Report HOTAS Warthog problems

[maxmax]

My slew hat works well up and down. But left and right it just stops after a brief second. Very annoying.

*edit*

Updated. Seems to have fixed the problem!

Edited December 27, 2012 by maxmax

[Mike Busutil]

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=125472

[kyuri_t7]

Hey guys,

 

i recently bought the Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog and i am wondering why the LEDs on the throttle flicker.

This is pretty anoying on the lowest 2 brightness levels.

The higher ones tend to be better.

 

So, is this a known problem?

Or did i just receive a throttle device with a malfunctioning PWM (pulse width modulation) section :huh:

[Shaman]

That's how they work, they do that very when you reduce their brightness they start flickering very fast, like old CRT.

[kyuri_t7]

Well, if the frequency is set fast enough the human eye should not see that flickering.

 

But if you tell me you experienced the same with your HOTAS throttle, i guess Thrustmaster designed it that way. I just think it is strange because the Cougar MFDs do not show that behaviour....

[Mike Busutil]

I do not have any LED flickering on my HOTAS. But I am also not set to a low brightness setting.

[kyuri_t7]

I do not have any LED flickering on my HOTAS. But I am also not set to a low brightness setting.

 

Hey Mike, do you mind setting the brightness to the lowest setting (value 43) and look for any flickering?

 

It would help me a lot i guess.

 

#EDIT: It is a pretty subtle flickering by the way, not that horror movie type of flickering ^^

[Mike Busutil]

Sure, I will check this when I get home tonight.

[skouras]

I do not have any LED flickering on my HOTAS. But I am also not set to a low brightness setting.

same...

[kyuri_t7]

same...

 

Does it flicker when set to a lower brightness?

 

I am thinking about returning the Hardware, but since everything except the LED thing is working just fine,

i don't want to give it away just to end up with a new HOTAS that shows the same flickering because it is designed that way :dunno:

[Shaman]

Yes, they do it but it's subtle, just don't stare too much lol...

I keep mine full bright.

[Flagrum]

Afaik LEDs can not be dimmed therefore they are toggled on and off rapidly. If you are sensitive you can experience this flickering effect with the tail lights of (modern) cars as well. Highly annoying if you are waiting - especially at night - at an intersection behind a guy who keeps his foot on the brakes.

 

I would think, the lower the desired brightness, the more time the LED have to be in the OFF state - thus reducing the frequency of the flicker and making it probably more noticable.

[kyuri_t7]

Afaik LEDs can not be dimmed therefore they are toggled on and off rapidly. If you are sensitive you can experience this flickering effect with the tail lights of (modern) cars as well. Highly annoying if you are waiting - especially at night - at an intersection behind a guy who keeps his foot on the brakes.

 

I would think, the lower the desired brightness, the more time the LED have to be in the OFF state - thus reducing the frequency of the flicker and making it probably more noticable.

 

I don't want to sound cocky, but being an EE student i know how to "dim" LEDs. It is done by using PWM (Pulse Width Modulation). The LED voltage is toggled from beeing high for some time and then low. This toggle sequence is likely to be set at a higher frequency than the human eyes can perceive.

The eye sort of memorizes the emmited light and so it seemes like the LED is on the whole time.

 

I actually designed a background LED circuit myself and adjusted the brightness by using PWM. I used a frequency in the kHz region and that worked out just fine.

As i mentioned earlier the Thrustmaster MFDs are adjustable without this flickering.

 

 

Maybe i just make a mountain out of a molehill but regarding that price tag for the HOTAS i am a bit confused here :joystick:

 

 

Yes, they do it but it's subtle, just don't stare too much lol...

I keep mine full bright.

 

Ok, thanks for the information. My HOTAS doesn't flicker on full brightness too, but playing in my dark nerd room it is quite distracting xD

 

 

Thanks for all the input so far :)

Edited October 21, 2014 by kyuri_t7

[xxJohnxx]

I would think, the lower the desired brightness, the more time the LED have to be in the OFF state - thus reducing the frequency of the flicker and making it probably more noticable.

