Star Wars A1U Modded Yoke - Left & Right Controls Reversed

[saxman717]

Just completed the Star Wars A1U mod with an APAC controller.  The APAC is recognized as a game controller in Windows.  When I check the controls, the up and down movements on the yoke are great and register properly, BUT.......the left and right turn movements are reversed (when I steer left, the controller registers movement to the right, and when I steer to the right, the controller registers movement to the left).  I've tried swapping the left and right wires in the APAC (black wire in slot 1, brown wire in slot 2), but that completely messed up the controls.  Help here would be greatly appreciated.....

[saxman717]

Very odd......I've tried swapping controls over to the "player 2" side of the A-PAC.......the up and down motions still register just fine, but regardless of whether the brown wire is in the "left" slot and black wire is in the "right" slot, or whether the black wire is in the "left" slot and brown wire is in the "right" slot, the controller doesn't register left or right movements at all. It remains either "fully right" or "fully left", regardless of which direction the yoke is turned.

On the "player 1" side of the A-PAC, the unit fully functions when the brown wire is in the "left" slot and the black wire is in the "right" slot, albeit with x-axis inverted (physically turn the yoke right and it registers as movement left on the PC, physically turn the yoke left and it registers as movement right on the PC). However, when the brown wire is in the "right" slot and the black wire is in the "left" slot, the unit acts hosed again, registering "fully right", regardless of movement. Up and down continues to function properly.

[JDFan]

Very odd......I've tried swapping controls over to the "player 2" side of the A-PAC.......the up and down motions still register just fine, but regardless of whether the brown wire is in the "left" slot and black wire is in the "right" slot, or whether the black wire is in the "left" slot and brown wire is in the "right" slot, the controller doesn't register left or right movements at all. It remains either "fully right" or "fully left", regardless of which direction the yoke is turned.

On the "player 1" side of the A-PAC, the unit fully functions when the brown wire is in the "left" slot and the black wire is in the "right" slot, albeit with x-axis inverted (physically turn the yoke right and it registers as movement left on the PC, physically turn the yoke left and it registers as movement right on the PC). However, when the brown wire is in the "right" slot and the black wire is in the "left" slot, the unit acts hosed again, registering "fully right", regardless of movement. Up and down continues to function properly.

Could be the switch connections inside the yoke instead of on the other end - Open up the yoke and check those connections.

[saxman717]

Could be the switch connections inside the yoke instead of on the other end - Open up the yoke and check those connections.

Thanks for the suggestion!  Before doing this, would such a problem with switch connections inside the yoke have been evident from playing games with the original build?  All controls worked perfectly and not inverted with the factory build, prior to modding. 

[saxman717]

MYSTERY SOLVED:  Apparently, on some versions of the Star Wars A1U yoke, the black wire is on the top and red wire is on the bottom for the x-axis potentiometer.

The mod directions that I followed by Kongs-R-Us, located here: , dealt with a yoke that had the red wire on top and black wire on the bottom.

By hooking the black wire to the ground slot and red wire to left slot, everything is working perfectly now.

[PL1]

The guy in the video does a really bad job describing the potentiometer tabs.
- His "up", "down", "left" and "right" tab labels are at best misleading.
- The good news is that he did correctly label the ground tabs.   

There are three tabs on a pot:
- 5v / operating voltage
- Wiper (always the center tab)
- Ground

The pot acts as a voltage divider.
- The output voltage on the wiper tab depends on where the contact touches the resistive element.
- The analog encoder converts the analog voltage from the wiper tab to a digital value representing a position on that axis.

If the axis moves opposite the desired direction (i.e. right instead of left), swap the ground and 5v wires on that pot.

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/Analog_Encoders#How_a_potentiometer_provides_the_voltage_for_an_analog_encoder_to_measure




Scott