Wireless woes (ruining my flights)

[Bluejay 0]

Hello,

 

I've been using a trusty wireless Logitech Freedom 2.4 for a long time now, and it's great. I do also have the CH yoke and rudder pedals, but they are uncomfortable and awkward for me to use on my desk setup, plus it's a very big hassle to set them up each time I have to play. The joystick, on the other hand, is much more convenient.

 

Since it's wireless, it will auto disconnect after a minute or two of inactivity, which is no problem. Pressing any button on it will get it to reconnect. However, occaissionaly and unpredictably, my aircraft will spazz the heck out as it disconnects/reconnects. I've had so many otherwise perfect takeoffs and landings ruined because of this, causing my aircraft to suddenly pitch up or down dramatically. Everytime I fly, I have to constantly worry about whether this will happen or not. In fact, I just had another landing at EGGW spoiled by this. As I was on final, about 5 miles off, and connecting my joystick to take over manually, my plane suddenly pitched up at least 40 degrees. I did manage to recover and land it, but it left a very bitter taste in my mouth because it just destroyed all the immersion I had and basically screwed the entire two hour flight, and this was only one of many times. There is no way to avoid it.

 

I realize that wired peripherals are more reliable and generally the way to go. But my current financial circumstances do not allow me to purchase another joystick (and besides, I love everything else about this joystick). Has anyone else with a wireless joystick had/solved this issue? There has to be some way around this. If anyone could suggest a solution or even a temporary fix that has worked for them, I would be very grateful. This little thing is completely spoiling my flight sim experience.

[Jim Robinson 122]

I had one of those sticks a few years back and I hear ya on the sleeping problem and also the compactness of the stick on the desktop which was nice (I also had a Saitek X45 or something and ended up selling it at a garage sale because it was so hideously huge). Mind you I was running WinXP at the time or maybe even Win98 but there was a little utility called "Caffeine.exe" that you could run while flying that would keep the Logitech stick awake. It worked, you could set the number of minutes for it to keep the stick awake, but it had some quirks IIRC, I don't remember what the quirkiness was though. Not sure if you can find it or if it will even run on Win7/8 but I think I probably have a copy on a backup CD or something somewhere if a google search turns up fruitless. Post back if you can't find it and I'll go on the hunt.

 

EDIT: That was easy, I did a quick search of my removable HDD and found it. Also appears it runs on Win7 so I'll save you the searching:

 

http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/Caffeine.zip

 

Jim

[Mike_CFII_MEL 789]

Hi,

 

Since sleep mode is hardwired to the joystick and cannot be disabled, have you tried to creat a bat file or something like it to input  a small command every minute to keep the joystick from entering sleep mode?.

 

I don't know if this is possible, but if so it would get rid of your problem. Any computer gurus out there that can figure out if its possible?.

[Bluejay 0]

Gents, thanks for your responses. Thanks for fetching that program Jim, it seems to work great for extending the sleep threshold. It certainly helps on, for example, landings, where I have to take care of a billion things, and on the ground (it thrusts up fully virtually every time it disconnects, which is very annoying) and allows me to rest assured it won't disconnect while I pay attention to those things. However, unless I want to keep my joystick awake for 1-3 hours nonstop (which would kill - nay, murder the batteries), the issue of sporadic and unpredictable input when I eventually reconnect it remains. A workaround I've devised for when I connect is to pause the sim and make sure there is no sudden input on the virtual yoke (and if so, correct before unpausing). It's annoying but it works somewhat. However, it doesn't apply when the joystick disconnects (although I think I could use Caffeine to pause just before it sleeps).

 

I'm now assuming that there doesn't seem to be any way to prevent that spazzing upon disconnecting/connecting? In all honesty, it wouldn't be so bad if I could tell when it happens, but it seems totally random.

 

Sent from my iPod

[Jim Robinson 122]

Seems to me I used to set Caffeine for about 10 minutes and that was primarily to keep the stick from going to sleep on final, I can't remember the stick's behavior exactly, it's been close to ten years since it found it's way into the dumpster, but I do remember it spazzing out, does it spaz out if you wake it up by clicking the joystick trigger? I remember I was in the habit of clicking the trigger about every 30 seconds but that must have been to keep it from going to sleep in the first place, I can't remember but I know later when I bought one of the Extreme 3D Pro sticks (same thing basically, but with a cord) I clicked the trigger constantly for six months. I also remember the "pause - wake up the stick - unpause" routine, lol. Another thing I used to do was engage the AP, wake up the stick, and then disengage the AP. Also, I never had it at the time but I think the payware version of FSUIPC can suppress control input spikes so if you have that you might try setting that up too.

 

I'm semi-happy with the Extreme 3D Pro sticks, the cord really doesn't bother me much. You can buy them at Newegg for something like $30 USD last time I checked. Order up a pallet of them though because the pots get twitchy and after about 6 months you have to start unplugging and plugging them back in to get the stick to center. I've got one here that's probably 5 years old, I've taken it apart and washed out the pots with soap & water a dozen times which initially fixes them right up but it's way beyond worn out now so it doesn't help much any more. I need to stop being such a cheapskate and just buy a new one. :smile:

[Mike_CFII_MEL 789]

Hi,

 

Any way to connect a power supply to the joystick, I know RadioShack made an adjustable power supply, that would eliminate your batteries all together.