Reverse Engineering the Force Feedback Pro

gez · Post by **gez** » Sun Oct 21, 2012 10:30 pm

Yeah, I do see it there, so at least that's normal. It's the settings panel I reach through there where I noticed the flickering of the axes, random button triggering and non-functional tophat - I assume that isn't normal?

Are you also running r54 on Teensy 2.0?

Gez

Poil · Post by **Poil** » Sun Oct 28, 2012 1:22 pm

Yep

I had the same problem, it was a bad contact on my midi connector.

Best regards

TMSio · Post by **TMSio** » Sat Nov 10, 2012 9:41 am

Hi to all,
I m new in this forum, i hear speaking about this project, and i want to try do to this.
I build the circuit, and i put inside teensy adaptffbjoy-r54.hex code.
If i connect all to my laptop (win 7 32bit) it work fine (just x and y axes inverted ... if i move my ffb to right the mouse move in left direction and the same if i move uo the mouse goes down).
if i connenct to my desktop (win 7 64 bit ultimate) i see in the devices Lufa Joystick wFFB with yellow"!"
(the same in windows 32 bit) but the joystick don t work... no mouse moviment and no force feedback.

I try with adapt-ffb-joy-proto1 and adapt-ffb-joy-proto2 code but no change.

Can someone hlp to me?

Thank you

Best regards

Emiliano

Sorry for my english

Overkill211 · Post by **Overkill211** » Sat Nov 10, 2012 10:42 pm

For those interested, I've whipped up a PCB adapter board to plug the pin-type Teensy 2.0 board into.

Just something I really wanted to try building. I've missed my FFPro, ever since I "upgraded" to the FF2. The newer stick just never felt as well laid-out as the original. Some games really needed that 9th button, too.

Built 99% to the published circuit diagram, with 1 extra connection... I hope to make it compatible with all the MS overdrive sticks, code-wise. I'll probably have to get past the "Hello World" tutorial, though.

Might save you some assembly headaches. I've tested all 5 that I have assembled (made 6, but one's mine, naturally) with my FFPro... all working.

Contact me if you're interested.

Poil · Post by **Poil** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 1:10 pm

Why have you got 4 resistors and 3 capacitors ?

On http://adapt-ffb-joy.googlecode.com/fil ... ircuit.png we have only 3/2 oO

Overkill211 · Post by **Overkill211** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 10:18 pm

I added those to re-connect pin 13 on the DB-15 connector. These are connected to B6 on the Teensy. It has no effect on current operation, but I figured that if someone changed a bit of code, the adapter could support the non-FFB Sidewinder sticks that use Pin 13, instead of 11. If not, oh well... an additional few cents in components.

malaki · Post by **malaki** » Wed Jan 30, 2013 3:42 am

does this one fit into a box like the 3dpvert?

Overkill211 · Post by **Overkill211** » Sun Feb 03, 2013 12:55 pm

If you can find a small enough box to accommodate it, and don't mind that the mini-usb will be recessed, then probably.
I didn't really design for a box... sorry. Works perfectly on a slot-mount plate, or mounted directly to a case wall. I plan on case-mount, myself.

sdecorme · Post by **sdecorme** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 2:27 am

Hi,
I've been reading this post , I've tried the descriptor given below it seem to work like a charm in W7 64bits.
I can receive som FFB effects on my device
I've just a problem with the RAM function calculate . how it works ? is someone look at the PID description o fthe USB ?
Thanks

Overkill211 · Post by **Overkill211** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:45 pm

First board is safely in it's new home in the Netherlands. Just 4 left, now.

osterac · Post by **osterac** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 7:12 pm

Hi!
Just finished making my own adapter on my breadboard. I'm making it for a friend, and he's the one who has the Sidewinder. The only thing I have to test it on at this point is a Sidewinder 3D Pro Plus, which showed up as a joystick, but not a working one - not really surprising, it's not a universal adapter (yet?). Next week I will hopefully try it out at my friend's place on his Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro joystick.
He also has a Sidewinder force feedback wheel. If anyone is interested, I can probably borrow it from him and hook it up to a computer with a gameport to get diagnostic data or whatever. My experience in electronics isn't super-extensive, but I have a friend who owns a publishing company and at his business there is a lab with an o-scope I can probably use.

