Wheelchair joystick help

[DAR748]

Hello I am getting everything ready to build my first robot. (well sorta)
I got a 24v electric wheelchair & have always wanted to build a remote lawnmower. Then down the road have it mow by it's self.

The problem I have ran into was the joystick to RC
The joystick has 5 wires going to a small board to a ribbon cable to 2 boards.
What I would like to do it find a way to hook my RC setup to it or if I can't do that build a easy cheap interface.
Or if I must build a speed control it'll need to be easy & the big part CHEAP
No money right now.


http://home.insightbb.com/~danswoodshop/ch.JPG
http://home.insightbb.com/~danswoodshop/ch1.JPG
http://home.insightbb.com/~danswoodshop/ch2.JPG
Here is what I could find on the joystick http://www.pennyandgiles.com/docGallery/228.PDF its the 2000
Chair was made by ShopRider On the joystick case it say Penny + Giles Pilot D49669/4

Thanks for any help.

[alain]

Hi,
Seems I've got the same joystick on my wheelchair. Unfortunatly, my purpose of hacking it was to build a robotmower and not a RC mower.

Why don't you use a standard RC remote control, and connect the receiver to the wheelchair control unit. You can probably connect the receiver to the H bridge through a PIC.
I give you my blog adress just in case. You'll have to connect with a translater, unless you read french language : http://greenbot.over-blog.com

Have fun.:D

[D0n]

here's how I solved that one... (not too elegant, but works)
pull the joystick apart. inside the joystick, there'll be a coil of wires attached to the stick, and a disc with 4 or six coils attached to it.
pull the coils out and mount the single coil to a servo, and the disc to another servo.
now mount the two servos to a bracket to emulate the positions the peices had when they were inside the joystick housing.
crude but it works.
here's how to hook it to your pc later:
http://www.endurance-rc.com/pctx.html
or
http://www.phidgets.com/index.php?module=pncommerce&func=itemview&KID=117666058468.179.18.249&IID=31

[alain]

Well done Don,
Let me know when you'll have working.
Have you got it on a website ?

:rolleyes:

[Kevin Berry]

The servo to joystick thing was done early in the robot wars world by making a linkage straight to the stick, not even dismantling anything. Basically just two slotted bars hooked to servos. The servos plug right into a standard 75 mhz R/C receiver.

[alain]

Hi roboteers,
Well done to control the motors throught the joystick interface. I've done it the other way, I mean, removing the joystick, some PCB modifications to wire my control unit directly to the power bridges of the motors.
Here where I am with this bot :


http://greenbot.over-blog.com/

Don't forget, to have it in english, just use google automatic translator site.

See ya

[snake bot]

ive never used one but my friend did its really good :idea: