Virtuality

Flight simulators have always given me a great deal of enjoyment. I really want to begin learning to fly the simulators again - I haven’t flown simulators since before I came to Uni.

I always wanted to build a flight Yoke for the PC, but don’t really know where to start on such a project. My joystick is in mothball at my parents house, in Girvan.

Problem: I don’t have the money to buy a flight controller or joystick.
Solution: xBox controllers have 2 analog sticks, 2 triggers, 8 buttons and a 4-way directional pad.

Oh yes, I’ve heard it’s really a U.S.B. device.

Sounds like it should be possible, and I remembered that a friend told me there are linux drivers for the xBox controller. A quick google turned up Windows drivers for the xBox controller. So here I began the long, laborious depth-first search of the various, often dangerous cupboards in my flat.

One hour later, and an old U.S.B. cable was procured. Snip-nosed pliers quickly dealt with the device end of the cable and the controller end of the little extra-adaptory bits that come with xBox controllers. (A scream and a shout for modification, I think!)

The top cable is the xBox adaptor lead that is shipped attatched to the end of the xBox controller cable. The plug on the left of it will plug into the xBbox, and the controller plugs into it on the right. The bottom cable is a U.S.B. cable, computer to device.

The cables had to be prepared before joining them; pulling the shielding back and fraying out the internal leads. There were 4 on the U.S.B. cable, and 5 on the xBox adapter lead.

To wire up an adapter correctly I followed the instructions to the letter, and tested each pin on each connector to identify which colour of cable the pins were connected to. It turns out, that the xBox controller’s cable has the same colour wiring for the same functions as my U.S.B. cable.

Tinning the wire ends to be soldered, and placing the two cables ready for soldering was the most nerve-wracking part of the job.

Soldering and insulation of each individual connection went by without error - thankfully.

Finally, a little tinfoil around the join to preserve the R.F. Shielding effect.

Then came crunch time. Was my soldering up to the job? It’d been more than a year since I last built any electronics. I was going to plug in some home-brewed wiring into my nice new motherboard. Scary.

Well, after I installed the drivers I plugged it in - and it worked!

Time for a game of TuxRacer.

Having completed this little project, I don’t have time to play that flight simulator after all. Oh well.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 23rd, 2005 at 9:15 am and is filed under Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.