Showroom Converting an XBox 360 Controller into a Helicopter Collective

After getting the FlyInside Bell 47 helicopter, I immediately decided that this fantastic vehicle deserves a more dedicated controller than my plane-oriented HOTAS.
I checked the huge amount of spare parts lying around in my workshop and found nearly everything I needed for building a helicopter collective, including an old XBox 360 controller.

I used an aluminium tube with a diameter of 30mm as shaft and an aluminium square profile of 60x60 mm as control box.


I cut the tube into two parts: a lower fixed one and an upper rotatable one. For the control box I cut an 80 mm piece from the square profile.
I planned to mount the two tube parts as well as the 80 mm square profile onto a 16 mm threaded rod. Fortunately I found two 16 mm ball bearings with an outer diameter that exactly matches the inner tube diameter. Besides I had some coupling elements that I could use to fix the lower tube part to the threaded rod.


The upper, rotatable tube part is meant for engine control, which means that I somehow had to connect it to a potentiometer. My approach was to fix a module 1 steel cog to the end of the tube.


Onto the opposite side of the tube I mounted a 2 mm metal screw as a rotation limit.


I drilled some holes into the control box for switches and one for the 16 mm threaded rod. After this I painted it black.


Eight switches, one potentiometer and one vibration motor needed a bunch of wires. My choice was an old TV Scart cable.


The next picture shows the XBox board. I desoldered the potentiometers with a desoldering pump and soldered wires to the contacts. Before doing this, I had to scratch away the black layer from the contacts.


I placed all the electronics stuff into an aluminium case and also mounted the collective lever to this box. The lever axis is an 8 mm threaded rod.
The next picture shows all these innards: (1) is one of the XBox potentiometers, which I connected with a piece of perforated board (2) to the lever axes (3). The two 8 mm nuts (3) provide the required friction for holding the lever in any position.
In the upper right corner you see the second potentiometer. I don't use it and just connected it in order to provide the correct electical resistance to the board. However, at some later point in time I may want to use it as basis for a cyclic control.


For the engine control, i. e. the rotatable handle on the upper part of the collective, I used a different 10k potentiometer that I inserted into the control box and connected to the handle via two cogs.


On the next two pictures you can see the mechanical rotation limits of the handle.


Also the collective lever has two mechanical limits, which I made from steel brackets (see (1) and (2) in the following picture).


And here you can see the complete device. The wooden base already has four 6 mm screws on its bottom side for mounting it to the rig. The two potentiometers on the electronics case are also connected to the XBox board. We will see if I can use them for something.


I already tested my new collective with a controller testing app, and all axis and switches work perfectly.

The next step will be to mount it onto my rig, configure it in MSFS 2020, and take off with the Bell 47.
Hopefully I will find time for this soon.

That's much nicer than the last time I saw someone do something like this.