VKB-SIM

I have a Gunfighter Mk.III 'Modern Combat Edition' Ultimate from 12/2021.

I started to notice a problem where joystick buttons do not work all the time.
Sometimes it takes like half a second for them to activate. If I press and hold the buttons, they might turn off and on again when I move the stick. This does not happens 100% of the time.

In the VKB device config button tester log function I see that when I pull the stick, it generates a press and release for buttons 28-31.
I am unable to locate those buttons on the stick, I have an analog hat in the MASTER MODE-slot.

Show the Profile-Axes and Test-External Devices tabs. In the latter, you can evaluate the quality of connection between the handle and the base when moving by clicking on the handle image. These buttons are activated when you install a button module, but you have a mini stick.

Here. I don't know why it shows two bases :/

I rotated the stick while taking the screenshot

There should be no yellow, much less red, splashes when moving the grip.
Show a photo of the contact pad (not the spring pad) on the base. It is worth checking the spring contacts in the grip so that they are not stuck. I advise you to install the grip in this sequence - with the window for monitoring the connection between the grip and the base open and the locking screw (on the grip) loosened, we smoothly turn (without strong pressure) to a comfortable position and control the quality of the connection - only when the indicator is constantly green do we tighten the screw.
But this is still not enough - in your screenshot you can see uncalibrated axes (having numbers 255 in the KdHi and KdLo columns), so it’s worth recalibrating the axes until these numbers change (does not apply to the 8th axis of the brake lever).
I advise you to update the firmware and configurator to more current ones from here.

Thank you.

What is the contact pad, the thing where the stick attaches to the base? If I recall correnctly, I have to first either PARK the device or remove the USB plug from the PC?

This is what she looks like.

Seems to be a bit dirty?
Extension is OK?

In the photo, the contact pad of the extension cord is out of focus, it is difficult to understand whether there are traces of spring contacts there, like on the base, or not.

Going to jump in here as I've also started to get slight connection issues again after I swapped out my MCGP and replaced it with an MCGU two days ago. I'm also running a 100mm extension, and both my grips are non-twisty. My gimbal's contact pad is a bit dinged up (mostly due to user error in the past I have to admit), the pad on the extension looks almost brand new to me - I attached some pics at the end of the post.

I'm not sure how to read those communication tabs in VKB Config. Moving around the stick through all its motions, this is what I got:



^ Just like Galwran, I also have two bases listed here. Not sure if that means this is normal or that we both have the same error going on... lol!

Those spikes on the graph were 1 to 2 percent according to the text-readout in the dialogue window. Haven't seen any higher/bigger spikes.

Is this how things should look like or are those 2 percent spikes already too much?

The reason why I ask is this: During gaming, I did again get unwanted activation/signal sent from grip to PC, coming from the brake-lever. This had happened exactly the same way on the MCGP when I was still using a slightly faulty fastener. On both sticks I have the brake axis turned into a button press in VKB Config. It'll only happen very occasionally but can be a real annoyance in a dogfight, so I would like to fix that behavior. I don't think this "unwanted button press" has ever happened when the stick is at rest/center. It always seems to happen when there is some sort of pressure on the stick, meaning when I have it pushed away from dead center. It does seem pretty random. For example: I just moved the stick around in all sorts of manner for about a minute or so while watching the "Test/Buttons"-tab for unwanted button-activation ... and nothing happened.


On the MCGP I was able to reliably fix this by getting a new fastener from my local VKB guy and then tightening it down *hard* with a good quality t-handle hex-key. I'm still using that same fastener to fasten the extension to the gimbal and I'm using the fastener that came with the Ultimate to fix the grip to the extension. I also checked the older fastener (lower one, fixing extension to gimbal) for wear and I did make sure that the spring washer was on the fastener's screw.

I really want to avoid having to swap out the gimbal's contact-pad, so is there still hope I can postpone that operation?

Not sure if this helps any, but here are some pics.

Older pic of what my gimbal's pad looks like - damage/pitting seems about the same today to the naked eye, but I should probably double check that with a magnifier/zoom shot.


And this is what my extension's pad looks like:



S.

A few movements with a soldering iron (careful) can turn your slightly shabby pad into something almost new, like the one in my photo.
To understand why phantom button presses occur when the brake lever moves, you need to see the settings in the Profile-Axes, Profile-Axes-Axes2Buttons tabs.

