Custom joystick PCB's?

[mastahkaz]

I was thinking... since everyones building custom sticks for consoles these days wouldnt it be a good idea if someone had some custom PCB's made for PS2, Xbox, whatever that are nice and square and just have leads that you can screw your wires into?  This seems like it would be much cheaper and easier than having to buy a real controller, taking it apart and soldering.  At least after the inital design/prototype costs or whatever it is they have to do.

Anyways, it was just a thought I had.  I dont really know much about how this works, but if i could find a place that does this around here i'd be willing to have it done, as long as i knew i'd be able to sell enough of them to make my money back.

What do you think?

[Vol]

x-arcade used to sell their PCB just for this purpose.  I cannot find it on their site anymore, but if I recall you could pick up the PCB for around $50 and then pick up one or two of each console adaptor you wanted.

[mastahkaz]

$50 seems spendy, seems like if someone here did it and didnt tack on lots of extra money for profit it would work out better.  When i was looking at websites of places who do short run pcb prototyping it was like around $400 for 100 pcbs... which could be sold for like $8 - $10 making it cheaper than a controller and the person doing it will make a little extra.

[RandyT]

$50 seems spendy, seems like if someone here did it and didnt tack on lots of extra money for profit it would work out better.  When i was looking at websites of places who do short run pcb prototyping it was like around $400 for 100 pcbs... which could be sold for like $8 - $10 making it cheaper than a controller and the person doing it will make a little extra.

Heh.  You might want throw a couple of chips and other sundry electronic components on there too!  Those pcbs are just that....pcbs.  By themselves, they have the same function as wire  BTW, someone has to breadboard the project and then design the layout for all the lines on those boards as well.

Then someone has to order a few hundred of each part (so they don't pay $5 for a $1 item.)

Then somebody has to write the code for the microcontroller, program it and then solder all the little pieces together.  Testing it to make sure it works when it's done is also usually a good idea.....

If it still sounds simple, then you are the man for the job .

Seriously though, the only reason you can buy things like controllers as cheap as you can is that the persons doing most of this work get paid very little, and any investment the Chinese factory makes in the production of these is spread out over a million units.  So if it cost $100,000 in development, that's only 10 cents per unit.  The rest is just straight cost and overhead which is a lot cheaper in China.

Sometimes the pad hacks are more economical....if you want a pad hack.

RandyT

[mastahkaz]

oh, ok thanks

[Vol]

Also, the X-Arcade PCB package came with color coded wiring harnesses equipped with quick disconnects.  Out of the box it is essentially an IPAC-2 that comes with the required wiring and supports the console adapters.

It's not/wasn't cheap (especially when the console adapters are $20-$30 each), but it works/worked.

[tmasman]

unfortunately they don't offer it any more... I emailed them a few weeks back & they said selling it seperately wasn't in the plans at the moment. Then they said "Watch out NEWs page for any change in plans"... Yeah right...

I hear there were latency problems with some consoles anyhow...

I'm just hacking PS controllers & getting the adapters to make it all work with the consoles. It all works out SOOOO much cheaper!!! $10-$18 for the adapters instead of $24-$30. (Not to mention a controller + wire + 2 hours of my time is much less than $50)

I thought about having a bulk run of PS controllers done before... It just didn't turn out to be worth it for me... I think the per unit cost was around $12 to get 100 done. After you add on a small enclosure, wire, quick disconnects & any kind of profit it just wasn't worth it.

[mastahkaz]

Well another question... is there anywhere that you can just buy the PCB for a ps controller by itself?  Would any of the companies that make them agree to sell you some if you buy them in bulk?

[RandyT]

Well another question... is there anywhere that you can just buy the PCB for a ps controller by itself?  Would any of the companies that make them agree to sell you some if you buy them in bulk?

They may, but you have to understand what "bulk" means to a Chinese factory.  Usually you are talking minimum quantities of about 500 units.  Even at $3 each,  that's a $1500 dollar investment, plus freight.

If you wanted to do this, you'll need to do a bit of sleuthing to find the real manufacturer (a distributor or retailer will not want to give you this info).  Then you'll need to get samples to evaluate before placing your order.

The factories also want 100% up front payment via an international wire (no credit cards, and no "net 30").

To sum it up, there's no easy way to do this stuff without a fairly substantial (to an individual) investment and risk.

RandyT

*edit*
formatting

[mastahkaz]

Thanks for the info RandyT i may have to look into that some more.  Also i found this site last night http://www.gamesx.com/controldata/psxcont/psxcont.htm.  It has some interesting info on the PS controller.  They also made a microcontroller to emulate a ps controller towards the bottom.

Since i dont understand much of this stuff its not really of any use to me, but maybe someone here will find it useful?

[OSCAR]

They may, but you have to understand what "bulk" means to a Chinese factory.  Usually you are talking minimum quantities of about 500 units.  Even at $3 each,  that's a $1500 dollar investment, plus freight.

If you wanted to do this, you'll need to do a bit of sleuthing to find the real manufacturer (a distributor or retailer will not want to give you this info).  Then you'll need to get samples to evaluate before placing your order.

The factories also want 100% up front payment via an international wire (no credit cards, and no "net 30").

To sum it up, there's no easy way to do this stuff with out a fairly substantial (to an individual) investment and risk.

RandyT

Yeah, you aren't kidding about the minimum quantities on pcb's.  That applies for most North American shops, too.  I buy my optic boards in lots of 500, not many places want mess with much less than that.  Those that do will most likely charge you insane prices.  I ended up finding a place in Toronto, Ontario that gave me some pretty good pricing on them.  When I asked about 500 piece lots, they said, "Yeah, we can do small orders like that."  Heh...  

[Edgedamage]

Edgedamage thinks to himself "Toronto EH"

[Hoe]

The problem isn't the programming, the price, or any thing, it's the bloody connector to the console. PCBs may be 4$ each, with a few extra bucks of stuff on them, but a run of controller adaptors isn't cheap (the mold will cost big bucks).

[tmasman]

Well...
Talk to these guys... RedOctane

That link points to their "Build Your Own Joystick" catagory...
They have an empty box for $20...
And on with the PS PCB (& cord) for $25...

Maybe you could order a bunch of just the PCBs from them...

Just solder the wires, add terminal strips somewhere (another PCB, enclosure, whatever!)
There you go!

<edit>
Just looked again... It looks like the wires are already attached to the PCB... Just add terminal strips & you've got something. (With little effort it would seem too!)

[SNAAAKE]

they wont sell you the PCB.

you gotta buy the whole thing...

[tmasman]

they wont sell you the PCB.

you gotta buy the whole thing...

DOH!

[Ahi_Tuna]

I can probably get them to fill any orders someone wants to place. I have a few extras if people want to buy one myself.

I may be able to get them to stock their Xbox available also. It all just depends on if there's much of a demand to tool up the site and put in the work. Just let me know.