William's Workbench

I built the MJoy16 controller quite some time ago and finally got around to making the key matrix board that allows easy input hookup. This board is double sided and a lot more tedious to drill and populate so I had been putting it off. I once again used the toner transfer method with good results.

It took about 10 minutes to get the two papers aligned properly and then it was pretty short work to etch. A lot of soldering and drilling later and here it is:

This weekend I etched a board for the excellent MJoy16-C1 controller board that I have mentioned in the past. This board is a USB joystick on steroids, supporting up to 8 axis, 64 push buttons, 16 toggle switches and a POV hat. The creator (Mindaugas Milasauskas) seems to have dropped from the net and the old domain is now a search farm. There is one website selling these online for the tidy sum of 199EUR. I found a good mirror of the old project page and downloaded the docs and hex file there. Update: This mirror is now gone as well. 🙁

I have had good luck using the toner transfer method of etching PCBs. Google it for a lot of sites with step by step details on the method. This etch wasn’t the cleanest I have done (I forgot to use photo paper and used regular printer paper), but was functional. I didn’t bother populating the parts for the ISP port, hence the blank area beside the USB connector. The jumpers on the white headers prevent false readings from unconnected axis. I had all the parts on hand with the exception of a 40-pin header for the digital inputs. Now I am one step closer to a functional panel.