So I've been racking my brain on joystick mounting and light ring solutions for quite some time now. I played with several ideas in 3d, but I really need to play with lighting in the real world to figure it out... so it's time for some more physical prototypes!
I was extremely close to giving up on this idea as there seemed to be no great solution without significant compromises.
This is where we left off on this over a year ago.
It wasn't a bad start, but it wasn't what I was hoping for, and there were a lot of compromises with it.
1. I wanted an evenly lit ring with no obvious light sources. (fail)
2. I didn't want to have to compromise significantly on how deep the stick is mounted for a lighting effect. (this compromises shaft length and can make it not feel right.) (fail)
3. I absolutely did not want to use a shaft extender as this will completely change the intended feel of the stick and greatly increase the throw distance. (pass if JLF)
4. I wanted my solution to be able to work with ANY commercially available stick in a universal way. (fail...this was very Sanwa JLF specific)
5. You must be able to change joysticks without ever impacting the CP top / artwork. (pass)
6. No bolts of any kind showing on the surface of the CP. (pass)
7. Ideally no dust washers on the surface of the CP (pass)
First I wanted to test my original idea of simply needing more than 2 LEDs to get around the ring. If more lights didn't help, then I might as well stop here.
The new plan called for hollowing out a very large section to include room for my new mount design. First to simulate this, I just cut some scrap 1/2 ply to the correct sizes to make 4 walls.
Then I cut an LED strip to about the right length (was a actually a pixel or two short) and taped it in place with duct tape as a temporary solution.
I put some washers together with tape to simulate the targeted mounting height and set a MS Pacman Mounting Plate on top of it.
The key here is that the mounting plate has to sit just under the center of the pixels so it doesn't block the light beams.
Then I took a highly sophisticated piece of cardboard, cut a whole through it quickly with a forstner bit, and painted a black area around it with a marker. I put a black washer in the middle to simulate the ring look I'm after.
This proved to light things much more evenly, and from a distance that works with all the commercial sticks, so it was worth continuing to rack my brain on it.
For fun I put one of my LED ring lights under it instead just to see what it would look like. This is cool if you like the definitive look of the LEDs. The plastic diffuses the shape of the LED a little, but it's still a very obvious light source.
There's just no way to get the depth needed to hide the light sources without drastically extending the stick shaft lengths. Also keep in mind I'm going for an RGB look, so I can't rely on hiding the sources more by color matching the light with the plastic.
Now before we go further I want to stress how hard it is to get a photo of light sources like this to look accurate. Generally speaking most phone cameras just won't cut it. There's absolutely no adjustment even in pro settings that I can make to get it to look like it does to the naked eye.
Cameras typically overexpose light sources which makes everything seem like it glows really strong, when in reality it doesn't. There are also colors (like yellow) that the camera can't even pick up natively. So as a simple example, my camera shows this looking rather evenly lit.
But this shot is a bit closer to reality after a ton of setting tweaks. Even here the blue is accented stronger than it really is. You get stronger / definitive edge highlights in the real world though.
Most of the shots in all this testing are all in a day lit room with lights on. If it looks decent in that setting, it looks really good in a dimly lit environment and could even be a touch on the bright side.
So knowing there was some promise to this working a bit better, I continued on and fabricated some new washers from the different plastics I bought.
Here's a very important discovery. For this entire project so far I've relied on a portable drill guide to help me get things more accurate. However, no matter how hard I tried,
at different points in the project I found things were never lined up quite the way I was expecting. Sometimes it was great, others not so much. Turns out that's because there's noticeable play in the drill guide that I can't figure out a way to fix.
The play happens while you try to force the spring down the shaft to make your hole. There's so much play that you can move the bit a good 8th or more in any direction.
Here we have an attempt to enlarge the center hole to be the right size for larger joystick shafts. Notice how far off center this came out after all kinds of careful alignment and even a starter puncture hole through tape over the top.
Not gonna cut it. So next I decided to just eyeball it and go at it free hand.
This came out a lot better than the drill guide, but still isn't quite right and is prone to error. I also had to start the drill resting on the plastic which caused some noticeable chipping on the inner edge.
Finally I decided to try to make my own simple jig to see if a more accurate cut was possible. Turns out it was.
I made a huge crosshair on the bottom scrap MDF. Then I used a 1.5" x 1.5" piece of framing lumber and used the drill guide to make a hole on it's center (which was marked).
Then I erased those marks because the drill guide was off as expected. Once the hole was made, I created a new cross hair mark centered around the hole I just made.
Then I wrapped it all the way around the board. This way the lines on the base MDF sheet can touch with these lines for easy alignment. Lastly I put the plastic piece I wanted to cut visually aligned dead center on
the crosshair lines on the MDF sheet. Then I stacked the 1.5x1.5 hole guide on top of it and aligned the cross hairs wrapping around that to the cross hairs on the MDF.
I clamped it down on both ends evenly. I marked a rough depth guide on the drill bit with tape. Then I stuck the drill in the hole on the top and drilled to the proper depth by hand.
...and the result, so much better! In retrospect I'm going to put tape over the top of these to hopefully further help reduce edge chipping, and make sure the drill is up to full speed before making contact.
So now I have a method to be far more accurate for precision drilling.
Next I assembled my new mount design into my test control panel.
I wanted to be able to play with the height a bit on where the metal mounting plate sits under the wood, so to do this I added a bunch of washers directly under it.
Some of this is to compensate for this MDF panel being exactly 3/4" where the plywood panel it will be on will be 1/16th shorter. This would all be fine except that the bolts I wanted to use for it then became too short. The final version of this will have the outer bolts running out the other side of the wood with a washer and nut on the end.
