Thank you for the compliments, everyone. I owe a big thanks to mega_mozg for his firmware. Without MMjoy2 I would have been forced to purchase controller boards, where I prefer to DIY anything I can.
Mega_mozg,
The F-15E Talon stick was purchased from Goodwill for very cheap. I stripped the PCB inside the handle of it's traces and rewired everything. I also replaced all the buttons with high quality snap-action switches (except for the Castle and China HAT switches). The knob you outlined in the picture is indeed a rotary encoder. The encoder itself is mounted further inside the stick, and I used a shaft from a broken potentiometer to attach. I will include more build pictures in my worklog (pending). The stick only uses two axes, but I have followed DocFlyer's hall sensor mod to perform the conversion on mine. I used Allegro A1326 hall sensors. Board used is one of your mmjoy2 designs with M32U4 AVR, and latest firmware with curves (I LOVE the curves, THANK YOU!)
The throttle started out as a lid for a VERY old metal filing box (probably from 1960-70s era). The base has something like 62 buttons all together, which I have split as two joysticks using the firmware. There are 8 toggle switches and three rotary encoders on the base. The base uses a single axis with hall sensor for the throttle slide. (I will have more pictures of the actuator when I finish the worklog). The handle is from a HORI playstation2 controller system. I also rebuilt the joystick from that kit (was my first mmjoy project.) The handle has it's own M32U4 controller built inside the box on the left side, connected with DIY USB coiled cable (making the coiled cables isn't very hard to do). The handle also has three rotary encoders. Alltogether, the throttle shows up in Windows as three controllers, every axis showing 12bit resolution (thanks to your autocalibration feature in the firmware). I will try to get my worklog drafted this week and hosted on my website.
Credit goes to:
Mega_mozg_13 for his brilliant work with MMjoy2
My best friend James for pressuring me to finish and take pictures
My metalworker friend Lee who plasma cut the mounting bracket for the handle
A character named Loc Nar from the Mechwarrior Online forums for sparking my interest in DIY joysticks
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I also have a set of Thrustmaster RCS pedals, which I have also totally modified with toe brakes, a robust centering mechanism, and also uses MMjoy2 via M32U4 chip
EDIT #2: I also forgot to mention that the trigger is a dual-stage. It has two switches and very different feels for both actions