I have decided to investigate an arduino based board for making a DIY radio. My concerns about FCC licensing of the Xbee stuff is probably just me being paranoid. May have to wait till after we finish the Arduino and Propeller boards.
I have 500 Aurora gimbals coming in June, or July need to check. lol
Anyone know where to get the Joysticks that Servocity sells? Are they new or used? The picture looks like they are used, or not in pristine condition.
I can easily source the same enclosure as the original ones used. Laser cutting top panels is also no problem. A few designs with different display windows is an option.
The board would need some analog circuitry to massage the signals from the joysticks to a nice 0 to 3.3vdc or 0 to 5vdc range no matter the range of the pot on the stick. Actually with enough resolution on the A to D it might not be necessary. It could have an xbee socket too. No need for a shield for xbee. Sockets and terminals could be included for the joysticks, sliders, etc. A keyboard socket for 4 x 4 matrix.
As far as I can tell the joysticks are new, but there is almost no markings on them at all. The box’s just have a label on them:
R400BM2
4 Function Joystick
The actual joystick has a little QC passed sticker and a another sticker that looks like a build date with different years and months, and both of mine have 2009 and 07 checked. Thats it. I have not torn it up to see if there are any internal marking yet…
This sounds like a very good idea. The DIY remote is a big succes. There already are a lot of people building there own. It would be good to see if you can turn this into a product some day. There are currently no high quality remotes with digital signals on the market.
Main concern about board would be the number of I/O lines. The BB2 just had enough for the current setup. But adding the 4 function joysticks will be a problem.
A quick summary:
3 x analog for left joystick
3 x analog for right joystick
2 x analog for sliders
1 x analog for measuring batt power
8 x digital for 4 x 4 keyboard matrix
2 x digital for function buttons on joystick
3/4 x digital for menu navigation buttons
1 x digital for speaker?
1 x digital/UART for display
2 x digital/UART for XBEE
Total Analog: 9
Total Digital: 14/15
Total Digital UART: 2
Good summary Xan.
I do like the read voltage feature on both the robot and controller, especially when using LiPo’s.
More inputs = better.
I would also recommend having some function buttons/switches closer to the gimbals, like you see on heli/airplane RC’s. The 4 function joystick would be a nice addition. The next best is to have a small potmeter also close to the gimbals. one feature I miss on the potmeters I mounted on the joysticks is that there isn’t any tactile feedback for when the potmeter is centered (like a balance potmeter on an HiFi amplifier). For some functions the centering indicator part is very useful. I’m not sure if slider-pot’s can be delivered with a centering feature? (I think so) If thats possible, maybe one of the sliders could have that feature.
An LCD that can display even more info at ones, for example a 4 line LCD or something like the stuff DialFonzo posted.
As I mentioned in a different thread when I received these gimbals, that I was thinking of playing around and building a new controller. I was thinking of using the Arduino Mega (Seeeduino Mega) for it, which has lots of IOs.
16 Analog
~60 digital
4 UARTS
A standard Arduino would not be sufficient as it only has 6 Analogs and 14 digital (2 of which used by USB).
Have not started it yet, been busy playing with other stuff. May need to order some more parts, like sliders, new keypad, LCD. I was also wondering about that one DialFonzo used from Sparkfun…
Wow we really started something big with this DIY radio stuff.
Ok mega it is then. A midpoint indentation on a slider would need to be done mechanically. I will see what I can come up with. We can retain the arduino footprint and shield connectors but there will not be room inside the case for stacking boards. We can also just make the board as large as it needs to be and abandon the arduino footprint. A better display is certainly due.
The displays are from 4D systems. I’ve been looking at them for another project. They can be easy controlled using a serial input but it is also possible to have custom rendered images when using a more advanced controller (that’s what I was looking for).
Today I started playing around with some of the parts I ordered or had.
I am using a Seeeduino Mega board:
Step 1: I plugged in a 4x4 keypad I had sitting around (different one made by actcomponents.com), that I ordered years ago from Digikey. I put tape over some of the keys to have the same labels as the ones that were used in the DIY. Code is working on Arduino. Easy to hook up, just used 8 digital IO pins. Did not need pull-ups as I simply enabled the ones on the Atmega1280.