Thanks for all your work on this, guys. I had been wrestling with this problem on and off for a while, and this solution is much nicer - and the build went very smoothly, thanks to all the documentation and stuff on the google code site.
Thanks again.

osterac · Post by **osterac** » Tue Aug 20, 2013 2:56 am

Hmm, things just got a little more complicated....

osterac · Post by **osterac** » Wed Aug 28, 2013 6:27 am

Just got the whole thing working last night. Very cool! It works beautifully. I still have the Sidewinder Force Feedback Wheel if anyone wants me to do tests on it, I don't know if there is still a future plan to add support for it.

Scanjo · Post by **Scanjo** » Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:10 pm

Thanks so much Grendel for this project and the time you have spent on it.

I have a FFP which has been collecting dust for a long time now. I am not a Descent player and never have been but I DO like flight simulators, and I'm worthless trying to fly with the keyboard. It's going to be SO nice to fly again (provided the software runs under Win7...) Force feedback would be nice but I'll learn to deal.

I have parts ordered and will post a pic when I have it together.

Thanks again,

Scott

Scanjo · Post by **Scanjo** » Sun Oct 27, 2013 11:55 pm

Well the parts finally arrived and I got the soldering iron out. I decided to use the plans from this site to see if I could get the force feedback to work as well. They use your plans with a couple further mods and of course software to support the mods they made.

I have it together and functioning using the JOY.CPL to test it. I haven't installed a flight sim yet so I'm not sure of the FFB effects.

As promised, I've got some pics to post.

BlueMoon · Post by **BlueMoon** » Tue Nov 05, 2013 6:29 pm

Hello everybody!

I recently found my old Sidewinder and as I am getting annoyed by my new joystick with ffb, I came across the adapt-joy-ffb topic.
So, I ordered 2 teensy´s and got to work.

When using my breadboard, everytime I connect the sidewinder with my windows 8 x64, it shows up as a LUFA Joystick wFFB. Good so far, except from the driver issue (Yellow exclamation mark). But whenever I launch a game, the controls work fine but I do not get any ffb. If I connect the sidewinder directly to a gameport on XP (old pc), the same game gives me some nice ffb.

I thought the problem would be the breadboard as I used quite long cables etc so I made a PCB. Soldered everything and got exactly the same problem... Everything working fine except the FFB (which is why I want to use this joystick so bad)

I did try this using windows 7 x64 AND win 7 x86 both same problem.

Anybody an idea about what is going wrong? I am really desperate!

Thanks in advance!

BlueMoon

osterac · Post by **osterac** » Wed Nov 06, 2013 1:20 pm

BlueMoon, what game did you try? Also, there's a light on the teensy that should blink whenever force feedback effects are being sent to the joystick. Was it blinking?
To test force feedback I use this program:
Force Test
Check one of the boxes for an effect, and make sure your hand is on the joystick because the Sidewinder FFBP has a sensor in the handle and will not do any FFB effects unless that sensor is active.
I had the yellow exclamation too, it's saying there is no driver installed. No driver is actually needed.
The game I used as a test was Rollcage, there's a free demo for it here if you want. I'm on Win 8 x64 too BTW.

BlueMoon · Post by **BlueMoon** » Wed Nov 06, 2013 4:31 pm

Thanks for the reaction!

When I use the force program, if I click on an option to test its functionality, the led blinks for a sec but than stops and no FFB is occurring...
I guess this is not right? Any possibilities of wrong configuration? Shall I upload my schematics and some pictures of my PCB?

osterac · Post by **osterac** » Wed Nov 06, 2013 5:17 pm

With the test program, I think the LED did a similar thing for me too. My friend has the joystick right now so I can't check for sure. Check what the LED does during a game too. It could be (guessing here, I'm no expert) that the teensy is getting the signal from the PC to send FFB events, but the connection between pin 12 on the gameport and PD3 is faulty somehow. Maybe a loose wire or something. Go ahead and upload schematics and pics.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 1:36 am

If you have it open, try reflowing your solder joints. May have been iffy to begin with and degraded with age.

Scanjo · Post by **Scanjo** » Fri Nov 08, 2013 1:14 am

Ok...it works but it's not pretty. I made some changes.

I put the 16 pin header on that I originally used with a game port on a ribbon cable. I also added a db-15f right on the board so I can have that protrude from the project box. It's tested and working including force feedback.

I'll be building a couple more as I had to order 3 prototype boards. See how they go on Ebay. If interested, keep an eye out.

Scott

BlueMoon · Post by **BlueMoon** » Sat Nov 09, 2013 4:53 pm

In the attachments I added the board and the scheme I made.
I also added some pictures of the board itself.

This is a prototype I made, not a final product.

If you find some mistake, let me know!

