homepage Forums Technology Flight Sim Pit Builders Thrustmaster Hat Switch

I recent;y found my old Thrustmaster Mark II FCS stick and WCS throttle. I thought I'd see about salvaging the switches and grips for a new controller project using Leo Bodnar's board (BU0836X). The standard switches on the stick or no problem, but the hat switch "unit" leaves me pretty confused. There is a small resistor network on the back of the switch and ultimately only two leads that were atually connected from the switch to the controller. I'm not really sure how they got an 8-way switch using only those two leads, but I'm no electricqal engineer. My question is, has anyone else ever played with one of these? Is it possible to adapt it to a digital board such as the BU0836X? I have pictures of teh assembly if anyone is interested:

Thrustmaster FCS Hat Switch

Thanks.

Hi Kodiak,

I don't have any personal experience with this stick so this is guesswork.

The two wires will show a different resistance depending on which position the hat is in. You can confirm this by connecting the two wires to one of the POT ports on Leo's board. One wire to the GROUND pin and the other to the CENTRE pin.

If you run the config program and move the switch around you should see changes on the reading.

It works by using the resistor rule that says putting two resistors in parallel halves the overal resistance providing they are both the same value. i.e. Two 10 ohm resistors wired in parallel will give you 5 ohms.

Each of the four pads cconnects a resistor to the centre pin. When you put the hat in a mid way position it connect TWO of them, giving you a different resistance.

Only two wires, but 8 different resistances across them. Clever....

You could connect the switch as I suggested for testing above and then use a program like HotKeys that will detect a particular resistance of a pot and output a key code for each one you set.

Hope that all makes sense to you.

Cheers,

Andy

AndyB is correct, old Tm FCS/PFCS stick's use HAT is plugged into analog axis, not in button matrix (to overcome gameport limitations).

To plug into BU, erase these resitor's and trials from HAT PC, and use only the micro-switch's of HAT.
Each micro-switch is one button (for BU matrix) or one HAT position (for BU matrix).

Sokol1

Appreciate the advice, that definitely explains it. So Sokol are you saying I should be able to desolder the existing leads and resistors and wire up the individual switches to the BU board?

I think that desoldering the resistors would only give you a four direction switch ( it's not easy to see from the photos, but it looks as if there are only 5 solder pads on the switch.

If you want to retain the 8 positions you'll have to keep the existing set up and use it on one of the pot ports of the board.

Cheers,

Andy

If you plan wire these four swtich's (of Tm HAT) into BU0836 four HAT positions (Up, down, Left, right) erase resitor's and PCB trails. You get 8 Way HAT. "Plug and play".

But, if you already have another HAT wired in BU0836 HAT position, use AndyB advice,
plug unmodded Tm HAT into one axis port. And use some software to translate this HAT in keypress...

Sokol1

Just wanted to say thanks to both of you. I desoldered the resistor network, and wired it up to the hat positions on the BU0836 and it works like a champ!