Don't think I ever held a soldering iron in my life, so I sure don't want to start using one now, trying to fix that pad ...

Just to clarify: The phantom presses occur when the stick is moved... I'm not even touching the brake lever. I move the stick while flying with none of my fingers anywhere near any buttons or the brake-lever and suddenly, button 24 gets pushed. I have the Axis2Button activated for the brake in Config, which triggers button 39 by default, which I then turned into button 24 (logical) because the profile is for a game that can only see 32 buttons per device.


I suspect the connection between gimbal and extension is slightly "bad" and sometimes when the grip gets pushed through it motions, one or more of the pins lose connection because of that movement.

Here's the tab, but as I've stated, I think this is more of a physical problem than one with settings in the VKB-software.



It's been the same behavior on the MCGP - the only difference was that the Pro was set to send a different logical button than the Ultimate, but it seems that the underlying fault with a less than perfect connection is a phantom press of the brake-lever-axis.


And just so I understand correctly:
1. It is ok to connect/disconnect the grip and look for a good "spot" on the pad while the stick/BB is plugged into the PC (hot swap)? That's what your post further up seems to suggest, I just want to make sure I don't misunderstand you.

2. How should the connection quality graph look like ideally? Steady green line with no spikes and constant 0% on the text read-out? Since it's called an "error level report", I guess zero spiking and zero percent error is what we want to see?


Cheers

Sascha

You can try moving the button response slider as far to the right as possible, maybe this will help.
Namely, you can set the handle “on hot”, focusing on the readings of the communication monitor.
The quality in the monitor should be, I would say, like green grass, constant, with acceptable “stumps and teeth” up to the first line of 10%.
If, when moving the grip, yellow and red peaks appear, look at the fixation and the contact pair.

I almost feel bad throwing all these questions at you Ron, but if I should forget it later: Thanks for your assistance..


Anyhow: I shot a short clip of me constantly moving the stick all over the place while the "camera" was running. There was one 10% spike in there, but, sadly, I have no way of knowing if that spike was also a "phantom press" of the brake lever. Everything stayed green for the entire time.

Video should be up by now, perhaps not in hi-res, though.

https://youtu.be/YplujhwhjzM

Does this look acceptable/normal to you?


S.

You can run JoyTester in parallel with the configurator and observe both the communication monitor and the operation of buttons. There is nothing unusual in the video, this is in the order of things.

After a few days of trying to avoid having to replace the contact pad, I just had to do it. I've had three or four longer sessions since I bought the Ultimate and during all of those, I would always get those "phantom buttons". Sometimes it would take an hour of flying before a "misfire", but I never had a night where I did not get those unwanted button presses. Just to make sure, in the game's keymapper I re-mapped the function I use the brake-lever for to another button and *then* the problem was gone - or rather it didn't affect the game any longer. But simply not using that brake-lever in games is not an option, IMO, so I went ahead and - with much fear in my heart - went and replaced the contact-pad.

Everything seems to work fine in VKB Config and JoyTester ... connection quality looks a bit more stable than before (but I still get occasional "micro-spikes" of 1 or 2 percent in there), but I can't tell if the problem is truly gone until I fly for another 2, 3 or 4 hours non-stop.

Anyway... here's what my old pad looked like when it was still in the gimbal:



... and here's a close-up shot after I had taken it out.



As well as that pad had still worked with a little less pitting, I guess this much damage was a bit too much for a perfect connection..

Turns out the operation wasn't *that* hard to do... the most annoying bit was trying to push the new cables through the gimbal ... but I'm not keen on repeating the experience anytime soon...


EDIT: Well... crap.
Tested the stick in-game and after about 20 minutes or so, I started to get those phantom presses again. Both my fasteners are on super tight and I did make sure to push down on the grip and on the extension when I connected them. I also checked the gimbal's interior for any loose or "bent" wires or anything like that and it all looked normal to me. The weird part is that this hadn't happened for six months or so with the Pro (it stopped after I had used a fresh grip fastener and tightened it down much harder than before). It only started again when I swapped the Ultimate in for the MCG Pro.

Not sure what else to do here...




S.