Finally, an analogue arcade joystick solution (Part 1)

I just received a Hall board from James Watt aka ClockworkRobot. What is this? I hear you say. This is a fantastic new product by James  to covert a digital arcade joystick (Sanwa or clone) into an analogue stick. Since starting my VecCab build I’ve been on a quest to find an affordable analogue arcade joystick that can be used in my setup.

You may ask why being able to play Vectrex games with an analogue joystick is useful when so many games on the Vectrex are configured for digital anyway. Well, this is a valid point, but on the VecCab I am building I want the feel of analogue. I don’t want to hear the click of the switches that you would hear with say a Sanwa digital joystick. In addition, with the Vector Mame Arcade emulators available on the VecFever, the majority are configurable for use with an analogue joystick.

Until now the possible analogue joy stick solutions have been very far and few between. I’ve been eyeing up original and OEM arcade analogue sticks in the past but have been put off from hitting the purchase button because prices were in excess of £200! In an other approach I’ve bought a couple of cheap analogue joysticks intended  for some of the 80’s computers with a view to mechanically  and electronically modifying (changing the potentiometers resistance  to the same variable resistance as the Vectrex ones). However, these sticks  have been sitting in a box waiting for that day when I can  drum up enough power to overcome my natural procrastination and dedicate  time to make a full investigation.

Imagine my joy when I saw James’ idea in the Facebook Vectrex Fan’s unite forum and later demonstrated on YouTube. Like all good ideas, the simplicity of the idea, makes it an immediate winner. It also shortcuts my previous deliberations and investigations into a working solution for an analogue joystick. 

The idea is to put a magnet on the end of the  existing shaft of the digital joystick and use a Hall effect sensor placed under the shaft  to sense  the position of the magnet on the joystick shaft with respect  to the Hall sensor. When the stick is moved, the magnet moves relative to the static position of the Hall sensor. This then gets converted into a voltage signal that the Vectrex can understand.

James’ Hall solution  is a populated PCB (microprocessor onboard) supplied with ancillaries (bolts, nuts and Neodymium magnets) that can easily attach to the underside of a standard Sanwa digital joystick.

The Hall board digital to analogue arcade stick converter kit as received from ClockworkRobot.com