does anyone use a joystick with a fair amount of buttons on it, that is shorter than 7" tall
less than 7" in any direction*, length, width, or height
Instead of posting twice you can always click edit in the lower right corner of your post 
But how many buttons do you need, minimum?
I donated my Microsoft Sidewinder Precision 2 to the team for use as the OP stick. Its got 4 axis (X,Y, and a Z that you twist the stick for, and a throttle), something like 10 buttons, and a hat.
http://www.yopi.de/image/prod_pics/81/e/81648.jpg
You can really just use any usb joystick…
EDIT: Okay, 8 buttons.
A USB gamepad such as the Logitec has two little joysticks, and a bunch of buttons…and they’re very compact. Try it you’ll like it.
If you just need the buttons you could always try ESTOP’s I/O module and make your own button board.
Dont forget you can use more then 2 USB inputs, and so youd still have both joysticks, but with an added bonus of an easy to use, custom buton board.
Are team uses a Logitech attack 3 put into a radio shack project box. It works well for an actuator joystick.
Generally my students have just used a USB game pad, ours happens to be an xbox controller, whenever they have needed a collection of buttons without the joystick for the operator.
Logitech extreme 3d pro has 6 buttons on the side, throttle, 4 buttons on the stick, hat switch, trigger and side button, and a twist stick.
http://www.simtractor.com/shop/images/505_1_0.jpg
Basically the KOP joystick but better…
But it’s height is 7 3/4 inches
That is the KOP Joystick?
No, it isn’t. The KOP joystick is a Logitech Attack 3, this is an Extreme 3.
While similar, the Extreme 3 has an extra button and a mini-joystick (I don’t know the correct term) on the top. Plus this has a twist stick, the KOP one does not.
Hope this helps! 
It depends what you’re looking for when you say better. Attack 3 has way more buttons than I need anyway, so the smaller footprint and lower cost is better for our uses.
Its usually referred to as a hat switch or something like that, I just call it a hat.
Our team has used Logitech Attack 2’s in the past, and they have been rather reliable and very applicable. This year, one of our drivers used an x-box controller to control the drivetrain and the other driver used an attack 2 to control ball intake, elevator, & shooter. In my opinion, the factors that influence what controller you go with should be the game itself, and driver preferences.
Ah, I see, our team never uses the KOP joysticks, we get the Extreme 3Ds and store them with the KOP stuff.
Having driven with a few types of joysticks and gamepads, the Logitech Attack 3’s are my least favorite by far.
Over the past 3 years, we’ve used:
-Logitech DualAction gamepad (all three years)
-Logitech F310 or Xbox (identical functionally, F310 is better to me, two years)
-Custom Cypress-based box (never will use Cypress board again)
-Custom box based on Logitech Precision (no analog inputs, otherwise very good)
-Custom box based on uHID (very very good, would use uHID again)
I personally prefer the (very old) CH Flightsticks in terms of actual joysticks, as I like the spring feel much more than that of the Attack 3.
I would highly recommend the Logitech Dual Action and F310 gamepads, as well as the uHID, to any team.
Andrew,
Is there anything special one has to do to use the Logitech DualAction gamepad with the base FRC Labview software?
No.
Left stick shows up as axis 1 and 2 (X and Y respectively), right stick shows up as axis 3 and 4 (x and y again), and D-pad shows up as axis 5 and 6 (it’s binary, so it will be either 0, +1, or -1 for each axis).
All of the buttons are numbered on the joystick, and correspond to the same number in software. L3 and R3 (pressing the joysticks) are buttons 11 and 12, they are not labeled on the joystick. I attached a pair of LabVIEW controls for the mapping of the buttons and axis, if you cast the LabVIEW Joystick Get clusters to these two controls, it will name all of the buttons correctly.
The F310 and 360 have identical button/axis mappings. See attached 360 files. Please note that L2 and R2 (buttons 9 and 10) are actually unused, I have some code that gets a digital output from the analog triggers (axis 3 is the raw trigger data fro L2 and R2).
(I had to zip them as CD does not allow uploading of .ctl files).
HMI_JS_Controls.zip (13.5 KB)
HMI_JS_Controls.zip (13.5 KB)
We took the KOP joysticks and unscrewed the two halves of the actual stick portion and unplugged the wires from the PCB, tucked the end of the cable into the stub-stick that remained, and wrapped it with rubber tape. it takes a bit more force to actuate as a result of the shorter lever, but it is much shorter, also, the cable could be attached to a custom button array either on-stick or off by simply replicating the circuitry of the original PCB, or at least the parts you need.
I’ve been using the Cyborg for a few years now:
the WPILib joystick don’t let you use all of the buttons, but if you write some custom objects/dashboard you get full functionality. it has more buttons than you’ll ever really need, and its fully customizable