no i was thinking of separate contacts on the inside maybe isolated by rubber or something that touched each other when the shaft was one piece but werent permanently connected that way you could still disconnect it.
How do those lamps work that turn on with a touch anywhere on the post?
Some clever spring-loaded contact stuff could be done – have a metal contact insulated in the top shaft connected to the + leg of the LED, while the ground connects to the outside. The positive terminal would then be a spring-loaded pin in the center of the bottom shaft, preferably not live until it’s been depressed by the top shaft contact (as to prevent something else metal from shorting it when it’s exposed).
Or you could probably stuff a (very small) coaxial barrel jack into either side of the thing. Dunno if you’d be able to source one small enough, though. Maybe split the difference, have a single female pin header in the middle of the bottom shaft, and a single male pin in the top (I’d go with machine pines for both, and maybe a spring-loaded pogo-pin on the bottom one). My main concern with all of these solutions is that I’m assuming the two halves of the shaft can freely rotate separate from each other; you’d need to keep that in mind while designing whatever you design.
EDIT: TRiXWoN – Those lamps mostly just have capacitive sensors in them – your skin changes the capacitance of the outside surface of the lamp, and it’s able to tell that. It’s the precursor to cap sense multi-touch touchscreens that you see in today’s modern phones. Your body doesn’t actually pass any active current through it; the lamps just detect when you touch them.
Yeah the single pin (male/female) in the center and using the actual shaft as ground was one idea I was playing with. HOWEVER, you’d need the male/female single pin in the center to be recessed so you don’t accidentally short things while putting them together and taking them apart. Playing with that distance might be a bit difficult, and isolation would be key.
Of course, the single pin/shaft ground eliminates RGB, but it’s a good place to start if nothing else.
All else fails, the method Ducky/Gumm are using works fine, and may work beautifully anyway with a bright enough LED. One thing that may make it work better is light pipe usage in the top half. I played with this idea before even having beta units, but probably went about it wrong. It may help focus any light lost while traveling through the top section. Something like this might be work to focus, and then re-disperse at the top into the balltop. What would probably work best is a cloudy ball top though, clear won’t take advantage of the dispersion near as well.
http://www.leds.co.uk/optosource/products/bivar#PLP1
The problem is diameter, the thru-hole is about .109" minimum taking tolerances into account, so you’d have to be smaller than that.
Here’s a shot I did while testing last night with a pink 11000mcd LED running at 30mA. The left shot is the led directly in the balltop in the traditional sense. The right shot is what it looks like if the led were mounted in the lower shaft.
The differences are noticeable, but completely functional. I’ll see if I can make some kind of light pipe to stick in it. I’m sure I can shave down the plastic from the ones found in some sticks.
http://www.tapplastics.com/shop/product.php?pid=147&
Acrylic rods available in 1/16 and 1/8" diameters for pretty cheap. I havent done the math but you might be able to squeeze in 3 of the 1/16" in.
Having worked with lightpipes alot in the past (for DIY BMW angel eyes), and my own experience making LED bat tops on my project gouken stick, i think its going to be pretty difficult to achieve a brightness that most people will be satisfied with. Primarily because so much light output is lost in transmission. In the balltop, you’d need a wide angle lens or something milky/opaque to scatter the light (to make it visible). Then the lightpipe itself wont be 100% transmission. And at the bottom of it, you need a bright LED with a focused lens (15 degrees).
On my project gouken stick, a 20ma 5000 lumen LED molded directly into a translucent plastic bat top looked dull (especially when compared to LED lit buttons). In this picture, i have the LED overdriven to 60ma. So just imagine a regular 5000 lumen LED that has to pass through a lens, a light pipe, and then a balltop… a lot of light will be lost in transmission… its a novel idea but i think this might not be the right approach IMHO…
WHERE DID YOU GET A CLEAR BAT TOP???
I made it…
I’ve forgotten the size of the joystick hole, but when the link is disconnected, can a button hole cover be used to hide it? Could the hole be slightly modified (widened) to allow this to happen, or does the connecting part of the stick inside block the button plug?
Most joystick holes are 24mm in size.
I think ducky has the best LED solution at the moment. It looks better than a top mounted LED from, the pics as well.
Well, once I finally get the produced units to start assembling and sending out the pre-ordered units I think we’ll see a variety of ideas coming all at once… both for LEDs and other nice and possibly must-have’s such as hole caps. Neither of which I have any time to work on atm, so I’m really stoked to see what you guys come up with.
What Ducky has done is probably the quickest way to get LEDs to work in this two piece operation, and with a bright enough LED it’ll work for most everyone I’d imagine, I’m just excited to see the progression from there.
Hopefully I’ll hear form the fab house by the end of the week, keeping my fingers crossed
Yeah, I don’t see why a 24mm hole plug wouldn’t work. In a worst case scenario, you’d just drill a hole in the middle of it to keep the lower shaft piece in place.
[S]So would a 24mm Hole Plugbe able to fit? the middle is mostly empty, so I imagine it would, but from the picture I have a very poor gauge of the depth at which the joystick’s body/lower washer would be[/S]
edit: ninja’d, thanks for the info
Though for a 24mm hole plug, you’d obviously also need to do something about the clips on the side so that you could actually pull the plug out when you need to. 
The idea was that the top panel would be able to flip up like a suitcase top, and there would be a slot in which to deposit the disconnected link upper body. And as long as you were opening the top of the case to retrieve the stick stored inside, you could pop out the button plug hopefully (and then store it inside the case).
Though now that I think of it the joystick body might make it hard to get at the tabs… Ideas?
I had an idea in mind before that could work if the bottom of the Link is magnetic:
Though Phreak said that some ICs are sensitive to magnetism… so I dunno.
I realize now if you leave the dust washer in place you won’t really need any felt.
You wouldn’t need to worry about a magnet effecting things – it wouldn’t need to be crazy strong or anything, and there’s nothing really sensitive in that area.
Interesting idea. The only thing is that, as Phreakazoid mentioned, the bottom part of the Link will be just about flush with the top surface.
Though I do I have plenty of neodymium magnets sitting around; I just might try your idea out when I get my Link.
The only question then is whether or not the shaft itself is magnetic; I vaguely remember Phreakazoid saying that it’ll be made of stainless steel? The majority of forms of stainless steel are not magnetic…
It’s 416 Stainless Steel, it’s magnetic so you’re good to go.