 

As part of a project I did a couple of hours of laboratory tests on dimming LEDs by using PWM (Puls Width Modulation).

The results themselves showed that normally the duty cycle (how long it will be on and off within one frequency swing) would normally not affect visible flickering.

However, visible flickering would occur at a frequency of about 48Hz (the human eye can recognize 24 pictures a second, therefore 48Hz is just about cutting it on not flickering).

At about 50Hz it is not noticeable directly anymore. You might have been able to recognize the flickering in the peripheral vision (as you could with monitors that where running at less than 72Hz (=24Hzx3; 24Hz for every colour)) at that frequency.

 

However, I highly doubt that the microcontroller used within the Warthog runs PWM at that low frequency. Normally microcontrollers run the PWM in the kHz range, which should not allow visible flickering to be seen at any duty cycle (=brightness).

 

EDIT: Beaten to it by another EE student! ;)

[kyuri_t7]

As part of a project I did a couple of hours of laboratory tests on dimming LEDs by using PWM (Puls Width Modulation).

The results themselves showed that normally the duty cycle (how long it will be on and off within one frequency swing) would normally not affect visible flickering.

However, visible flickering would occur at a frequency of about 48Hz (the human eye can recognize 24 pictures a second, therefore 48Hz is just about cutting it on not flickering).

At about 50Hz it is not noticeable directly anymore. You might have been able to recognize the flickering in the peripheral vision (as you could with monitors that where running at less than 72Hz (=24Hzx3; 24Hz for every colour)) at that frequency.

 

However, I highly doubt that the microcontroller used within the Warthog runs PWM at that low frequency. Normally microcontrollers run the PWM in the kHz range, which should not allow visible flickering to be seen at any duty cycle (=brightness).

 

EDIT: Beaten to it by another EE student! ;)

 

Haha nice, another EE student.

 

I fully agree with what you said. Yet i don't understand why i recognize that flickering.

[Shaman]

Same observation as you guys I did here. I own 4 MFD Cougar bezels and yet I can't notice flickering as I do on Warthog, but oh well, pumped up brightness for fancy green glow in my own nerd pit and I just don't look at it while I'm flying anyway. Blindly catch all controls anyways.

It is a cosmetic bug certainly to some people who perceive annoyance from it, I was annoyed too at first I seen it, but not a controller issue.

Edited October 21, 2014 by Shaman

[Flagrum]

I know that the human eye "should" not be able to see this flickering of a PWM controlled LED (learned something here, thanks! :o). But I know that every person is different and no two eyes (+brains) work the same. Iirc there were reports (complaints) about these flickering of car back lights / brake lights and I think, they were saying, they were working on some sort of solution (of which nature ... I can recall, though).

 

Just saying, some people can notice this flickering, some don't. Some are more sensitive, some not. Personally, I can not see my Wartog nor MFD LEDs flicker - but I either turned them off or set them to the lowest setting as they are waaay to bright for my taste in a dark room. But I DO notice the brake lights of some car models flicker - at night, if I move my head away and only use my peripheral vision. (so, PWM is probably also not equal PWM)

 

*shrugs*

[xxJohnxx]

(so, PWM is probably also not equal PWM)

 

Yes, PWM is not equal PWM might probably be a key factor here.

There are different type of PWM possibilities for Microcontrollers nowadays.

Some of them allow "hardware supported" PWM on some of their I/O pins, where you basically tell the PWM-Hardware: "Illuminate at a duty cycle of xx%". That PWM-Hardware then will drive it's output independently from the main processor of the Microcontroller.

 

However, hardware-PWM might only be available to a couple of your I/O pins, or on some micro-controller types it might not be available at all.

If that's the case you normally still can achieve PWM, by using so-called "software" PWM. In this case their is no dedicated PWM-hardware available, but instead a custom PWM-code (managing duty cycles) is built into the main code. Therefore the PWM is done by the main processor and not dedicated hardware. This might (not saying this is the definite case here), depending on processor load, lead to short brakes in the PWM-code being run, because the main processor might be doing other stuff.

