DIY Flight Simulator Joystick 

Square magnet with the hall effect sensor was a great idea. Gonna have to steal that one for a future project

I was honestly slightly disappointed you didn't measure your cats latency at 8:25!!!

Thank you. This is by far the best explanation of a Hall Effect Sensor. Couldn't find this anywhere else.

5:02 wiring here is just a work of art tbh

"...as Microsoft Flight Simulator doesn't currently support missiles." I found this absolutely hilarious .

This will be amazing when used with an fpv rc plane setup

I will almost definitely be building those rudder pedals in the near future. The high quality pre build alternatives are so expensive I could never justify the price, and these look surprisingly elegant.

I especially like the simple and elegant ways you got the maximum resolution out of both hall effect sensors just with your clever placement of magnets.

You're so good at this engineering that you're starting to make this seem too easy. (It would have taken me decades to think of using two magnets.)

Very nice. I'm a simulator-focused flight test engineer with 30 years of handling qualities / flying qualities test experience, so this is my bread-and-butter, and it's so good to see what you're doing here. You might want to consider adding two things: some mass to the stick, and some friction or damping to each axis (pitch/roll/rudder). The mass will make it generally feel more like moving around the mechanical parts in a real airplane - the stick itself has mass, but all the moving parts do too. Every real aircraft has some damping in its control system (some natural, and some artificial). While too much damping is usually bad, some is definitely good. You can get relatively inexpensive adjustable fluid/hydraulic dampers (sometimes sold as adjustable shock absorbers). I think you'll find it feels far more realistic with some damping, and it will be less prone to pilot-induced oscillations and excessive "twitchiness". In my experience, the larger the airplane the higher the damping, partly because larger planes have longer runs of control system linkages and cables, thus more parts to add friction. A little Pitts Special will have nearly zero damping, but a 747 has fairly high damping. It was easy to see you overcontrolling the biplane - that would pretty much go away with a damped mass-added stick.

This video is so perfect in so many ways. Just straight to project

Any tips on the printed mounts for the slotted aluminum? What kind of plastic and fill are you using?

For the full light-aircraft stick-and-rudder effect, it would be cool to add force feedback.

8:26 Man that cat is fast. Milliseconds from opening up the eyes to full track of the red ball.

Absolutely brilliant, the world needs MORE people like you that are not only educated but also creative and able to produce ACTUAL worthwhile “stuff”.

I love the use of magnet and hall effect sensors. I never would have thought of the use of magnet combinations to achieve anything other than 180 degree resolution. Thank you!

Tom, can we get a cat latency measurement please? -> 8:18

Dang it Tom, now I have to redesign my HOTAS! Your use of the Hall effect sensors is great! My original design used diametrically magnetized, cylindrical magnets fixed at the exact centre of the gimble shaft, but issues of precise alignment and rotational distance caused issues with resolution and precision, your approach is much better! I think the only change I would make would be to replace the 4 corner springs with a single central spring at the bottom of the gimble, maybe with a tension adjustment.

I used those tiny hall effect sensors to create a brushless motor I designed for a science fair project! It's really cool to see them being applied for different things.

The beauty of building your own joystick is that it's done to your specifications and handling properties too. Great video mate

Btw. the button on the top of the "control sticks" in the aircrafts are connected to the radio. It's the talk button.

You are one of the only people I know who actually know how to properly design a part for additive manufacturing. I used to work in an AM shop, and we'd get orders from people like Mercedes, general atomics, with parts that when printed were insanely weak and oddly designed for their end-use. I respect that in you.

That was the most gorgeous slow-mo shot I've seen of a cat ever. So many have tried to do slow-mo stuff with cats before but I've never found them captivating, like they tried too hard.

Thanks you for this video! I've been researching on this topic to make my own flight simulator controller for Elite Dangerous, and now with all things clarified, I can proceed to making it. Thnak you, you helped me A LOT.

