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  • Author Author: tariq.ahmad
  • Date Created: Date Created
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DIY Arduino Helicopter Collective Joystick Control -- Episode 440

 

I love to fly in simulators, especially helicopters. But, there is just not an affordable collective control that I have found, so I decided to make one for myself! I am going to build a joystick using an Arduino Micro, with a bunch of buttons for assignable controls and a high quality encoder for the collective axis.

Supplemental Content:

 

Also you can watch the live Twitch recording about this build: element14 Presents Live Twitch Stream: DIY Arduino Helicopter Collective Joystick Control

Bill of Material:

Product Name Manufacturer Quantity Buy Kit
BOURNS Absolute Rotary Encoder, 120 rpm, 128 PPR, EAW Series BOURNS 1 Buy Now
ARDUINO Development Board, Arduino Micro, ATmega32U4 MCU, 20 3.3V I/O, 12 Analogue Inputs, ISCP Header ARDUINO 1 Buy Now
ITW SWITCHES Pushbutton Switch, Industrial, 59 Series, 13.6 mm, SPST-NO-DB, Momentary, Square ITW SWITCHES 1 Buy Now
ITW SWITCHES Pushbutton Switch, Industrial, 59 Series, 13.6 mm, SPST-NO-DB, Momentary, Square ITW SWITCHES 1 Buy Now
ITW SWITCHES Pushbutton Switch, Industrial, 59 Series, 13.6 mm, SPST-NO-DB, Momentary, Round ITW SWITCHES 1 Buy Now
ITW SWITCHES Pushbutton Switch, Industrial, 59 Series, 13.6 mm, SPST-NO-DB, Momentary, Round ITW SWITCHES 1 Buy Now
C & K COMPONENTS SWITCH, SPDT, 5A, 120VAC C & K COMPONENTS 3 Buy Now
BOURNS Incremental Rotary Encoder, Pro Audio, Continuous. 24 Detents, 24 Pulses, Quadrature Output BOURNS 1 Buy Now

 

Additional Parts:

 

Product Name

5 Way Momentary Square SMD Tactitle Switch

M3x5x2 Square Nuts

8mm Bore Diameter ball mounted pillow blocks

T6 Seamless Aluminum Round Straight Tubing 16 Gauge 1-3/8" OD
Attachments:
HelicopterCollective_Resources.zip
image
DIY Arduino Helicopter Collective Joystick Control

element14 presents  |  About Kaleb |  Project Videos

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  • in reply to Uni33

    I abandoned Arduino IDE a long time ago. I now use VSCODE and PlatfomeIO ( https://platformio.org/)
    See even Cursor ( https://www.cursor.com ) the free version, which helps you (sometimes yes, sometimes not) thanks to AI.

    It perfectly manages many modules like Arduino or even ESP32

    Main advantage, we can see the calls to external libraries (source code) and better understand how to use them.

    Above all, we can keep versions of old libraries for old projects, without necessarily having them updated. Which is impossible with the Arduino IDE. This allows us to resume old projects without fearing that a library update will bug, because a function is no longer supported.

    At first, it seems more complicated to use, but in the end, we save a lot of time.

    Enjoy VSCODE ( or Cursor ) and PlateformIO Heart eyes