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

DIY Arduino Helicopter Collective Joystick Control

element14 presents | About Kaleb | Project Videos

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Top Comments

KalebTheMaker over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

How are you downloading the DXF? If you try to right click it and "save file as" it will save a html page. If you clone the repository and open from there it should work.

I just cloned the repo and opened the .DXF file in lightburn and it opened no problem.

-Kaleb
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KalebTheMaker over 4 years ago in reply to gtg938v

Hi there,

I just downloaded the FBX from github, imported it and opened it. I do not think its corrupted. I am running the latest release of F360 currently. What is the failure that your fusion 360 reports?
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Former Member over 4 years ago

Do anybody have the BasePlate.dxf working? I always get a error if I try to open it.

Thank you
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webitman over 5 years ago in reply to gtg938v

Thank you very helpful , have managed to download and instal "ClickEncoder, Joystick, and TimerOne" libraries needed for this project,
but it still won't verify? I am getting a load of things that need doing now and I am becoming confused, in the ACE128,h file its asking for ACE128_MCP23008 to be defined but it already is,
I have printed out the error list as a text file and it's 5 pages long.

Paul
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gtg938v over 5 years ago in reply to webitman

Paul,

Check this video out, should help!

https://youtu.be/igdBT0hwsJc
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webitman over 5 years ago

Absolutly brilliant design Kaleb, I have actualy built this and ready to fly,
BUT as I am new to the Arduino IDE i'm having trouble uploading the code as I keep getting : Arduino: 1.8.13 (Windows 10), Board: "Arduino Micro" CollectiveControl:1:10: fatal error: ClickEncoder.h: No such file or directory #include <ClickEncoder.h>

Can you point me in the right direction please as to the correction of this problem.

Thanks Paul
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gtg938v over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

I submitted the file to Autodesk Customer Support and they said,

"Thanks for the files you added to this support request. I have been able to reproduce the issue on my computer and also with several Autodesk software able to open FBX files. I can confirm that this file is corrupted."

I'll let you know if they have any fixes on their end.

In the mean time, Kaleb do you mind trying another upload of the fusion file? Maybe in a different file format?

Thanks!
Rich
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Former Member over 5 years ago

Hi first of all thank you this is amazing.
But I cant open the Base DXF File and cant find the Fusion files. Am I doing something wrong?
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aosatx04 over 5 years ago in reply to gtg938v

Richard,

I had no problems with fbx file. I'm currently using the following version of Fusion360;

2.09.9930
Active Plan: Fusion 360, Subscription
macOS 10.16.0
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gtg938v over 5 years ago in reply to KalebTheMaker

Kaleb,

For some reason when I try to open the fbx file from github in fusion it gives me a failure. It's as if the file is corrupted? Or maybe it's the wrong version?

Thank you for the help, I really love your project, and thank you for making it publically available.

Rich
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