Nice! Would love to know how to make custom grips for the Rhino though. A gamechanger if possible without the need for soldering skills etc. Is there a guide for doing custom grips for the Rhino?
Sadly, the project didnt get enough community interest and the developer is focusing on making it only for himself, the issue was the price for something like this was gonna be €202, which is a bit much for what it is
3D print or 3D print mold to resin is much cheaper. To say nothing of re tasking injection moulded commercial plastic housings. Like I did with my Thrustmaster X-Fighter B8 grip or the Suncom F-15/hornet stick I’ll eventually get around to finishing now that I have a trigger solution. Most actual sticks are slush cast resin, not metal. You can slush cast resin in a lot of mold materials.
@keem85 @Kalixto I’ve done two custom 3D printed sticks from scratch, both using freejoy as the way to interface with my PC. Version 3 will be modified from V2 for a VPForce DIY kit. Custom design for someone who hasn’t done modeling before will be tough. But wiring has been made very simple by Walmis with the shift register board. It will require basic soldering skills but as @.rustbelt said this is a simple skill to learn. Pair it with the 3D printed F-4 Phantom grip listed above and you would have a great place to start to learn wiring. From there you could move on to learning to model your own grip keeping in mind the things you learned from wiring the previous.
Also my best modeling tip: If I was going to start from scratch again, I would first start with the electronics I wanted and build a grip around them rather than what I did which was build a grip shape and then try to fit buttons and functions in after the fact.
Other modeling tips: Start with a reference. Virpil as profile views of all their grips with some dimensions, you can use these to help guide how to shape and size your grips.
If you are just starting with modeling, YouTube is your friend. Also practice modeling things you have laying around to learn the different functions and different possibilities to get to the final result.
PCB prototype board kits are a great place to start for through-hole soldering practice. You also might want to buy some bulk buttons/switches to practice soldering wires to the terminals. Making a button box with a freejoy or a bodnar board is a great place to learn soldering and build something practical to use. If you go the freejoy route, you can do a button matrix for a challenge problem, but I would say if you are confident enough to do a button matrix you could manage the shift register wiring and it would be much easier.
I've got the grip ready, and I moded a thrustmaster with a teensy PCB, my question is about analog microcontroller, like the joysticks from the Xbox 360 first gen, those have a hall sensor in it. I think you can't use shift register with analog.
Great info, thank you! I think I will be able to solder. but I must know that I am soldering correctly. I really really want to use a H145 grip (only seen by Komodo and Max Flight Stick so far), but these grips are so incredibly rare, so naturally I'm scared to destroy it.
But let's say I decide to solder my H145 grip. Would I just unscrew it from my Komodo cyclic and cut all the wires about 10-20cm sticking out from underneath the grip? And then solder this "freejoy" on to those sticking-out-cables?
It was an incredibly overpriced cyclic for sure, but I love this grip really much. So naturally I don't want to destroy it because of those two reasons. It was custom made for me with grip length fitted to my rig and everything.
There is another online shop that has a very nice H145 collective, scanned from an original and then printed via the pulver 3d print (plastic) technology. Don't know the name right now, but might be able to look it up.
Cyclic Piloten Stick ähnlich zur EC-135 oder EC-145 für Homecockpits (v9) 1 teiliger Handgriff Polyamid Sinterlaserdruck schwarz matt lackiert 7 Taster ang
The creator is very kind and helpful, once you get a hold on him. But he can stop answering for a long time and you have to persistently send him mails to try and wake him up. Allthough I'm happy with this product, I don't think I will go to him for more. Microhelis seems like a good option number two. I just have to do some research on button soldering and tube-bending. Kind of hard to plan without having all the measurements beforehand.
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