blog.me

So today it is currently the hottest day of the year so far at a nice and toasty 111 degrees outside. And what I do to stay cool? I go and work on another sub project in the garage with a friend of mine. It is for his home theater and I happen to have a few extra 12″ subs laying around. It should sound good once we are done with it. A good deal bigger than his current sub which falls of a lot around 40hz.(can you even call that a sub). Any case I need to get some pics of the build in progress along with some pics of the controller before I start to glue it all together.

I finally hoped onto facebook and that has consumed a bit of my time lately. Nice to be able to network with so many people I known over the years. Any case, purpose of this update is to talk about the second arcade controller I am putting together. I will get some pics of it in the works. This designed will be different as it will have a top that will come off. I will make use of ribbon cable to neaten up the wiring and I will definitely stick to using a new wired controller. The PCB is just that much easier to work on for the new revision versus the older revisions.

I shall also be taking many more photos this time around to document the build process. I will have a couple pics uploaded tomorrow. I also have my hardwood of choice I am going to make the top out of. It is called Purple Heart and I picked up at wood workers source today. That and a couple of extra clamps and some clear coat. Yes the wood is actually purple and a wonderful hardwood to look at.

We finally completed the first Joystick build and used it quiet a bit. It works very well after I re-attached the the analog button section to the control board.

Here is a link to all the pictures we have taken of it. Pictures of Arcade Stick for 360

Next project is to build one for myself.

As promised, I have some pics of the almost completed arcade stick. Click them for a much larger photo.

Almost completed

The inside of the controller

More to come later.

My brother and I finally got a working arcade stick last night after realizing that the first PCB we used from the used 360 controller was damaged during the initial soldering. So after purchasing a brand new wired 360 controller, finding the pin outs for the new PCB designed used in the controller ( which was much easier to work with I might add ), we had a successful test last night. So far we are very pleased with the results. Playing around in the training arena in Street Fighter IV, we can tell that it was definitely more responsive over the standard controller, the feel was there, and how easy it was to execute the movements.

Things I learned so far in building this.

• A good soldering iron is important here
• Even more important is a good clean soldering tip appropriate for the job
• Burning the PCB is bad, but burning the PCB and lifting up a couple traces is much worse
• Building the box was easy (pics to follow soon)
• But building the box and not taking to account that the Sanwa JLF arcade stick was meant for metal panels and not 3/4″ of red oak made it more difficult.
• A hole cutter bit for the drill works wonders

That is it for now, I am going to grab a few pics as we are applying the finishing looks to the box.