Thanks already!

osterac · Post by **osterac** » Sat Nov 09, 2013 6:49 pm

Seems like you have the legs of this capacitor connected (shorted) to each other, and nothing connected to the other side. From the diagram on the google code page, it looks like you're supposed to connect the ground to both of the caps on one side, then connect the other side of one to the teensy side of R1 and the other to the teensy side of R2. At least that's what I did, and it worked, so that's something.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Sun Nov 10, 2013 4:45 pm

Looks like the caps are soldered in wrong -- should be across, not down. Good catch osterac

osterac · Post by **osterac** » Sun Nov 10, 2013 6:26 pm

Thanks, Grendel

Duglum · Post by **Duglum** » Thu Nov 21, 2013 11:10 am

Hello Scanjo, hello everyone.

I also still own a Sidewinder FF Pro, a Precision Pro (3D Pro Plus that is..) and a Sidewinder Gamepad. I used to play and love Descent and Descent 2 (and Descent 3? Not sure) and Forsaken with my Sidewinder 3D Pro, but i need them for other stuff nowadays.

Scanjo, i'd love to buy one of your Boards, completely preassembled if possible. I stumbled upon this thread a few years ago when searching for USB Adapters but i didn't deem it important enough to fiddle with some wires on a breadboard.

What would you charge for one of the Boards, including shipping to Germany. (Or if you are in the US, i'll be in Las Vegas and maybe Los Angeles for a few days in a week, maybe that would be easier..)

Overkill211 · Post by **Overkill211** » Fri Nov 22, 2013 11:55 am

osterac wrote:Just got the whole thing working last night. Very cool! It works beautifully. I still have the Sidewinder Force Feedback Wheel if anyone wants me to do tests on it, I don't know if there is still a future plan to add support for it.

I'm wondering if you'd post a photo of the pins on the DA-15 plug for the FFB Wheel. I've never been able to find a pinout description of that controller, and I'm wondering if my modded board design would already support it (electrically, anyway). Thanks.

osterac · Post by **osterac** » Sat Nov 23, 2013 2:09 pm

Overkill211 wrote:I'm wondering if you'd post a photo of the pins on the DA-15 plug for the FFB Wheel. I've never been able to find a pinout description of that controller, and I'm wondering if my modded board design would already support it (electrically, anyway). Thanks.

I've attached a photo of the connector. Let me know if you need anything else!

Scanjo · Post by **Scanjo** » Sun Nov 24, 2013 3:58 am

@Duglum - In the interest of full disclosure, this is a different project than Grendel created. It is based on Grendel's work but it does NOT work with his code. I chose to go this route because it supports the force feedback. There is more info, and files to download at the Adapt-FFB-Joy project.(http://code.google.com/p/adapt-ffb-joy) Grendel has assisted with this project , but his code doesn't work with this board since some of the TEENSY inputs and outputs were reassigned to add the FFB support. The schematic IS different.

Ok, with that out of the way...I am still waiting for all the parts to show up since to get a decent price some of them are coming from China. I'm ordering TEENSYs as needed since they are the main cost of the project and they don't seem to offer a volume discount. Once I have everything I need then I'll figure the cost of parts. I'm thinking around $30.00 my cost. It would be nice to get a few bucks for soldering everything. I have no idea what shipping will cost me to send it to you. I also need to find some anti-static bags... This will be a bare PCB pre-programmed with no enclosure. While it could be used that way, I'd recommend putting it in a box of some sort.

Give me a week or so to figure the rest out and I'll post here again.

Scott

[Edited for accuracy after being moved from another forum]

Overkill211 · Post by **Overkill211** » Sun Nov 24, 2013 10:50 am

Thanks, Osterac.

It appears the Wheel has the exact same pinout as the FFBPro, so my mod to add pin 13 is unnecessary - except for the non-FFB sticks.
So, it looks like somebody just needs to whip up the configuration info, and map the protocols to get the wheel working.
As my programming skills for the Teensy haven't reached the "Hello, World" stage, yet... doubt it will be me.

Incidentally... second board sold - so only 3 remaining.

Duglum · Post by **Duglum** » Sun Nov 24, 2013 4:41 pm

Scott, Sounds great. Thanks for your reply.

Since my Username/Account here was deleted after my first posting for whatever reasons, just had to recreate it, i guess i'll just write you an email to the address i found on the Project Website, if that's ok with you, so i won't have to clutter this Thread with any more Postings.

Scanjo · Post by **Scanjo** » Sun Nov 24, 2013 8:26 pm

All parts are in. Just waiting on packing supplies.

