Anyone heard from Urze lately?

[bumfire]

Has he been in contact with anyone yet regarding their money ?

 

I just ask because he signed into the forums on 13th may 2009

 

Last Activity: 05-13-2009 09:29 AM

 

Hopefully he has gotten in contact with those he owes money to via pm when he was back on the forums a week ago.

[kaiserb_uk]

Strangely enough no, i've heard nothing.

[Flim]

still owes me 90$ bucks-- since last Jan! Heard nothing-- He sure did jack up a good thing --

 

hopefully no one would be dumb enough to send him money again!

[-fox-]

Pretty strange story. Depression or something like that seems like a good guess but nonetheless, if I where you (and live in Germany), I'd contact police about a possible fraud.

[JimMack]

Please pm me if anyone is still owed money by URZE for non-delivery of his collective.

[Frakin Toasters]

PoleCat, wow, what a legend.

 

Incidentally, does anyone know if the blueprints to this thing are floating around? Or does anyone have a repository of the photos from the website? I wouldn't mind having a tinker with building my own for personal use, as i desperately wanted to get one of these for my x52, and have only today discovered all of this stuff due to the website being down.

[Triggerhappy69]

Actually I have been thinking the same..

 

Not that I need one, but Urze did come up with a brilliant idea here. And after looking at the pics I could find it does'nt seem to complicated for the avarage DIY'er to make a simular collective for himself?

 

As far as I see It's a 20mm alumuminum rod approx 400mm long. A brake handle from a general bicycle type with a microswitch inside it. The microswitch is connected to the (is it Saitek) thingie at the end?

 

If someone can tell me what the multo button thingie at the end is, and the product is not under patent, I can make a prototype and post a how-to?

[CyBerkut]

Trigger: http://www.saitekusa.com/prod/cyborgcommand.htm

 

It is a Saitek Cyborg Command unit. You can see it on Saitek's main site as well, I just can't get to it while on the employer's network... :music_whistling:

 

I started on a project like this after seeing the pics of Urze's. You'll notice that Urze took the hat switch out of the movable thumb rest portion, and moved it to where the "10" key is. You have to make the hole bigger for it to fit through, and modify the keyboard membrane switch so that the "10" key won't activate any more. (I put electrical tape under the clear plastic membrane, if I remember correctly.)

 

I know Urze's early models had a hand brake lever, but he did away with that on the later model. It appears that he took the switches for the "15" and "16" buttons, and mounted them on the underside of the stick (where the brake lever would be). Those switches are on the same small circuit board as the hat switch. I used a buddy's dremel tool to cut the board to separate them. (You may want to map out the hat switch contacts/conductors before making the cut, as it would be easy to get the hat switch oriented incorrectly in the main unit if you don't.)

 

I bought a bicycle hand brake and brake caliper set to cobble up the collective brake with. (The one I bought actually is designed to operate two brake calipers, so I can just adapt the second cable connection to operate a switch instead).

 

I haven't implemented it yet, but my plan was to turn the brake caliper pads from facing inward (toward where a tire rim would be) to facing outward. Then, just position two flat surfaces, one to each side of the collective stick, for the pads to push against when the brake handle is not being squeezed. The surfaces/brake caliper pads need to be adjusted so that the pads are clear of the surfaces when the handle is squeezed, allowing the stick to be raised/lowered. Not as spiffy as some other solutions, but it should be able to be done without mauling the Saitek X-52 throttle. ;)

Edited July 29, 2009 by CyBerkut

[Airway]

What's the update here?

[Kuky]

don't think there's any update here... I just gave Urze negative REP (at least what I can do) on his last post... with what happened this is not cool from him at all