Thumstick/ Analog stick board

Question

Dear Ben,

In one of your episodes you controlled a cnc router with a device which looked like a homemade boerd with two xbox 360 analog sticks. i was wondering if you would share how to do this as it would be a great addition to one of my projects.

Thanks a million,

Devin

colecago · Accepted Answer

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/272

ckraft · Answer

It wasn't that complicated really. The motors on that CNC machine were driven by dedicated stepper drivers. Those drivers have pins for direction and steps. So the analog input of the sticks was fed into an Arduino which just read the analog range to tell if they were left/right, up/down. Then based on that information it triggered the right logic for direction on the particular stepper driver X vs Y.

It really comes down to the motor drivers. If you have motor drivers that allow you to specify direction easily then the rest is easy. I may still have the code around here somewhere if you would like to set it up yourself. If you don't have motor drivers that allow for easy control though its not going to work.

colecago · Answer

They are pretty simple, they consist of 2 potentiometers and sometimes a switch. You apply voltage across the potentiometers, then put the wiper of the potentiometer to the analog input on an arduino, and that's about it

http://www.adafruit.com/products/245#Description