What are your thoughts on Pots vs Hall Effect? I know Pots are easier to set up, but is there an advantage to using hall effect?

Im trying to make a collective/throttle setup like the virpil collective has. I enjoy the box look and would like to do that as well. I just don't know how to do that with hall effect.

Any Tips?

What do you think is a better way to measure pedal travel and why? (load sensor excluded)

I read a lot about hall sensors being better because of no moving parts. But potentiometers still seems good enough for cars. Also supercars.

I'm fairly new to most of the terminology here, so I would like to apologize in advance if I mix up my wording a bit. My interest here is to build myself essentially a HoSaS setup, but more in the directional sense of a fancy game controller to play a variety of games (MMO, 1st/3rd person FPS, etc) and not just flight sims (I don't know if marketed flight sticks work across the board like that). I tried doing my own research but I am nowhere near as smart as I like to think I am. So my question is which parts I should focus my learning towards to give me the closest feel to an Xbox controllers thumbstick. Thank you ahead of time for any help and advance, and I apologize again if none of this makes sense.

Edit: More Questions >_< (And a very terrible diagram sortof?)
I would like to start by saying thank you for all the help so far, but it created more questions so I'm sorry ahead for any stupidity in the questions. Is there a recommended distance between hall sensors? For example, should the X axis sensor be a certain distance above or away from the Y axis sensor, or will it not make a difference? Also, is there a recommended travel distance from the sensor towards the magnet, and would 1/4" travel distance be more responsive than a 1/2" travel or vice versa? And lastly (hopefully), do they require a north and south? IE: Ideally I want to make a twin stick setup, so would having a unidirectional twist (Figure B) in the left stick allow me to roll left (or in R6, lean left) and similarly for right stick mirroring to the right?

Hello Redditors,

I'm planning to build 4 axis for my simpit for rpm, oil radiator, prop pitch, and mixture.

Should I build them with a hall sensor or a potentiometer? Would it make a difference?

I know nothing. Please explain it like I’m 5.

I’ve been playing Rocket League with an Xbox One controller for almost 4 years now, peaked at top 13% in both duos and solo, and I’m planning on getting a new controller.

For those of you that play Rocket League with a Hall effect joystick, do you prefer them over analog potentiometers? Also, have any of you tried Hall effect & decided to switch back to analog potentiometers?

Hey so I'm trying to make a Stewart platform from old motors and seen somewhere that you could use Hall effect Potentiometers to get the position. But I have not been able to find what that actually is, like is it just a rotary encoder?

Thank you for the help!

I think this is the right place to ask about this.

Basically, I'm looking at making some sim pedals and wheel (I'm starting with the pedals since they seem easier) and I'm not sure whether to use a potentiometer or a hall effect sensor. From my understanding, a potentiometer would have a lower resolution than the hall effect sensor would over the same degree of rotation but I'm not sure if the potentiometer's lower resolution would be noticeable or not for sim racing.

I'd like to use the same components for the pedals and the wheel, and while the potentiometer would be simpler for the design if it has a low resolution I can figure some way out to use a hall effect sensor instead. How many different input values could I get from a potentiometer? I know with the hall effect sensor it would be limited to 1024 because of the Arduino, but I'm not sure if the potentiometer would have fewer values or not.

I’ve seen many people in the sub posting about how hall effect joysticks are better at everything, they last longer, they feel better and smoother, they are much more precise than potentiometer controller, and all controllers should be hall effect in the future.

Hall effect joysticks do last much much longer than potentiometer joysticks from Alps or Favor, and they do feel much smoother for lacking that layer of carbon film for the joystick to rub on.

However, this creates other issues such as worse centering performance, and battery consumption, in turn, worse polling rate.

For FPS gamers, precision is the key, there are five major parts of what makes a controller precise, in the following post, I’ll be explaining these five points using an example controller– the Rainbow 2 Pro from Bigbigwon (stupid name Ik), this is an e-sport controller designed for professional FPS players.
https://i.imgur.com/M1EFx0K.png

Centering Performance
Centering performance is about how precise a joystick can return to 0(the center)

In a perfect world, the centering performance should be 0,0. However we do not live in a perfect world and no controllers can do this (at least for now), the ones that can, use center deadzone. Which is absolutely not something you want on a professional level controller for FPS games.

