joystick control?

HEKS

Hello
i ve got a question about the usb paralaxx servo controller.i want to control the servos with a usb joystick.is it possible?do i need a bs or other hardware?is it possible to control them from a pc over the internet(on a website)?rc surveillance camera or s.th.l.th?thanks!!!
sorry im new in this forum!!! -HEKS-

Mike Green

Both the servo controller and the joystick are USB "slave" devices. They both need a "master" controller which is normally a PC. It is possible to buy devices fairly cheaply now that can attach to a microcontroller like a Stamp and act like a USB "master". Vinculum makes the VDIP1 and VDIP2 (www.vinculum.com/prd_vdip1.html) and GHI Electronics makes the USBwiz (ghielectronics.com/details.php?id=5&sid=6). Both can connect to a Stamp, but are somewhat complex to use to communicate with things like a joystick or the servo controller. There's really nothing simpler on the market, mostly because USB itself is fairly complex.

You could use a PINK (www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=30013) which would get you the ability to have a website on the internet where you could enter control information from a PC or any internet browser. You could use a Stamp to talk to the PINK and the Stamp could control several servos (maybe 4) by itself. You could use the serial version of the servo controller to control more servos from the Stamp.

You would have to be much more specific about anything else you might want to control.

Unsoundcode

It is possible to use a joystick/gamepad to send serial signals to a servo controller or Stamp with a GUI programmed with Real Basic or an element of Visual Studio Express extracting the PC's gameport information.

Jeff T.

HEKS

Hi Mike
thanks for the answer!i want to control a pan tilt camera (servo driven)with my pc over a usb joystick ...and an option for a dc 12v motor (with a possibility to control it over a website).i just want a controllable pan tilt webcam for my website later!The pink “thing” is nice!is there any software to control the parallax servo usb device with a joystick?don’t know how to realize it with real basic or visual studio.How does the BS communicate/connected to the pink and the usb controller….over the pc?Thanks a lot!
-HEKS-

Mike Green

The PINK has an Ethernet port and a serial port. The BS communicates over the serial port (look at the PINK documentation ... downloadable from the Parallax Store webpage for the PINK). There is no existing software for communicating with a USB servo controller and you can't connect the two directly anyway ... you would need something like the Vinculum. You would be much better off either using the BS itself to directly control the servos or getting a serial servo controller which can be connected directly to a BS.

There is no existing software that I know of to control a pan-tilt mount from a joystick on a PC. You'll have to do the programming yourself. This is a support forum for Parallax devices and not for PC programming, so you are not likely to get much help with that part.

If you look at the PINK documentation, you'll see that the BS can fetch the data associated with variables on the webpage served up by the PINK. In the simplest case, these would be decimal numbers to be used to drive the servos. A program for the BS would simply read these continuously and either use them directly to send control pulses to the servos or would immediately retransmit the information to the serial servo controller. There are plenty of examples in the servo controller documentation or in the "Robotics with the BOE-BOT" manual that you can download from the BOE-BOT webstore page or the Download menubar item on the main Parallax webpage.

crgwbr

You could use a program like roborealm to interface to the joystick. It has a pre-existing object to do that. You're still not going to get around the coding part though. :P

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code

People say that if you play Microsoft CD's backwards, you hear satanic things, but that's nothing, because if you play them forwards, they install Windows.

I spent a minute looking at my own code by accident. I was thinking "What the heck is this guy doing?"

swrider

Another option:

I've been having alot of fun with the cheap RWS/TWS-434 receiver/transmitters and did a little project that uses a BS1 as a remote servo controller and my PC joystick.·I posted a video of it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7m7SbAKS6c

My kid and I still like to compete with it·to see who can move objects the fastest. It is very crude, but works and total cost/time is minimal.

On the BS1:
-2 Servors
-1 RWS-434 w/ 6.5inch antenna wire
-1 LM7805 voltage regulator for the servo's

On the PC:
-1 TWS-434 Transmitter connecter to·a serial port
-Joystick
-C# Express using DirectX SDK

TWS-434 Transmitter :
-1 TWS-434 w/ 6.5inch antenna wire
-1 MAX232 plus associated caps
-1 Serial cable (one end chopped and wired to MAX232)
-1 LM7805 5V voltage regulator
-1 Solderless breadboard
-1 Project box
-1 NPN transistor connected to RTS line to power on/off TWS
-Green power LED
-Red transmit LED

If anyone is interested I'll clean-up the C# Express project and post it as well.

M





Post Edited (swrider) : 4/24/2007 12:53:18 AM GMT