Here's a pic of the final board.

Overall dimensions of the board are 2.1" wide X 3.5" long including the DB-15 connector. This should help you in planning for an enclosure to use.

Postage to Germany should be from 6 to 10 dollars depending on final weight. That's first class postage (cheapest) but I can't determine a time frame for delivery. The web site just says it varies by destination.

BlueMoon · Post by **BlueMoon** » Mon Dec 02, 2013 2:51 pm

osterac wrote: Seems like you have the legs of this capacitor connected (shorted) to each other, and nothing connected to the other side. From the diagram on the google code page, it looks like you're supposed to connect the ground to both of the caps on one side, then connect the other side of one to the teensy side of R1 and the other to the teensy side of R2. At least that's what I did, and it worked, so that's something.

That was indeed the problem. My board was fine, just soldered the capicitors the wrong way... I feel so stupid now!

I really want to thank for the support and fast reaction!

I also have this Force Feedback steering wheel here... As I am not an electronical specialist: could we make it work by changing the configuration on the chip (like tweak few settings) or do we have to re-write it because it is not a LUFA joystick wFFB?

Merl · Post by **Merl** » Mon Dec 02, 2013 4:37 pm

Where can I buy one or two of these? I want some now!

Scanjo · Post by **Scanjo** » Mon Dec 02, 2013 10:51 pm

I've been working on buying parts and getting the PCB manufactured. Packing materials was an after thought...

I'm to a point where I am ready to start making and selling them.

I've priced it at $40 plus actual shipping cost to you. I will test everything before I ship it.

I'm willing to sell kits with all the parts included, but you solder it and you load the program on it. These would be $35. Obviously I can't test these.

I'm selling just the board. There is no enclosure included. You will also need a USB 2.0 A (plugs into the computer) to mini B cable. Most people have these laying around from an old cell phone so I don't add the cost to the project. Here is a pic to help you out.

: usbAminiB.jpg (2.35 KiB) Viewed 104474 times

If you want one of my boards, use the form at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1D4Kc8d ... g/viewform. If you have questions, please send me an email directly Scott@IowaJohnsons.Com or post here.

The main cost of these adapters is the Teensy so I order them as needed. It takes about a week to get them if I'm out. Don't expect to get the adapter over night.

Scott

Overkill211 · Post by **Overkill211** » Tue Dec 03, 2013 6:21 pm

I have also constructed adapter boards for the FFBPro. Have the info posted in the other thread, relating directly to the FFBPro.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19061&start=60

Primary differences:
- I added traces and a capacitor and resistor to connect pin 13 of the DA-15 to PB6 on the Teensy. The point here being, code changes may allow support of the 3DPro and Precision Pro. I recently confirmed that the Force Feedback Wheel has the same pin configuration as the FFBPro, so it might even be able to get support, in the future. I'm not a coder, though, so don't ask me when.
- No trim pots. I believe the circuit designer's intent was to allow you to fab up a set of rudder pedals, for flight sims. Hence, I left this as a 6-pin header.
- 1/2 the size. Allowed me to get 6 boards instead of 3.
- Fully assembled and tested with a functional FFBPro.
- I do not include the Teensy board. Why pay for shipping to me, then shipping to you. Save some fuel.

I've been selling these at $20, plus actual shipping. Currently have 3 remaining. I can do international shipping, just keep in mind that it's expensive.

Scanjo · Post by **Scanjo** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 5:10 pm

Can't find DELETE...

tormix · Post by **tormix** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 4:08 pm

Overkill211 wrote: Incidentally... second board sold - so only 3 remaining.

Hello,
is your adapter also working with Windows 8 64bit and working all FFB effects?
Thx
Peter

BlueMoon · Post by **BlueMoon** » Sun Dec 08, 2013 4:14 pm

So, to get the ball rolling, I started to do some research about how to get this thing working for the Steering Wheel as it doesn't seem to be that hard to adapt it (we got the basics right?)

First of all, the current HID is for a joystick, not a steering wheel. So to get started, a HID for a steering wheel with FFB should be found. This HID should be modified with code from the current project (MS SideWinder FFB Pro) if the commands send over the midi channel are the same (which is not certain). If this is the case, nothing more should be modified.
When this is not the case, this midi channel has to be reverse engineered which is quite difficult for somebody without decent tools to do so.

Is there somebody from the original project around that is willing to help?

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Sun Dec 08, 2013 5:43 pm

I will keep an eye out for a used USB wheel, sometimes they show up at the local Goodwill. If I can snatch one I can capture the USB descriptors.