I’ve been getting the Kiwi kits for my granddaughters. They love them, and I’ve been very impressed with the amount of thought that has gone into the design of each kit. I recommend.

I never thought of using two magnets for one sensor, amazing idea!

Great video. I will keep that 'cheap' hall effect idea in mind for my next project. I built a set of rudder pedals using potentiometers for the YAW, left, and right wheel brakes. To over come the problem of the resolution I made geared linkages for the pots. The pots typically have slightly more than 270 deg rotation and the yaw linear travel of the pedals is 9 inches in both direction resulting 45 degrees rotation. So using a 6:1 gear ratio I get the full travel of the pot and increased resolution. Flies in DCS, and X-Plane without any control issues and tracks VERY smoothly as well. Gears are 3-D printed as well. Working on a 'Huey' cyclic and will try your hall effect idea! Very nice. I must add that your design is a lot cleaner than mine.

Really nice job on that joystick! I like the magnetic approach, very smooth.

Mr beast: giving away 2 houses!!! Tom: I cannot give myself the luxury of buying 15 euros of sensors for my project.

The little animations helped me a lot with understanding, thank you.

IR barrier sensors from old Ball mouses are Great for this too. Lots of low cost Steering wheels use that to get precision and 920° measurement range. Love your videos, All the physics involved in our hobbys and how you explain them its just awesome and absorbing

Totally agree about the pivot point.

8:19 The slow-mo shot I've seen in a long time just watch the cats reaction i love it

Awesome work. I've gotten stuck trying to build my own, and this is really encouraging to see :)

Many thanks for sharing, that was absolutely brilliant, per usual! This gives me a good idea how to digitize any physical movement without a complex gear on a potentiometer in upcoming projects ... it is so simple and yet such a great solution that will run much more reliable than any potentiometer.

Love the new animations Tom! They really help visualise your concepts!

If you made it so the rudder pedals didn't auto-center and maybe used friction to keep them where you set them it'd be perfect for helis now they've added them

Yoooo, i was legit planning on getting a 3d printer for months now, and my first project idea was to do exactly this, to play flight sim

The use of Hall effect was a great idea, gratz. When you bought the problem up, my first thought was to put a big cog on the pivot and a small cog on the potentiometer, increasing the angle of turn on the latter. Your solution is more elegant and will last longer.

I ve just bought some magnetic hall efect sensor, im going to try this. Thank you Tom :)

Those animations were mint. When it came on, I nodded in appreciation and thought, dayaamn Tom, getting slick.

Awesome project! The production value of your videos has improved so much since you first started this channel. Everytime I see Tom uploaded a video, I get excited. These never get added to "Watch Later." They always go to "WATCH RIGHT NOW!!!"

This is brilliant. The classic joystick just has such a different feel from the "central stick" control of any modern light airplane - the joystick, on the table, is just awkward to use. I could easily do without the throttle (any independent one or Cessna-like one would do), but the combination of stick + rudder in a single element is just awesome. Hopefully someone gets the message and starts selling those, for those of us who don't have the time/resources to fabricate it!

The spring system for the pedals is ingenious. If the tension of the spring is of the same pedal it's attached to, it might not fully return to neutral, but in this setting, the opposite pedal brings the other back. I'll try that.

Your KiwiCo advert is brilliant! It made me laugh, definitely memorable!

"I want something a bit more.." *plays with broom*

This makes me appreciate my peripherals so much more, when even a DIY solution cost hundreds. love diy, but I love the CNC or extruded metal, plethora of buttons & dials, and complicated electonics & sensors, that all add to the immersion

Great video Tom , really liked the way you problem solved getting full resolution form the hall effect over 12 degrees or rotation.

I really really like the way you used the hall effect sensor I've been wanting to make something similar, but I struggle with thinking up mechanical design, so I was stuck trying to figure out how to use an encoder or pot for it thank you

I'd love to know what's the latency of your cat at the moment the ball hits the cups because that was really fast.

