Force Feedback DIY: Sidewinder FFB2 vs. The Competition

[Alterscape]

I'm in the very early stages of designing and building a custom force-feedback stick for sim flight -- something floor mounted, with a fairly long extension between the stick grip and base/pivots. As such, I'd have to replace the motors and motor drivers with something capable of providing enough torque with the stick extension, and probably build new motor mounts, and possibly new geartrains. I have access to a machine shop and some 3d printing gear, so I'm fairly confident I can take care of the mechanical part.

 

My question: I have a "spare" FFB2 stick that I was thinking about gutting to drive my frankenstick -- connecting my own H-bridge to the motor outputs, etc, and connecting my pots to its pitch/roll inputs. The FFB2 seems to be extremely well-regarded by the sim community, however, and as the saying goes, "they just don't make 'em like that anymore." It seems a shame to wreck a perfectly good FFB2 if there are other options that would work just as well for my purposes.

 

So, my question is, does anyone know if the problems with the Logitech FFB sticks (or Saitek, for that matter) were primarily in the hardware, or the firmware/circuit board? If I'm going to be DIYing my own gimbals/motor mounts/pot mounts/etc, poor quality in those parts on the original stick doesn't really matter.

 

Thoughts?

[jib]

I would use the Microsoft FFB2 if I where you.

I find the Logitech G940 has some bad driver issues when trying to trim in Blackshark.

There are some details here: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=84883

[recoilfx]

The problem with MSFFB2 is that there is a signal dead zone. You will probably see/feel it more when you have the stick extended. Resolution of the sensor is also a rather low.

 

Logitech doesn't have a dead zone, however, there is a larger force feedback dead zone (this has been decreased with newer firmware). The resolution is pretty high (provided by MLX90333).