Instead, all FPS focused controller should have a zero center deadzone, this would appear as slight drifting when the controller returns to the center. Aka something that looks like this:
https://i.imgur.com/k2MRb57.png
(Rainbow 2 Pro)

This is almost a perfect centering performance, the centering error is around 0.08, compared that to the hall effect joysticks
https://i.imgur.com/zKOtlQG.png
(Gamesir T4K)
Note this is currently the best hall effect module we have on the market, the JH16 and the error is almost 0,03, comparing 0.03 to 0.008, that’s almost 3 times of the difference.Thus, for FPS gamers, hall effect joysticks have worse centering performance.

Sampling Rate
First of all, Sampling rate is different from polling rate, this along with joystick resolution are the two most major parts that decide how precise a joystick is.

What is sampling rate?In short, it’s how many how many sampling points are there, when the joystick is pushed from the center to the max value.

For example the rainbow 2 pro has 2192 sampling rate on both side (Xbox Series X controller stock has around 1000, other controller usually has around 500.)

So does it mean the higher the sampling rate, the more precise a joystick is?In general yes, but there’s another important part to consider“Stepping”Rainbow 2 Pro controller has 32767 max value on one side (The X value shown in the image)
https://i.imgur.com/9HxSJ1z.png
This is the max value that this controller can ever hope to achieve, but we don’t have 32767 sampling points here? So how does this work?

That’s what a step is
https://i.imgur.com/BK8tstx.png
The rainbow 2 pro has a step of 29.89 (30), which means each sampling point covers about 30 values. This much much better than any regular controllers.

Resolution
What is controller resolution?Basically is the smoothness of how sampling points are placed near and far of each otherit’s easier to explain this in image
In a perfect world, a sampling resolution would look like this
https://i.imgur.com/5Hj54uU.png
They are placed perfectly at the same distance with each other from the center to the end.

However, we don’t live in a perfect world, so most our controller resolution would look like this https://i.imgur.com/i6MkgYA.png
Most sampling points are placed at the end, and there are a large lack of sampling points in the middle.
(obviously this an extreme example of what it would look like, there are also issues of inconsistency)

So a great way to see how precise a controller is, is through the resolution map
This is what the rainbow 2 pro resolution looks like
https://i.imgur.com/PgUlDbd.png
The line is smooth aka no not much inconsistency

Compared that to Thrustmaster eSwap Pro
https://i.imgur.com/5xiVKeY.png
The line is much more jagged aka much less precise

So overall, the smoother the line is the better the resolution is.

Polling Rate
Self-explanatory, I won’t be wasting too much time here, a good polling rate for professional FPS player is 1000hz, many high level controller allow for this under wired mode 1000hz, like T4K, Rainbow 2 Pro etc.

Wirelessly, the best polling rate is 500 hz for now with the proprietary flysync by flydigi.

But, professional players don’t play wirelessly… So just plug your controller in and get 1000hz polling rate.

Damping
There isn’t any scientific proof about how damping would affect precision, it’s mostly about how the joystick feels in your hand.

Basically, a controller with more damping = the joysticks are harder to pushThe best way to get a feel how different level of damping feels like, is to grab an Xbox controller, then grab a PS5 controller, you should clearly feel that, the PS5 joysticks requires slightly more strength to push, that’s what more damping is like.

But there is one factor of damping that affects precision, and that’s middle damping.

This is also why some people say hall effect joysticks feel smoother than potentiometer joysticks, because there’s no carbon film to rub on in the center. So, in the center, the joystick feels lighter.But that’s not what you want when playing competitive shooters, in fact you want to the center to have more damping, aka harder to push, to be easier at micro adjustment for the camera.

Rainbow 2 Pro has a very creative solution to this… It may sound pretty dumb, but they added a rubber tack to the center to make the center have more damping, some people absolutely hate this, in fact, it makes the center feels kinda rough and contradictory to what a smoother joystick feels like, but it helps with micro adjusting the camera in FPS games.

