external joystick

[DRÄPPEL]

Hi!

I'm planing to build a MBSIDx4 with a full control surface. I've seen people use joysticks and i thought it would be a fun idea to try out, however i don't want it on the actual control surface so i was thinking of having it as a external joystick that i can plug in when i want to use it, perhaps through a d-sub or something similar. My question is: Is this possible?

If i understand the joystick design correctly i will need to get a AIN just for the joystick, since joysticks use pots and not encoders right? Would it just be a matter of connecting cables from the AIN to a d-sub port in the MB and doing the same on the joystick(pot -> d-sub or is there anything else i need to think about? I also have another idea of extending the joysticks functionality by adding a button on it that will toggle through the diffrent things i want the joystick to control ( lfos etc, does anyone have any other ideas? ). So basicly i want to know if it is possibe to have a external joystick and if it is i want to know if the toggle function is doable.

Thanks

[SounDuke]

I tried this out, it was not exactly an external joystick controller but basicly my plug and play tool was equipped with 2 potentiometers and 4 buttons. IT IS doable, but be careful as long, unshielded and near cables are the primary source of jitter (random values in output from the pots) and sub D ports (I'm quoting TK :))  aren't the best choice for analog signals. Hope I helped

Ganbatte!

[SounDuke]

Ah one more thing: I'm not familiar with joysticks, but I guess 2 axis Joysticks are equipped with 2 pots

[illogik]

I guess 2 axis Joysticks are equipped with 2 pots

you guessed right sir!

What you need is joysticks with 2x 10k lin pots

d2k used these: http://www.alltronics.com/images/22P010.jpg

cheers, marcel

[rogic]

believe it or not, I ripped mine from this:

http://members.rott.chello.nl/mlampers/images/Programmable_TV_game.jpg

:P

and the pots are 50k, not 10, and it works perfectly

[DRÄPPEL]

Thanks for the input!

If i use shielded cables and replace the d-sub with something more suiting ( any recommendations?)  would it work fine or will there always be jitter? How did you work out the problems with your PnP tool SounDuke?

Also, does anyone know how to implement the toggle function i talked about in the first post? I'm guessing it will only require a few lines of code but with no experience in programming it would take a lot of effort for me to write it.

Cool joystick rogic, looks very old school :)

[SounDuke]

Well, actually I changed my design due to an -ehm- user friendliness problem on my previous one, so I didn't try shielded cables. I had 24 cables without shielding and 2 m long. I don't want to talk about that nightmare :)  I'm rather sure that you'll be fine with them;  You should need only 5 cables in total if I'm not wrong (Vss and Vdd to connect the 2 pots and the button, the 2 wipers of pots+the button line) and I don't think this will lead to noticeable jitter (at least not for cables longer than 2 m). If this should happen, put 100nF ceramic caps as close as possible to the Vss and Vdd pins of the pots to preserve power integrity. I think you can recycle a midi port too if 5 is the exact number of cables as I tried to guess (putting vss in the central pole), at least the poles are at a greater distance than in a sub D

Hope it helped