masusaca

Hello there!! I been thinking of taking a joystick from a controller and making a steering wheel out of it. The problem is that with joystick you cannot rotate, but rather turn right, left, up or down. I want to know if it is possible to solder or do something to make a DC motor (since it can be rotated) to control the joysticks x axis? Sorry, if this isn't the right place to post this question, I'm new and not sure where to go to get help with this.

My idea is to take a controller and add this feature to it. I want to put a small steering wheel into the joystick to control its rotation like if you are driving a real life car. Also, be able to have the y axis for forward and backward.

Bud

Not sure why you would want the steering wheel and throttle linked together like that. Would make it hard to steer without changing the throttle position and vice versa.

masusaca

I see what you mean, but I thought that by putting the steering wheel into the DC motor would allow me to control the joystick. For example, instead of having the joystick, which only turns X and Y axis I would use the DC motor as a rotating wheel to control the direction of the x axis only.

Bud

Might be kinda fun to figure out how to make something like that work. If the throttle and steering are on different sticks it'd be a lot easier. Me, I'd just get a wheel radio and call it good.

IndyRC_Racer

iTrader: (9)

Steering wheels in r/c radio transmitters are normally attached to a potentiometer. Actually I believe console and pc steering wheels also use potentiometers.

Here is a 3d printed steering wheel add-on mod for an xbox controller if this helps give you any ideas...

masusaca

Thank you! I actually came across these videos. It does look like a nice project. My idea was having a bigger steering wheel that I can mount into something similar to those of racing cars (not that big of course). So, the mechanism of this project you linked is a bit too small. This also looks like the easier way to make what I want because it doesn't involve anything electrical.

Basically I wanted to make my own type of steering wheel with pedals. First I want to figure out how to make the steering wheel from the controller. Then I will try to do something with the triggers (accelerate and brake buttons).

killer rock

unless im mustaking you should be able to a old pc or game console controller those racing controller then solder there potentiometers to the remotes old potentiometers. with a little extra wire. the steering wheel should be the easies. as its only one potentiometer the hard part would be the footpads. as are controllers only use 1 potentiometer while the footpads use 2. 1 per peddel.

the first part very easy with 6-9 soldering points.(almost as many soldering point as installing a new motor and esc) but the second part would be harder. and require far more in-depth knowledge on electronic.

it does sound like a fun interesting projectkeep us up to date.

estill

iTrader: (14)

Go with something Arduino based. Depending on the number of channels your looking for you can go as small as a sparkfun pro micro. (eBay Chinese knockoffs are about $5). The real costs are the potentiometers and what ever you build.

There is a joystick library that handles the hard part of mapping inputs to the PC joystick function. For a rough idea of what you are in for I found an instructable. If you familiar with this site, these projects are not always foolproof. I do not recommend blindly following any projects on that web site.
https://www.instructables.com/id/Cre...oystick-Libra/

Google Arduino based joystick project to see other ideas.