RCS Joystick, where to buy parts?

[RodrigoRodrigues]

Hi all, I am building a custom control panel for KSP and want to add a RCS controller, what I need is two 3-axis joysticks but there is a difference between them:

The right joystick is easy to find, it's third axis is rotation, there is a lot of components like this used in camera control and it is realatively easy to find.

The left one is tricky, the third axis is a pull/push button and I just cant find one like this, there are a few joysticks with buttons on top but this is not what I am looking for, if I were to do something different than the real RCS controll I'd preffer to use another rotation axis so I could keep the analog feel.

Any ideas where I can find this? Thanks all.

[rodion_herrera]

Your best off the shelf solution (not DIY) for full axis 6-Degrees-of-Freedom (6DoF) control (including translational) is this:

http://www.3dconnexion.com/index.php?id=26&redirect2=www.3dconnexion.com

[RodrigoRodrigues]

Looks like a great device! I might get one, but I really want to go DIY for now... I am considering to add a simple joystick to a platform similar to this (which apparently works with KSP) to get the pull/push effect: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:78693

[lawnmowerlatte]

I went with two three axis joysticks with the rotation mapped to forward and back for translation. It works well enough, I couldn't find anything (cheap) that offered the push/pull mechanism.

[Stocchinet]

Some time ago i was planning to do the same thing, the only solution i was able to put togheter was to place the entire joystick on a "sliding" chassis bonded with a rotary potentiometer to simulate a 4°axis, as soon as i can i'll post to you some more explanatory drawnings, warn: it requires some DIY skills!

[cm2227]

I also settled for a solution with two separate joysticks (actually switches) for translation control. This has two reasons. No. 1 is that in reality RCS has no throttle, so you don't need analog input for translation. Second reason is I can't handle rotation and translation at once, it just puts too much stress on me. You can see my joysticks in my hardware thread.

At first I had two full joysticks where I used one twist rudder as up/down control.