from the guts of a ball point pen, and so far works great. I drilled out the center with a drill bit till it was the correct size.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with it, it feels more like an analogue stick, and the throw is short enough that the deadzone isn't too bad. I feel some of my joystick related woes stem from how different programs treat the diagonals, as there is a seperate sensor for the corners, as opposed to just having it record UP+LEFT or some other combination.

Anyone else think of any good parts to use to make a replacement joystick/dpad?

joy_mod_1.jpg


joy_mod_2.jpg


joy_mod_3.jpg
 
That looks very scary. What did you do to mess it up beyond repair?

Edit: HAHA! My avatar (Rayek)'s looking at the joystick and wondering... WTF?
 
Rayek posted on Dec 12 2005 at 03:13 AM said:
That looks very scary. What did you do to mess it up beyond repair?

Edit: HAHA! My avatar (Rayek)'s looking at the joystick and wondering... WTF?

Just some overzealous "improvements" I made, I trimmed the normal stick too much and it got loose and eventually fell off. I don't miss it too much though :)
 
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As long as it works for you... So you just cut off the back of a ballpoint pen and attatched it to the gp2x? Nice. How does it fit?
 
Rayek posted on Dec 12 2005 at 03:26 AM said:
As long as it works for you... So you just cut off the back of a ballpoint pen and attatched it to the gp2x? Nice. How does it fit?
Fits very snugly, as I trimmed it till I found the right size

It's actually two parts, the bottom part was part of the guts of the pen, then trimmed the guides which were on its sides (the fin looking things). The inside was trimmed with a few different drillbits till I found one which was a snug fit for the top. I can't for the life of me remember the exact diameter the final bit was though :p

I cut off a small part of the cap for the rounded top, just super glued on.


<ascii art time!>
Code:
       _________
     /            \
    |_____________|    <- pen cap tip
 /  |              |  \
|   |              |   |
|   |              |   |   <-bit of pen's internal mechanism, with edges trimmed
|   |              |   |
|   |              |   |
|   |   _______    |   |
  \ |__|        |__| /
    |  |        |  |
    |  |        |  |
    |  |        |  |
    |  |        |  |
    |__|        |__|
       |        |
       |        |
       |        |<- metal stick on gp2x
       |        |
 
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Great mod! I am going to advice something to a friend of mine who'se gp2x thumb-stick is soo loose it just rotates.

I bet you it plays a lot nicer than the original stick. I am not sure about the risk of creating too much leverage on the stick when playing, since the joystick mod is a bit taller than the original. More forces might be applied to the soldered base of the stick....

Perhaps superglue-ing the original stick and superglue a part of a pen's cap on top, marked by the xxx's, is a safer solution

___xxx
/````````\
\,,,,,,,,,,,,,,/__regular stick
___ I_I
___ I_I
___ I_I
########
########_soldered base on the motherboard

the taller the modded stick, the more forces are applied to the soldered base on the motherboard. And soldered connections aren't supposed to have any tension or force applied to them....
 
rautiocination posted on Dec 12 2005 at 07:23 AM said:
Rayek posted on Dec 12 2005 at 03:13 AM said:
That looks very scary. What did you do to mess it up beyond repair?

Edit: HAHA! My avatar (Rayek)'s looking at the joystick and wondering... WTF?

Just some overzealous "improvements" I made, I trimmed the normal stick too much and it got loose and eventually fell off. I don't miss it too much though :)
Heh, that sounds like what I did. I tried to sand down the stem of the joystick cap (the stalk of the mushroom shape). I think doing that has improved the feel of the joystick, but now it's rather prone to falling off. Er, oops! I've just added a tiny blob of blu-tak which seems to have sorted it out nicely.

I have a spare GP32 joystick cap which I've shortened to fit on the GP2X without standing too tall. The hole in that is too big, but I think it'll be great once I sort out some sort of sleeve to make it fit. I'll try blu-tak for that tonight, but it's probably not going to be firm enough.
 
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Mark1970 posted on Dec 12 2005 at 02:06 AM said:
Great mod! I am going to advice something to a friend of mine who'se gp2x thumb-stick is soo loose it just rotates.

I had that, I just squeezed very carefully on the cap's shaft with my incisor teeth, put it back on, no more rotating.
 
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Here is my version of your fix:
stick1.jpg

stick2.jpg


I added a little ducht tape on the top to make it less slippery.
Sad thing is, it`s not black...
But it works much better than the normal stick.
 
I also did a modification, a so-called 'Retrocon-mod' take a look:

mark1970_retroconmod.gif

It doesn't fit directly one has to adapt the Retrocon's analog stick to the gp2x's shaft which is shaped like a D at the end. Whereas the Retrocon's shaft is [] rectangular.
 
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