Board index FlightGear Support Hardware

Deadband on CH Flightstick pro?  Topic is solved

Joysticks, pedals, monitors.

Deadband on CH Flightstick pro?

Postby eatdirt » Mon Dec 17, 2018 1:58 pm

Hi there,
I am new to FG, and in particular to joysticks... I bought the CH fligthstick pro usb joystick recently, as well as the pedals. Everything seems to work fine, no config needed, beautiful. I am perfectly happy with the pedals, but got some bad feelings with the joystick.

I "feel" that the joystick has far too large deadbands along the roll axis. Namely, I have to move the stick by quite a few degrees to get some non-vanishing roll signals, above which the motion is very smooth. But that's utterly annoying to make roll corrections around the horizontal, I have to move the stick left and right by a lot before getting a correction and that's not precise at all. I am almost regretting the mouse sometimes :)

Because I have no experience, I don't know if that expected, is it hardware/software related? I am under Linux by the way. On the software side, I've tried to look into the xml file, add some deadband=0 command (inspired by the FG fighterstick xml files which have these), but this does not change anything. Help appreciated!

Thanks,
cheers,
Chris.
eatdirt
 
Posts: 1012
Joined: Wed Aug 15, 2018 3:06 pm

Re: Deadband on CH Flightstick pro?

Postby wkitty42 » Mon Dec 17, 2018 5:41 pm

have you calibrated your joystick? on *buntu, look in system settings->input devices->joysticks... calibrate there and then see how a clean joystick xml file works for you... if you still have the problem, then you can modify the file and place it where FG will use it but it won't get overwritten during an up/downgrade of the sim... on *nix, the resulting file is stored in ~/.fgfs/Input/Joysticks/name_of_joystick.xml... this file starts off as a copy of the default one in FGData... modification to this file from within FG are stored in the copy and won't get overwritten... you can edit it there and be sure to keep a clean backup in case you need to start over again...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
User avatar
wkitty42
 
Posts: 9146
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:46 pm
Location: central NC, USA
Callsign: wk42
Version: git next
OS: Kubuntu 20.04

Re: Deadband on CH Flightstick pro?

Postby eatdirt » Tue Dec 18, 2018 2:00 pm

you can edit it there and be sure to keep a clean backup in case you need to start over again


Thanks for the answer, yes, this is exactly what I have done. The file

CH-Products-CH-FLIGHTSTICK-PRO.xml


is created within ~/.fgfs/Input/Joysticks/

and the section "Aileron" looks like this:

<axis>
<desc type="string">Aileron</desc>
<binding>
<command type="string">property-scale</command>
<property type="string">/controls/flight/aileron</property>
<factor type="double">1</factor>
<offset type="double">0</offset>
</binding>
</axis>


No deadband settings appear there nor in the configuration menu within flightgear.

But if I look into the system side config files, within this directory

/usr/share/games/flightgear/Input/Joysticks/CH/


and get some inspiration from
fighterstick-usb.xml
, the section "Aileron" contains:

<dead-band type="double">0.02</dead-band>


I have the "Flightstick" and not the "Fighterstick", but I have tried to force this property within my local config file, and set it to 0.00, nothing changes. In fact, even if I put other values, this seems to be ignored. That's why I was wondering if I am hitting some hardware limitation of this joystick, may be the deadbands are not configurable? :(

Cheers,
Chris.
eatdirt
 
Posts: 1012
Joined: Wed Aug 15, 2018 3:06 pm

Re: Deadband on CH Flightstick pro?

Postby wkitty42 » Tue Dec 18, 2018 8:14 pm

am i understanding that you're trying to tighten the stick up so the numbers start changing sooner? that there is a physical deadband in the device where you have some slop before the numbers start changing?

i'll also ask again if you have calibrated the stick via the OS' joystick device settings??
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
User avatar
wkitty42
 
Posts: 9146
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:46 pm
Location: central NC, USA
Callsign: wk42
Version: git next
OS: Kubuntu 20.04

Re: Deadband on CH Flightstick pro?  

Postby eatdirt » Tue Dec 18, 2018 9:19 pm

Thanks to Polly, I have been able to actually make the deadband xml property working for positive values, and I now understand that it has nothing to do with my issue (I would need <0 values!)

am i understanding that you're trying to tighten the stick up so the numbers start changing sooner? that there is a physical deadband in the device where you have some slop before the numbers start changing?


Exactly!

OS' joystick device settings


No, but your question made me looking for that "jscal -c" sotfware under linux, which I have tried, and I think you fixed my problem. The axis 0 (mapped to ailerons) was returning values from 11 to 255, while the other one, which I did not have problems with, was returning by default values from 0 to 255. And, after calibration, there is still a small physical deadband on axis 0, but not more than on axis 1 and this is completely acceptable!!

Sorry for the noise, and thanks a lot for the help. I'll appreciate any advices for my future joysticks too, does this small physical deadband is present on all joysticks?

Cheers,
Chris.
eatdirt
 
Posts: 1012
Joined: Wed Aug 15, 2018 3:06 pm

Re: Deadband on CH Flightstick pro?

Postby wkitty42 » Wed Dec 19, 2018 7:20 pm

it isn't noise if it is legit :)

i'm glad you found a fix... i was on the verge of pointing to a hardware problem with bad sensors in the stick but thankfully it wasn't that...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
User avatar
wkitty42
 
Posts: 9146
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:46 pm
Location: central NC, USA
Callsign: wk42
Version: git next
OS: Kubuntu 20.04


Return to Hardware

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests