Return of Justice. Darksakul's Injustice Mod worklog

Tech Talk
1

First up Read the other Injustice thread, I will wait.

Okay its time to Mod the Injustice Stick, as the Real Injustice is not because

Spoiler

Super Man is a Dick

But that PDP decided to use Qanba made parts.

First what I did was attempt to fit a Seimitsu LS-32-1* (because Sanwa is poop and the stock Qanba parts are worst)*.

Unlike the Sanwa JLF mount plate, the Seimitsu mount plate doesn’t fit in the gap provided. Protip: for you Sanwa lovers, you can swap the JLF’s mount place for the stock mount place and your JLF mounts fine.

I marked off where to dremel

And made my Cuts. Like the JLF mount plate the LS-32 plate mount holes does not like up with the Injustice stick.

First remove the nuts that are going to hold the mount plate in place,

Then use a dremel or a drill to widen up those screw holes, and continue with cutting away those brackets that held the nut in place.

As you can [NOT] see I added some metal washers to reinforce those holes.

If you are stoping the Mod here, you want to mod the bottom lid as well so you can close your stick

Next is hacking up that PCB.

Remove the side panels, so you can remove the rear panel (the one with the USB ports and switched) the front panel can stay.

Then you can remove the PCB assembly.

Take that apart, note the 2 ribbon cables, 1 is for the USB and the other is for the switches, go ahead and cut both ribbon cables. If you are a real Pro, desolder them.

Then Cut your PCB up like this. Throw out the larger section as we no longer need it. Keep the USB daughter board.

Where to solder for the ground, start, home and select.

This next part I forgot to take photos of so bear with me.
Note the daughter board with the switches and USB port. The spot the USB ribbon cable was is labeled. You can attach a USB cable (or just 4 wires) so you can run them to your new PCB.
Reference for USB hacking http://pinouts.ru/Slots/USB_pinout.shtml
The only other useful point right now is the GND point where the other cable was.

Using some 30 awg wire I tapped the 4 signal trances for Start, Select, Home and Ground. That wire for ground was soldered to one of the 2 far poles (left or Right) for the tournament lock switch as the middle lead to that GND point.
This way I can still use the Tournament Lock. The remaining 30 awg wires where splice to thicker 24 awg wire which is leading to my PS360+ PCB.

Once I drilled a 24mm hole and did some dremling so I can fit a Neutrik RJ45 Passthrough, and reassembled the remaining PCBs
So now the back of my rear panel looks like this.

Attaching the rear panel back to the rest of the stick (and cutting a hole for the Neutrik to fit), then super gluing some standoffs into place my stick looks something like this.

See how I routed the wires through the side openings? Normally bits of plastic on the side panels will prevent this.

A Dremel, hot knife, pliers or other means of cutting will make short work.

Now the final part, after replacing the sides, its time to close the lid. But wait there is a PS360+ and a LS-32 in the way.

So trim all that annoying plastic . Do not get rid of it, just cut it down to a half inch to a inch.

And here is the Final Product. Template courtesy of d3v.

2

Nice work! I’m a little confused though, why include the PS360 and the original USB board?

3

The USB part of the board is just for the USB jack so I can still take advantage of the micro USB cable that came with the stick.

4

8 button. :cry:

5

Gorgeous stick, I wonder if this is the first fully modded Injustice stick?

6

fully modded would could be that everything was replaced… case, buttons, all wiring… lol… oh that would be a custom then…

he did a great job though… dremel work could have been cleaner and crimp barrels? for shame! lol… :wink: (fun poke/jab at dark… you did good brother)

7

BTW, shared this on Test Your Might.

8

Thanks for the complement.

Yeah once day I need to acquire the right pliers to use the nicer QDs. The nice looking QDs were pre-done wires but I decided to make my own daisy chain.
Yeah my dremel work could have been cleaner, but I figured no one going to see the inside once I am done.

I didn’t have a replacement plexy and I don’t like Button Hole Plugs.

I am thinking of redoing my Blue TE-S as a 6 button.

9

So I got around to modding my friends Injustice stick with some SW-68 microswitches for the Push buttons
The Joystick got modded with an Sanwa JLF square gate, JLF’s pivot, metal washer, PAS JLF 2 lbf Custom Spring and PAS red anodized actuator.

I found out you can get away with the stock shaft if you just change out the pivot, spring and actuator. The particular Injustice Joystick had lubrication so I did not add any more grease.
I got the best fit and response out of the red actuator over the other oversized actuators Paradise arcade sold (blue was overdoing it). I did found out the stock Actuator and spring cover is too tight of a fit for a sanwa shaft.
And any spring stronger than the default JLF spring is fine, which by the way the JLF spring has more resistance that the stock Qanba spring.

I forgot to order a spring cover, and tried to use the Qanba spring cover. The whole spring assembly bunched up and the stick was so loose you though I left the spring cover out.

Yeah the controller’s buttons feels better with the Sanwa button switches, and the joystick is tighter and more responsive with a new pivot, spring and actuator.
But it is not the same to me as a full Sanwa or Seimitsu mod.

Overall if you want to be frugal or keep the existing LED lighting the SW-68 micro switches and JLF parts swap is fine for a Injustice stick, but it does not beat a full mod.

10

This part about the LED’s…

The cheaper LED solution should be the whole point about this stick.
It personally doesn’t make sense to me to take the original PCB and the LED’s out of commission. It’s certainly cheaper to NOT have to replace the original PCB but to have to redo all the button wiring and lose the LED’s at the same?!?!?!?!?!?

(I did enough modding with soldered-button Hori PCB’s to get the whole point about trying to do as little work as possible AND saving a buck when I could.)

I doubt any of us is going to find a cheaper solution for LED’s.
The third-party controller board costs alone kill that notion…
Add to that the cost of the individual button-configured LED’s.

Sure, the original Injustice joystick LED’s are not personalized LED’s but still…!

There’s gotta be a way to integrate an LS-32 type controller without losing the joystick LED, either.

(You just know that’s going to involve a) cutting the plastic LS-32 base somehow; and b) figuring a way to put the LEDs between the top base and just above the joystick micro’s to getaccurate LED response to directional inputs… that’s the problem right there. Your cutting [in the right places] would have to be VERY accurate or a third-market party part solution would have to be made available to take care of this problem…

(This is precisely why I don’t like non-universal joystick designs!)

Paradise Shop, for instance, has replacement hollow LS-32 shafts (you want the short one for a mod on an existing joystick case) AND sells an inexpensive LS-32 clone with 0.187 tabs that’s pretty good. Heck, you could buy a silent mod for the LS-32 and still come out ahead of buying a silent JLF/JLF mod kit! The directionals are the hard part of the joystick LED… That’s a challenge I’m sure a couple of guys (Toodles, jdm, etc.) could figure out. ( => Don’t look at me… I think up ideas but I’m no engineer – and I also don’t have infinite money to waste away parts, either! LOL)

C’est la vie… do whatever makes you feel better or happiest in the end!
This is just some other anonymous shmoe’s opinion.

I skipped this joystick because I wasn’t crazy about the design (Astro City-esque) and artwork ( = I HATE post-52 DC) LED or no LED. I got out of acquiring new Astro City-build cases even before Hori stopped making them. (FYI, the last Hori Astro City joystick was the HRAP 3 Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue joystick.)

I hope this post does not come across as a condemnation of what Darksakul did – that’s his personal project and what he wanted in the end – but it does express some of my concerns about these mods.

I’ve done my share of a mod or two where I felt I went TOO far and changed the character of a joystick too much…

11

That is fair, I agree with that statement. I do feel that The Pulse setting for the LED is gimmicky at best, and LEDs can be distracting, as I rarely used them I was not afraid to chop that part of the stick out.
There also the eventuality that some of these PDP/Qanba PCBs will die out, so I felt it served the greater good to show a PCB replacement is not just possible but show what it could entail.

I could’ve redo the LEDs with KN inserts and a on/off switch, screw the pulse setting that only works for only 1 game. I would spend alot but had the same effect.

I mod the Injustice stick for mostly the sake of hacking up a PDP stick to something more functional, and to open the road for others to follow if they so choose.

I did feel with the right parts or mods the stick become usable, even if its just some SW-68 switches and a Sanwa pivot, better spring and better actuator.

I never liked how the base of the stick lighted up, I think a LS-58 is a better candidate for a Dust Washer/shaft lights than the LS-32, but if I could install a LS-32 almost any Japanese style stick and the the New Japanese compatible Korean Crown stick are viable options.

12

im curious about the button LED boards, maybe I missed it, but are they even usable in say like a sanwa button? i know theres a securing tab which holds it in place, but that should be easy to get around with theoretically.

sorry its off topic, but, sup…

13

The LED boards cam be installed in a Sanwa Push button with some modification to allow the LED connector though. I was able to get the LED board to fit in right without additional taps to hold it into place.
Then again I kind of cut my opening on a test Sanwa button kinda sloppy and it fit with mechanical retention (cut the gap enough to it pressure fits into place)

Yeah I know the pics are done with a non-transparent button, but the transparent button has the same shape and size.
Plus I didn’t have any extra Transparent buttons I wanted to sacrifice.

14

I’m trying to dual mod this stick with a dpdt switch and add a ps4 controller. I took some pics of the pcb hoping that someone can tell me where the solder spots would be for the bottons in order to keep the LED function.

http://i609.photobucket.com/albums/tt172/pwnerer_betty/20140102_132812-1.jpg

http://i609.photobucket.com/albums/tt172/pwnerer_betty/20140102_132404-1.jpg

http://i609.photobucket.com/albums/tt172/pwnerer_betty/20140102_132343-1.jpg

15

very disappointed in the lack of 6 button, i thought better of u @darksakul

nevertheless, impressive work

16

Sexy stuff. Proper mod thread too: Dremel was out by the third photo.

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It was when the Injustice stick is new and there no plexy options. Also I hate to use button plugs.

Thanks

18

I Replaced the PCB all but the segment that had the button contacts and the USB port.
Basically I trashed the LED function.

I also didn’t keep my notes, so without me probing the PCB with my multimeter I couldn’t tell you.

I also can’t tell you if there be enough room for the PS4 PCB or not. As the Space was already tight for my PS360+

19

well i was thinking about getting rid of all that extra shit in the stick. I have a multimeter, how would i go about seeing where the button contacts would be?

20

I soldered directly to the traces