Keep in mind that you're not only measuring the latency of your input device. You include all the way from it through the code of the program and the output on the screen after going through a graphics chip. This can add some serious numbers (maybe up to 50ms depending on how it is coded). But to get a comparison between the devices it's good enough.

I've been interested in building my own cockpit for these sims, this helped me immensely. Thank you!

I've been watching your brother Tim showcase it on streams! Pretty nice set up considering that you can replace the costy aluminum extrusions and 3d printed parts with anything you know how to work with!

Great video Tom, now I need to put one of these together for some Elite: Dangerous

You could add a feedback based on airspeed to the elevator springs w/ a manual "trim" balance wheel. Use stepper to pull one spring while pushing the other. Put stepper on mount that is movable by trim wheel. Flying a plane out of trim takes a bit of effort. Trim for climb, trim for cruse, and trim for landing. My 1953 Cessna 170b has a trim wheel that is about 5" in diameter controlling trim tab on trailing edge of elevator. Newer plans have electric trim. Older pipers have a crank handle that changes the angle of the horizontal stab.

I've been thinking about making a joystick for a long time now, you can't even begin to imagine how much you've made my day!

Ah finally a use for all the springs i collected in a drawer!😜

Great vid as usual. Just a little tip to use rubber sealed bearings on your next build. They'll keep all the dust and cat fur out ;). When you order them they will have 2RS at the end.

Thank you so much for publishing your designs. I built one with my son and it works perfectly with FlightGear on Linux and Windows. I was able to add some more push switches and potentiometers for mixture and elevator trim and these work really well with a bit of extra code for the microcontroller.. The whole design is really easily modified and I added 3d-printed cable clips and inserts to hide away some of the spaghetti. I did break a rudder pivot, but that was solved by printing with thicker walls than the default Cura offered on fine mode. I struggled to find springs for a sensible price. The hall-effect sensors work really well, so perhaps I'll give this some thought in my future work. Now I just need to learn to fly better, but the joystick certainly makes the experience much more satisfactory.

i'm actually finishing the build of your joystick. Many thanks for sharing ! I really love the design and the Hall effect sensor solution is REALLY a great idea :)

You need to diy a headtracker for it so you can look around!

Fantastic video as usual Tom. Love seeing what projects you come up with, you really inspire me to do builds of my own :) the Square magnet hall effect assembly is pretty smart, did you come up with that on your own?

Wow, just love watching people being so skilled and creative. Great build

That is the cutest TQS I've ever seen, well done! Will definitely learn from your build, thank you!

Love the idea, just wish my abilities could keep up with my aspirations. Lol.

1:38 you could have picked a potentiometer with lower resistance rating so you can get more deflections

I love it.. great work Tom. The best thing is you have the controlls exactly like a real plane. You will flight better. I have a similar design but the springs instead of stretching are positioned in such a way that they are pressed. That makes the stick try to get in the middle more easily and it is not so soft, you have to do a little force. Excellent work Tom. Cheers PD: next step, buy a car seat and place it to be more comfortable

For eight years it has been a dream of mine to replicate a cockpit from Star Citizen for myself, but I have neither any experience in engineering nor in electronics. However as a small project I think I can start by making a switch panel like you did for the thrust control. Thank you for the great video!

That's a pretty sweet little rig. Next step: Force Feedback!

It’s about time! 😁

I have been looking for the whole package for flight sim use. This might be it! Thanks for sharing the project

Those tracks you use to mount things onto, those are wonderful

Bit i want somethin a bit more: *wildly mixes some cereal*

2:50 "then using an Arduino joystick library and few lines of coke..." 😂

Another option for the longer throw, is to stack square magnets together to make a single longer rectangular magnet. Still has the advantage (over round magnets) of fitting nicely in a rectangular recess in the plastic.

