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ServoStik Review

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Slippyblade:

--- Quote from: Scorpie on July 07, 2014, 02:03:37 pm ---The only thing I now want to know if its possible to mod the stick with an rgb led balltop :D there goes my imagination :D

--- End quote ---

That'd be cool, change the ball color based on 4/8 way position.

05SRT4:
That actually does sound cool, I don't think it would be impossible to do.

danny_galaga:
I was going to write up a review but noticed this so will add my thoughts here. First up I have to say theses are absolutely worth the money. However, much like buying say a resin cast kit model compared to a mass produced one, you are buying a very niche product that needs a little attention before installing. The things that need attention are as follows:

1) There is no inherent system to hold the screws in place. they will work their way loose over time.
2) The springs are too close to the size of the washer hole, and tend to work their way 'through' them, thus ending up on the wrong side of the washer.
3) The swash plates can be tight enough to bind and stall the motor before it finishes the full turn. If it happens to one joystick and not the other (as it did me), much head scratching ensues!

The solutions are quite straight forward, much easier than fixing up the afore-mentioned resin kit.

1) Locktite! Easy-peasy. In the pic you will notice I didn't go to town on it. Just put some where you think thread will screw in. You may end up with some on the plastic. Don't worry, it's not glue. Just clean it up the best you can with cotton tips or tissues. Tighten the screws up just tightly enough that there is a little bit of pressure. It doesn't need much and doesn't seem to me to be something that needs to be fine tuned.

2) Not as easy as the first part. You could either find some springs with slightly larger diameters, or do what I did and open up one end a little so that it can't worm its way into the washer. I used a pair of pointy nosed pliers. I suspect it wouldn't matter too much if you lost a spring, as long as you put the screw with the missing one at the opposite end to the control horn. All they do is gently apply pressure upwards.

3) My first thought was to try and remove a bit of plastic off the swashplate, but hit upon a simpler solution that works well. I simply put a tiny amount of ceramic grease on one side of each of the four swash plate contact points and then turned it so that it dragged the grease through. That INSTANTLY made it very very light to turn. If you are worried that it is too loose (I'm not) you could always just do one or two contact points.

The third pic shows what my springs ended up like, and also the grease. I used ceramic grease because I had some (it's great for N64 thumbsticks!). It's designed for plastic gears and bearings. But I'm pretty confident that vaseline would do. You only need a smidgen.

Look after those things and you should have years of trouble-free operation.

Treguard:
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I noticed you were using this in software mode. Have you come across something that explains how to assign the switching to a button (or 2) say for an arcade cabinet setup? Thanks

Flyer:
I need a comprehensive list of ROMS vs 4/8 way and I plan on writing a .NET exe to shim between Hyperspin/launch and the Mame.exe.   It will capture the command line intended for MAME and fire off the servostik EXE ONLY if it needs to switch from 4-8 way or vice versa (this means storing current state).  Then calling MAME and running it with the passed command line arguments.

I already had to write a custom one for Daphne command line as they differ from game to game.

My Setup is pretty unique.  I modified the servostik motors for Sanwa JLF and I built a narrower cabinet that wall mounts and the controls slide in and out as a drawer on 4 drawer rails (2 each side for extra support) and a motor to open/close it.  There is an arduino that runs the drawer open/close system on/off and I plan on getting info on how many buttons games need and only lighting those buttons with the arduino.  This same "Shim" application will trigger the number of lights to light for buttons or all if its unknown. 

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