That said, just with the bolts tightly screwed into the wood, it was solid. You can see the same #8 bolts used to mount the joystick to the metal mounting plate. (MS Pacman sized).
The stick I'm using is the MS Pacman stick which I found has a shorter shaft than all the others I've looked at. I figure if I can make this work good, then everything else will be great.
Here's the underside of the CP it's mounting into.
I made a dumb mistake by plotting my threaded inserts too far out.
Those inserts are only 10mm deep btw. I didn't want to have to remake everything so I compensated by cutting slots into the wood on the joystick mount.
This meant the hold would be significantly weaker, but it should be good enough for testing. You can also see I duct taped the LED strip in place and covered the mounting area just to help the reflectivity a bit.
In the final version I'll probably paint it white or use the same reflective metal tape I plan on using in the marquee area.
Here it is mounted and put together.
You can see the hex bolts and washers on the end just barely having enough surface to grab. Surprisingly even with all these mistakes compromising its strength, it was still solid with little more than finger tightness everywhere.
There's zero play in it, so I figure when done correctly it should stay solid over time.
Here it is flipped over and mounted with a couple clamps onto the corner of my actual control panel.
You can see I have 2 different plastic round dust washers under the joystick.
Right now the concept keeps the black washer close to level with the surface of the rest of the control panel.
I will probably try to make a version that makes the black plastic sit inside the white dust washer so they are all level as well. This is all dependent on having the perfect sized forstner bit and making a jig that's precise enough.
For now this isn't bad though and I could live with this. It gives it the white ring look I'm after. In the next version I'm going to increase the size of the white dust washer a bit so you don't see into the hole at all even when the joystick is pushed full in a direction.
The black plastic is the special black LED plastic I got from tap. Figured I might as well find a use for it. It has a nice shiny side to it that looks nice and reflective.
Here I'm playing with a number of things. The left side is exposed enough where I can reach under it and manipulate the LEDs. The tape isn't holding them snug enough to the top, and I found if I pushed it up tight I could pretty much double the brightness on the ring.
Another factor is that the right side of the ring doesn't have as many LEDs and is missing 2 right in the center where it's needed most. That will all be corrected when I split up the strip and deliberately mount LEDs in key spots.
Next I have a couple dark room shots where I'm playing with dropping the mount even lower to try to get the LED centers better aligned. The more center aligned I can get them with the joystick dust washer, the better the results. Look at the left side again.
Here where you see a hot spot of light on the left edge it's actually not that white. It's very brightly colored. Then it quickly falls off (but not completely). So even with this over exposed photo you can get the sense that it's basically illuminating about half the thickness of the ring consistently.
Here I adjusted a few more things and changed the color. Now you can see on the left it's spreading much better, compared to the right that's totally out of alignment (tape failed).
So that's where I've left off so far. I believe this setup has potential and I can achieve a decent look with it. Let's check the criteria list again.
1. I wanted an evenly lit ring with no obvious light sources. (pass)
2. I didn't want to have to compromise significantly on how deep the stick is mounted for a lighting effect. (this compromises shaft length and can make it not feel right.) (pass)
3. I absolutely did not want to use a shaft extender as this will completely change the intended feel of the stick and greatly increase the throw distance. (pass)
4. I wanted my solution to be able to work with ANY commercially available stick in a universal way. (pass)
5. You must be able to change joysticks without ever impacting the CP top / artwork. (pass)
6. No bolts of any kind showing on the surface of the CP. (pass)
7. Ideally no dust washers on the surface of the CP (pass)
Overall we're looking good here! If you wanted to remove the entire stick and swap it with another, you can do it with 8 screws and don't have to touch the E clip on the joystick. The only exception would be something like a flight stick.
If you wanted to, you could keep all your sticks on my mounting bracket design and get the hot swap down to 4 screws. All the wires would just need to run to a Dupont or JST connector for quick swapping.
For me I don't anticipate the need for quick swaps. I just wanted a versatile design so I can try out all the stick types over time and choose my favorites without compromising the CP.
I think this could even work for a servo stick. It just depends on if it's possible to get LEDs around the servo extension area, and you would need to adjust the routing under the CP in that area.
The remaining challenge is keeping the LEDS exactly where I need them, but ideally not gluing them in place. I would like the strips to be able to be removed easily for maintenance.
Worst case if I glue it, I need an easy way to break it off without damaging the CP. The tape on these strips tends to vary in quality and even the 3M stuff has plenty of complaints with it not holding well.
My current thinking was to try to make some sort of pressure pin out of thin metal (like wood staples) to try to hold it in place. Not sure that will work though.
I might try to make some kind of wooden support brackets that get wedge in there somehow. Who knows.... love to hear ideas! My current "LED gutters" are 2/8ths wide by 9/16ths tall.
If I can get it high enough up at the perfect angle, then I'm only compromising about 2/8ths of the joystick shaft, which in my testing on the MS Pacman seems fine.
I believe 1/8th which is a full layer on the ply should be strong enough to not worry about it breaking with the little more than 1/8th gap under the wood before the metal plate.
If it becomes a concern I may add some tiny supports outside the dust washer area and in between where the mounting holes are.
Also if anyone can think of a stick that might not be supported by this mounting bracket let me know! As far as I can tell it should cover all the common sticks I found to purchase so far.
The last challenge to this is making it all fit in my existing CP layout. This mount requires a lot more space than I originally designed for. Most areas will be OK but there are a couple that will present challenges to solve ((player 3 for instance).
Some of this is solved by adjusting the size of the wooden L shaped brackets that attach to the metal plate for specific areas.
Given this solution I am even starting to see a version of this that should work to get the ring light around my spinner. That will be the next challenge after this one is complete.
Hopefully someone is finding all this information useful. Let me know if it's helping you in your project!