joypad hack woes (or how I blah blah blah)

okay so here's what's happening. I have a homemade stick that has served me well from Arcade boards, to PS2 to Xbox 360. The only thing that's changed is the innards.

Sadly, my previous joypad board died without warning so I went out, bought a new one and set to making it right.

The solders are tight. nothing is loose, everything checks out...except, and this is a big except, every now and then for no reason at all I get one or more of the following symptoms:
1) please reconnect controller. this message flashes up and then goes away. everything is fine after.
2) P or K, one will go. kinda like Sophie's Choice but without any real decision on my part and, you know, without the nazis. get a float, press P and nothing! play as wolf, try a grizzly lariat and get a sidekick or his df+P. The a throw, get a guard (useful sometimes).
3) random up motions.

It is so inconsistent that I cannot reliably recreate any situation and sometimes it never happens but when it does! fuck.

Anyone with experience with cutting and soldering pads? I take this apart and it all checks out - there, one the surface, does not appear to be anything wrong and yet something is sooo not right.

has this ever come up for anyone?

I'm losing my shit.

 

The main reason I built those pizzabox sticks was because one of my converted vshg's was giving me the "please reconnect controller" message with increasing regularity.

I couldn't figure it out.

When I map buttons I need to turn unused buttons to "no use" & vibrate to "off", otherwise weird stuff happens.

Good luck!

 

Just checked: all my unused buttons were set to "unused" but vibration was on! here's hoping it is *that* simple.

thanks!

 

sadly, it isn't that easy. oh well. more Guitar Hero I guess.

 

Did you replace the analog switches with resistors? If not, that might be what you need to do. Fred's pizza boxes fell victim to the random-input/no-input problems at SoCal. They had no resistors. "(No) resistance is futile!"

 

Actually the black buttoned stick fell victim to a stray wire strand occasionally contacting the ground for . I cleaned this up & hopefully it's still working for Sunday's surprise guest.

The pink buttoned stick's woes were traced to the wires inconveniently running below the punch (maybe guard...I can't remember which exactly) button pushing the switch up making the button not work.

This second stick and the third one have worked daily without a hitch since socal without restrictors provided unused buttons are mapped unused & vibrate off.

Like I said, one of the vshg's I converted started having increasing problems sending signal to the xbox. At the time I got the sense that the cord coming out of the pcb had gotten yanked or something, wasn't getting a good connection & that's why I was getting the please reconnect controller message.

I'd wiggle the cord...press it into the pcb...turn the system off & on etc & finally it would work for a minute or two or hours then disconnect again. I was having to open the case up a good deal for the few days I let this go on to swap buttons or check the stick. I finally gave up and ordered pizza.

You might just need to start over with a new pad. I'm sure resistors couldn't hurt.

 

PM Veedees for the win. Totally destroyed my stick lol, cuz im a fool though.

 

What did you do to your VSHG?

 

I was moving some buttons. I did that fine, but ripped some cables putting the case back on. Noob mishap on my part.

 

i was working on my vshg today, trying to make the damn thing work, wired everything perfect, all my solders were spot on, but when i go to turn it on... nothing... the madcatz isn't getting recognized by anything, but the vshg part still works fine... don't ask me how or why XD

will keep working tomorrow

 

hacking a pad is always a bit messy. ideally you should fix the pad in position inside the stick and not touch it with your fingers directly on the board too much.

 

Hmmmmm.... Ive modded 3 or 4 controllers to my stick. First thing I do is controller side soldiers, then screw the controller into the stick, after that every soldier I do is checked in Dojo. I keep the dojo interface open, and go to my desk and soldier then recheck. Im using a MC SFIV pad, best one Ive used.