I just tried your fix and it appears to be working correctly now.  The button mapping seems a little off, but that is an easy fix.  Thanks for your help!

I'm having issues getting my new tankstick working with Recalbox.  I have the setting correct in the configuration file (controllers.xarcade.enabled=1) but it still treats the Tankstick as a keyboard.  I looked at the log file and get this message: 3.60] : xarcade2jstick : no official stick found, looking for keyboard encoder now ...   I'm not sure if I'm just missing a step as I didn't see that there was anything other steps I needed to take to enable this service.  I'm on the most current version of recalbox and don't believe it's an issue with the tankstick as it worked in a Retropie image I was using prior to this.  Thanks for any help!