So overall

Should I buy the Rainbow 2 Pro, if I play FPS games? No, not all, Rainbow 2 Pro is a tournament controller, there’s no consideration given to the longevity of thing, it only needs to work well in the tournament to give the players some advantage. Controller with Alps joysticks have a lifespan of around 3 months under very heavy use, that’s especially the case for Rainbow 2 Pro, as the fact that it is designed for short tournament use.

Anyways, these are the 5 major points of what makes a controller precise and fit for FPS games.

Hello everyone, quick question, these orange analog sticks are regular potentiometer right? I've seen some hall effect ones in orange but the sides are usually cover ( because they're magnetic and not potentiometers)

Thanks !!

I'm asking this because when I was rewatching some of Mr. Steele's videos, he mentioned how potentiometer gimbals are more accurate and better quality than hall effect gimbals.

But from my understanding, aren't hall effect gimbals are more robust and and accurate because it doesn't rely on a mechanical piece constantly coming into contact?

I'm kinda confused as to why would Mr. Steele recommend potentiometer gimbals as opposed to hall effect. Could someone with better understanding of gimbals ELI5 it to me?

Pls answer
I got my Gamesir T4 Cyclone pro yesterday
It's hall effect controller, I've noticed that the sticks wiggle more than the potentiometer ones
Not drift, just physical wiggle of the stick it self it's just like alittle bit looser than the potentiometer sticks when u wiggle the sticks not moving them
other than that everythings seams to be okay (the circularity error is 1.1% + super sensitive good sensor)
is it okey with these type of sticks to be looser than the potentiometer ones?

don't tell me to return it coz I bought it through international shipping company so it will cost more than buying new controller locally

As the title states, I'm interested in which of these would be better for some DIY pedals. I do not have a wheel yet, but I am interested in making my own pedals first before making the wheel to get an insight into the difficulty of this project before I delve too deep.

Should I choose a potentiometer or hall effect sensor to do this? From my understanding, a potentiometer would give less resolution than the hall effect sensor, but how important is this resolution difference? And if there is an issue with using potentiometers for the pedals, would there also be an issue with using them for the wheel which was my initial plan?

Asides from resolution differences, there is also the cost and ease to create them. The potentiometers would be cheaper and also easier than the hall effect sensors, but if there is any downside to using them I would take the time to design something for the hall effect sensors.

What would you recommend for making my pedals?

I work at an electric bike shop and I need to change over some throttles from hall effect sensors to potentiometers. I've not done anything with hall effect sensors before but I understand the theory.

I understand that for both of them you have a say 5V high and a ground and the throttle sets the voltage coming out say 2V. Can I just directly swap in a pot to the same 3 wires?

My controllers stick drift has gotten to be a major problem. Im thinking of switching out the joysticks with some cheap hall effects from amazon for a few bucks. Anyone done this before and is it worth it? Are there any problems with it? Im playing on ps5 using a standard duelsense

Note: Im asking because i heard hall effect joysticks have issues related to aiming and micro adjusments

After suffering severe stick drift in my 2 PS5 controllers (bought at release) I've installed in one controller some TMR sticks and in the another some Hall effect sticks.

I've been reading about how TMR is much better, more accurate and more power efficient than Hall effects.
I believe all of this to be true when you put them into a measuring rig or if you are a world class competitive player (which I'm absolutely NOT).
For me the power usage point is irrelevant because I predict power usage by the force resistance in the L2/R2 and the vibration system will reduce this to a negligible percentage.

Having played with both for a while (mostly Death Stranding 2) I have not been able to notice any difference between the two.
Given the price difference (I paid about 10 euro per stick for the TMR and about 2 euro for the Hall effect) I really wonder why to use TMR.

So what are the differences a normal casual player should notice (which I haven't yet)?
Perhaps I've been playing the "wrong game" (DS2) to notice the difference and it is noticeable if you play really fast game like Fornite or something like that?

What am I missing?

Teardown and comparison of Alps potentiometers vs Hall effects: g units, k-silver and Favor union.

Alps and K-silver module designs are very similar. Whe the favor union and G units share design similarities as well.