 

 

Or it might could be a completely different problem. I will probably have a look at the internals of the throttle at the weekend and probe around a bit. Kinda interested on what's going on there :D

[xxJohnxx]

Actually thinking about it, some users where experiencing jittering of the 'friction' slider axis whenever the LED backlight wasn't set to full brightness. This might be related to that.

A thing that came to my mind where voltage drops that might be caused by applying PWM signals to the LEDs. If they don't have enough capacitvy to even out the LED supply current, it might cause voltage drop on the supply lines. This might cause flickering and upset the potentiometer value messuring of the 'friction' slider, while it would not necessarly affect the Microcontroller because that sure has a good dimensionised cap. Who knows.

[kyuri_t7]

xxJohnxx, thanks for the participation regarding this "problem". I totally forgot the possible usage of software PWM.

 

I will probably have a look at the internals of the throttle at the weekend and probe around a bit. Kinda interested on what's going on there :D

 

Really looking forward hearing more about the results of the measurements :thumbup:

I thought about doing that myself, but i got the HOTAS just on last saturday, so i may return it within 2 weeks to get full money back and i don't want to loose this option yet.

[xxJohnxx]

I had a look into it today.

 

It turns out they really seem to be using software PWM, as the LEDs operate at a frequency of 200Hz, which is far lower than usual hardware PWM. Nevertheless 200Hz is 4 times faster than the visible limit of 48Hz, so this should not be a problem in that regard.

 

While having it open, I started to see the flickering as well. On the lowest brightness level it is hardly noticeable, but it is there.

With the equipment I have at home, I don't really have the chance to figure out where that is coming from unfortunately.

 

The only thing that could be somewhat related, that some of the internal connectors had a 50Hz signal going over them. I don't know where it is coming from (could be inducted over electro-magnetic fields, could come over the USB line or might even be intentional), and I don't know if it has anything to do with the problem at all. It's just very close to the critical 48Hz, which is why it came to my attention.

 

It just seems this is present on the most TM Warthogs, while most users probably don't even know it. So I wouldn't worry to much and maybe turn the brightness up to the next higher setting.

 

Best regards,

 

John

[kyuri_t7]

Thanks a lot for the investigation :thumbup:

 

I actually got used to the flickering. When concentrating on not crashing into some enemy missiles i find myself not even recognizing the problem. Still confused about Thrustmasters design.

 

Cross-talk and interference is a known problem coming from the 50Hz power grid. Often times the USB line features a ferrite bead to get rid of possible noise signals.

But i never heard of a similar problem coming from the issue adressed above so i might be totally wrong :)

 

Anyway, thanks again and have some nice flights :pilotfly:

[a1adin]

Hi Guys,

 

I have just got my Thrustmaster Warthog yesterday from PC Case Gear, Australia.

However, today I install TARGET, and suddenly I notice Z and Rz axis are not detected.

The other axis: slider and mini mouse (X&Y) and the buttons are detected.

 

Now, if I look at Control Panel > game controller > warthog throttle:

Z and Rz axis are not detected.

 

Yesterday, before I install TARGET, both Z and Rz axis were OK.

 

Do I get a faulty product or did I do something wrong here?

Anyone with warthog has this kind of problems before?

Please help.

[T_A]

did you activate a TARGET profile? if so , it might be one without those axis

 

you should see in windows control panel 2 items , one for throttle and one for joystick , if you see just one then TARGET is on and configured with a wrong profile.

[a1adin]

yes, I did activate stock profiles that come from target installation.

 

I tried blackshark and dcs f-15.

I think both profiles use z and rz axis.

 

in windows control panel actually, I have tried both:

- thrustmaster combined (when script is running)

- joystick and throttle - hotas warthog (script is off)

 

in both setting, now z and rz axis are not detected.

 

do you know what is wrong?