Home made arcade style joystick - Wiring pointers and tips

Fixing Up of the Buttons and Joystick

It is time to fix in all the buttons and joystick. The moment of truth...

Since the PCB in using has an Analog on/off switch, I used a mini push button as the on/off trigger.

Mini push buttons from Sim Lim Tower. Costs $0.50 per piece.

From top to bottom: How the back looks like; the front (notice where the small mini button is)

Notice that a large portion at the back of the top cover was removed. I had to chisel away the large portion as the buttons can only screw onto surfaces with a maximum thickness of about 8mm and my wooden plank is 17mm -_-

Wiring for the Buttons and Joystick

For this PCB board that I used, all the buttons and directional pad share a common ground. Hence, I daisy-chained the ground terminals for all them together.

Daisy-chaining. The red rectangles are the connectors and the blue lines are the wires that I had shown in my earlier post here.

For the SANWA buttons, there are 2 terminals per button. Take note that either terminal can be made the ground terminal.

For the Seimitsu joystick, it is a bit tricky. There are 5 different coloured wires attached to the joystick.

The orange wire is GROUND.

But for the rest of the wires, depending on how the joystick is mounted, they will be different. Just refer to the table below for easy reference! ^_^

Joystick wiring reference table.

Terminal blocks were used for joining the wires from the buttons and joystick to the PCB wires and secured by screws.

From top: Halfway through the wiring; wiring done for the joystick (I know, the wiring is very messy...-__-).

With the wiring done, the back cover was put on and screwed on tightly and the protective layer on the acrylic sheet removed and VIOLA!

Home made arcade joystick completed!

Tested the joystick on my PC and PS2 and it worked like a charm! Weee~~

A game of Street Fighter or King of Fighters, anyone?