I like to play flight sims, and a rudder pedal is a pretty important accessory to me. The problem is that the ones that are available to purchase are either prohibitively expensive or they're designed to be thrown away when they fail.

Well, after throwing away my second set of pedals, I decided to design my own. Serviceability is my primary design consideration. Having to change out a potentiometer every couple hundred hours of use is a non-issue if the process to do so takes 10 mins from start to finish.

The pedals operate as an accessory to the throttle controler (TWCS T.1600M) that was part of the set the original pedals came with. The throttle has a rj12 connection on it that allows it to connect several additional axis's. So I'm just feeding the potentiometer directly into that jack, letting the throttle controler figure it out, and then assigning it an axis in game. I will eventually replace the throttle interface with my own onboard Arduino controller but that's a different project for a different day.

I originally tried to use a small rotational dampener I scavenged from an industrial cabinet that had soft close drawers. But it didn't give me enough resistance, so I added the cheapest motorcycle steering dampener I could find. Now it has great feel. The only drawback is that it doesn't self center, but that's a feature since I primarily fly helicopters.

The parts bill was around $70~

Additional pictures: https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/Y8El3K71hp.jpg

https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/c61YRwnjL3.jpg