Search the Community

Hey guys, After some time the analog pots of my very nice Thrustmaster Cougar started putting out erratic values and were spiking all over the place. These pots seem really cheap and even if there were still replacement parts from TM available, in my eyes it would not make much sense to replace them with the same low quality parts. I have been tinkering with my idea of contactless sensors for the Cougar now for around a year and I think I am finally satisfied with what I got. These sensors are plug and play, fully sealed, make use of a ball bearing on the axle and use a N52 neodymium magnet for contactless angular measurement. The PCBs are only 14 x 20 mm (0.55 x 0.78 in) and were quite the hassle to make all the necessary ICs and SMD parts fit in. The housing is a two part SLS 3D print from Shapeways, which is a very tough material. I use it for all sorts of mechanical parts. (Here you can find development pictures: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...er#Post4419858) These sensors in reality are not hall sensors, but instead use next gen magnetoresistive sensors which are heavily used in the automotive industry and have basically replaced hall sensors there. The main advantages are higher sensitivity and actual angular measurement instead of only measuring the magnetic flux (as hall sensors do). The same type of sensor is used eg in Baur BRD devices in form of MagRez or RAMS. These devices are known for their amazing precision and I wanted to make use of the same sensor in the Cougar. Installation is as easy as stick it in, screw it tight, plug it in and done. You can calibrate them as you normally would via the Hotas Cougar Control Panel and the whole thing stays fully TARGET compatible as well. Now enough talk, here are some pictures. TM Cougar stick sensors Because the question comes up a lot, you can invert every axis of the Cougar in the first tab of the Cougar Control Panel (CCP) software. If you are interested or want to ask questions please contact mtwsims@tutamail.com. No PMs please! Please note that sometimes I am rather slow to respond and it can take me several days to answer your emails. Payment via PayPal or SEPA bank transaction, but for PayPal I would have to add the PayPal fees on top. All sensors are designed, assembled & hand soldered by me. Every single sensor is then checked and calibrated manually. I can proudly say it is 100% Made in Germany. Price: 44€ (set of two sensors) + 7€ tracked international shipping (from experience shipping within Europe is around 2-6 days and to the US 14 days) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- TM Cougar Throttle standalone USB adapter + digital contacless 14 Bit GMR sensor I also have made a USB standalone adapter for the Cougar with a high res 14 Bit GMR TLE5011 digital sensor on the Throttle axis. This one is similar to the TUSBA, but half the price and with an added extension bay that supports extra shift registers, encoders, buttons, analog and digital axis. You can buy the USB standalone adapter without the new digital sensor and simply keep using the original pot. However you can not use the digital sensor without the USB adapter, as it communicates via the digital SPI protocol. I have been selling these on the german Craigslist/ ebay since 2018 and people were really enthusiastic about their performance. Price is 33€ for the adapter and 20€ for the sensor + 7€ tracked international shipping (shipping is only paid once per order) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- TM Cougar Throttle hall sensor kit I can now also offer a simpler Hall effect sensor kit for the Throttle. It consists of an Allegro 1324 hall sensor + cable and a 3D printed casing + N52 magnet. It is plug and play for the Throttle unit without my USB standalone adapter and similiar to older hall sensor kits for the Cougar. The difference is it requires no fancy mounts and is fixed in the correct position in two out of three axis for more precision. The third axis is dependent on magnet strength and can be hardware and or software calibrated. By hardware calibration I mean depth of insertion into the 3D printed case, nothing to it really. The mod is only compatible with the 5V mainboard version as is! The solution to this problem is a little voltage conversion board that is 3€ extra. The 5V and 3.8V versions differ in a resistor on the VCC line. Here you can check which version of the Throttle mainboard you have: https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/135000-new-hall-sensor-kits/?do=findComment&comment=2916178 Awesome installation instructions by JCook: Price is 22€ + 7€ tracked international shipping (shipping is only paid once per order) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cougar Ministick/ Slew replacement This mod replaces the original Ministick of the Cougar Throttle. Often times the original Ministick is worn out and as no replacement parts are available from Thrusmaster anymore a solution was in dire need for many HOTAS Cougar fans. The thumbhat is modeled after the earlier block original F-16 slew. The mod is completely plug and play. Price is 22€ + 7€ tracked international shipping (shipping is only paid once per order) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cougar ANT sensor replacement This mod replaces the original ANT pot of the Cougar Throttle. Often times the original ANT pot is worn out and as no replacement parts are available from Thrusmaster anymore a solution was in dire need for many HOTAS Cougar fans. The implemented chip allows me to program the min/ max voltage output of the sensor to correspond to the exact min/ max angle actually needed in practice. For the Cougar ANT pot this means 270° of rotation in total. Important installation instruction: Price is 22€ + 7€ tracked international shipping (shipping is only paid once per order) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CH Pro Throttle, CH Fighterstick, CH Combatstick, CH Pro Pedals etc. magnetoresistive sensors The cool thing about these MR sensors is that they are a drop in replacement for the standard CH pots, but contrary to these they work contactlessly. That means you can simply connect these sensors to your CH mainboard and done. You will never have to worry about deteriorating or dirty pots again. The CH Control Manager recognizes this sensor normally and you can calibrate it within the software. Important installation instruction: Price is 22€ + 7€ tracked international shipping (shipping is only paid once per order) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 Bit shift registers for Cougar USB standalone, Thrustmaster gear, MMJoy2 These are compatible to the Thrustmaster hardware, to MMJoy2 and to my Cougar USB standalone adapter. The dimensions are 20 mm x 50 mm (0.79 in x 1.97 in), so they are very small and fit basically in everywhere. The pins are spaced in standard 2,54 mm (0.1 in) to fit normal header pins (see picture 2). I offer them either with or without header pins. The shift register is 24 Bit, so it has 24 inputs that you can connect buttons to. It can also be daisy chained, so you can put several shift register boards in series. Eg MMJoy2 supports 12 shift registers in series. So if you daisy chain 4 of my 24 Bit shift register boards, you have a total of 96 button inputs with just 2 pins used. If this isnt pretty damn cool I dont know what is. Price is 10€ + 7€ tracked international shipping (shipping is only paid once per order) If you are interested or want to ask questions please contact mtwsims@tutamail.com. No PMs please! Please note that sometimes I am rather slow to respond and it can take me several days to answer your emails. Payment via PayPal or SEPA bank transaction, but for PayPal I would have to add the fees on top. All sensors are designed, assembled & hand soldered by me. Every single sensor is then checked and calibrated manually. I can proudly say all my mods are 100% Made in Germany.

