Standalone Joystick Tester - Anyone interested?

Bryce

Active member
AmiBayer
Joined
Aug 21, 2012
Posts
2,586
Country
Germany
Region
Nordrhein Westfalen
Hi all,
I've been asked to build a few joystick testers for someone, so as I have to order boards and make a batch, I thought I'd ask here if anyone is interested in having one. It will be a small (about 3 x 5cm) PCB with a 9V battery at one end and a 9pin Sub-D at the other and lots of LEDs to show the directions/fire are working. It will test Atari type joysticks, both fire buttons (if the jostick has two) and the Auto-fire circuitry.
If anyone is interested, then let me know here so that I can judge the batch size.

Bryce.
 
Quick picture of what they will look like:

JTester.png

Bryce.
 
I have a suggestion for an improvement which I have not found on any existing designs:

I found that LED based joystick testers are not really sufficient for testing joysticks as it is hard to see on the light whether a switch is bouncing and in my experience about half of switches that initially seem good has too much bounce due to wear and dirt, thus affecting the performance. If you add a piezo buzzer that emits a pure sine tone, it is easy to hear whether the tone is clean or 'gritty' when the stick is moved after a connection has been made.
 
A nice idea, but it would at least double the price of the device. I'm not sure most people would be interested in paying more when most people just want a works or not result.

Bryce.
 
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