Step 2: I connected up a 128x128 OLED display, I purchased from Sparkfun (sparkfun.com/products/8537). Connected to USART, running at 125000 baud rate. This is the same one that the member DialFonZo used. I started off with some of his BAP code and have it running on the Arduino. Started creating functions to do many of the simple things like display text, numbers… Got some of it working.
Step 3: rigged up one of the 4 function joysticks. Have it connected to 3 of the analog inputs, plus 1 digital. Have analog code in place that does the averaging of the last 8 samples (like our BAP code). That part appears to be working. I have not done the Centering functions that take the initial values and then remap it such that we have proper zero and I again will probably scale it back to 0-255. Note: these joysticks appear to give me good values from near 0-1023
Now have Text values for the Horizontal and vertical for the 1 joystick showing on the OLED, plus simple bar value… I added a bar value for the rotatory knob which I show in green.
I think the 2 sliders will arrive on Monday, so I will soon wire them up as well as the 2nd joystick.
I receive a new XBEE adapter from parallax today, which I soldered in the pins, so soon will work on generating the DIY XBee packets.
But maybe I should start to build something to hold all of the components. Right now it is looking a bit messy
P.S. - Jim would you prefer that I only mention my working on a new version of the DIY remote here in the development thread or go ahead and add this onto my existing thread for DIY XBee remote or potentially create a new thread for my DIY Arduino XBee remote.
Same display as DialFonzo. Used his code to start from, which is showing his initial display layout. I will try to take a few pics and maybe even a few videos from time to time
Did not get much done this weekend, but did add a bit more to the rats nest and wired in the XBee using a parallax adapter. I also converted my Configure XBee program from Bap to Arduino (so far just mega, but just a few more lines of init should make it work on non-megas as well).
Will probably wait to clean up wiring, until the new Arduino Mega shield boards arrive. Scheduled to ship Wed, which implies it will probably get here Friday or Monday. Then I have a bunch of soldering and testing to do. Most of the parts and tools should arrive today-Wed, including:
New solder Iron to supplement the WSL: tequipment.net/HakkoFX888.html
New Crimping tool never had any luck so ordered this one: pololu.com/catalog/product/1928
Back on subject, will be interesting to see if Arduino Plus shield will fit in current size case. With OLED, it might as ti is very thin.
Again I can(should?) take most of this conversation over to the non-development part of the forum?
The keypad is the same as the DIY one. I need to order one, as to help standardize design.
4 in one joysticks. The main holes can probably be smaller then DIY joysticks. My guess is maybe 40mm diameter. The mounting holes are 32.5mm.
pictures showing this up at: servocity.com/html/4_function_joystick.html
OLED: Mounting picture: 4dsystems.com.au/imgprod.php?pid=78&img=180
Hole should be about: 35.2mm high and about 34mm wide.
3mm Mounting holes about 39.5 Horizontal, 27.5 vertical
Not sure what the best placement is, I have toward top.
I have two slider like DIY, wonder about adding one more? Slots are about 2" long by .1". Mounting holes are 2.5" apart, know is about .67" wide
Need 4 configure pushbuttons, could be place just below or above OLED. Could be in straight line or diamond like Zentas.
Need power switch
Want power plug (Type M or N?) for recharging battery.
Want some easy way to plug in Arduino to USB? Not sure if anyone has a simple short extension that can be mounted to box?
Option: Should we stick with chip type antennae for XBee or one with external antennae?
Should we add more buttons/knobs? We have lots of IO pins and currently only using 8 (9 if add slider) of the 16 analog pins.
I will draw this up in Corel and post the image here. It will be a start anyway. It is my pleasure to make this for you! Very well behaved chickens you have there. lol
I think it should all fit in those box’s. I am hoping that the Seeeduino Mega/shield should fit, with nothing above it, which is one reason I moved the display up. XBee can easily be under display. Battery should fit under keypad, like now. Later may have to work on an all in one board.
I really appreciate this and know how busy you have been. I am looking forward to seeing all of the other new projects like A-POD as well. Now I just need to order 1 more slider/knob.
Sorry about the PM’s I found the image of your drawing and printed it without noticing there was text there too. lol So I can cut this and mail it maybe today depending on their work load. I have four of the keypads left over, you are welcome to one if you haven’t ordered yours yet. I don’t have a lot of the slider pots, only two so I’m no help there.
), great to see it coming together.
…
Very well behaved chickens you have there. lol 