Dude, you’re like, my favorite RU-vidr of all time. I want to be an engineer when I grow up, and your videos are so inspirational.

Yaaaayy

7:32 who else thought the sponsership was going to be MS Flight Simulator 2020?

I build rudder pedals with a similar technique. I don't own a 3D Printer, which make calibrating the magnet positioning a tricky part. In addition I added a lot of buttons to a table clamp. In the table part I included a rotary encoder to contron things like radios and NAV. I also added a small joystick which control the view angle and zoom (by pressing the small joystick. Your solution looks much better than mine, congrats. Thanks for this great video. Maybe I'll try to improve my setup based on your ideas.

I designed one similar using old model airplane servos an removing the potentiometer out of them for the control positions. Then decoded the signals through an arduino. Converted to USB on the output. Works great. 👍

"I'd buy that for $100." "The total cost is $275" Aight, xbox gamepad it is...

Nice. Now build an actual plane around it

Awesome video Tom. Like the other folks are saying, the Hall Effect sensor implementation explanation was super. Didn't understand it until now.

Well, I've got my winter project now, great video!

1 minute of silence, for those watch this video without the YT recommendations ...

0:34 Dude I thought this was family friendly.....

Awesome engineering and imagination ! I use aluminum profiles on a regular basis for building prototypes. Nothing beats it for speed and strength.

The square magnet solution it's so nice, such a simple solution but yet not many people would've thought about it.

Video: released like two minutes ago People in comment section: NiCe ViDeO

What's the latency of your cat?

I took up your Kiwi Co offer a few videos back, we're 2 boxes in and my daughter loves it. We paid extra to get a STEM book in in each month as well which have been fantastic bed time reading, my daughter asked for more of both of the series that the books came from so we're going to end up with a back log. Love your projects, really wish I had more engineering knowhow. I've picked up coding a few times but can never apply it to something fast enough to retain the knowledge.

Nice job! One issue that is sorely problematic with gaming joysticks in MSFS is trim. In a real plane, trim can be set to cancel out the pitch input at any reasonable angle, and you can feel that as the pressure on the stick goes to zero. This holds the aircraft in a climbing or descending attitude (or level of course). The joystick's effective 'centre' position is offset by the trim. With a gaming joystick, there is no feel at all with trim, and worse, it works to make the standard centre position the trimmed position, which is unrealistic. It would be great if a flight joystick could physically simulate trim, perhaps by moving the spring fixed locations forward and backward using a motor. (If the 'feel' aspect of trim isn't familiar to you, try and get an experience flight sometime). If anyone can do it, you're the man! (Edit: another thing to consider is adding toe brakes to your rudder pedals).

how do people already have something to say the video is like 10 seconds ago how much have you alreay watched?

This is the most elegant DIY hotas solution I"ve seen to date. Really nice design Tom.

The low potentiometer range can be fixed with some clever configuration of the ADC. For the ATmega32U4 used here, we could run it in differential mode and use a second potentiometer set to the mid point. Using the internal amplifier we should get a decent resolution. Bonus is that the second potentiometer effectively functions as trim, and can be used as such in the sim

Tom, you're a Great Engineer, keep the good work!

This is pretty awesome. If I could make a suggestion...the axis you are using for the rudder pedals would actually be the toe brakes in an aircraft. The rudder movement would be akin to a sliding motion ie if I push left rudder the whole pedal slides forward on the left while the right pedal slides back towards you, not up and down like a gas/brake pedal.

If I do remember my flight class correctly, brakes are pushing both rudder pedals at the same time. Putting the rudder assembly on a sliding part and belt connect to a potentiometer to read the amount of brakes applied would be an easy improvement I think.

That's a very acceptable latency for the input. In professional full flight simulators the complying latency accepted for certification has to be less than 300ms. The average is around 200-210ms. I worked as an FFS technician. Great video by the way! Maybe I build one of these for me!

The way you solve the mesure range was smart!