Greetings, I currently run DCS in VR. I have a HOTAS that's configured as a Cougar Throttle with a TUSBA R2 connector and Warthog Stick. It's working as expected. The only issue I have is that sometimes there's a need to use the keyboard to get some tasks done. There was a way using Foxy back in the day to create scripts in order to allow for shifted sequences. Such as holding down the S3 button and pulling up on the throttle comms would invoke a command to an external view say. Is it possible to get something like this working with the current set up I have? I appreciate any feedback and comments about this. Thanks, -Matt

Hello guys, I have been working on a project of 2 Simpit which uses 2 R2 TUSBA for the TM Cougar throttle, however we had a few problems. On one of the throttle we had a piece (which i forgot the name, but basicly allowed the base to know which position was the throttle on), we changed it as there was irregularities when the throttle was moved to a new position (sometimes it "jumped" for a milisec to another position, or when going full idle or AF it goes maybe to a value up to xx50+ then goes back), we had calibrated following the manual and as of now that throttle is (kinda) working, we cannot just allow the throttle to be either full idle, or AF. The second is a little bit tricky, we originaly thought it was a software related issue, basicly the throttle cannot go over an value of 1097-ish (even with all position calibrated - paired), we then after many troubleshooting tried to change the piece with no change. We have tried some fixes that didn't work however.