o PRESENTATION ON JOYSTICK

Submitted by Bob Johns

11/9/2013

RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi

Definition History Technical Details Design Working

Other Applications
Pictures
RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi

11/9/2013

o DEFINITION

A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer. Joysticks are used mostly for computer games, but they are also used occasionally for CAD/CAM systems and other applications.

11/9/2013

RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi

o SOME HISTORY

Joysticks originated as controls for aircraft ailerons and elevators. The name "joystick" is thought to originate with early 20th century. The first electrical 2-axis joystick was probably invented around 1944 in Germany. In the 1960s the use of joysticks became widespread in radio-controlled airplane modelling systems. The first use of joysticks outside the radio-controlled aircraft industry may have been in the control of powered wheelchairs (1963).

11/9/2013

RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi

CONTINUED

Ralph H. Baer, inventor of television video games and the Magnavox Odyssey console, created the first video game joysticks in 1967. They were analogue, using two potentiometers to measure position. Joysticks were commonly used as controllers in first and second generation game consoles.

More recently, analogue sticks (or thumbsticks) have become standard on video game consoles and have the ability to indicate the stick's displacement from its neutral position.

11/9/2013

RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi

o TECHNICAL DETAILS

Most joysticks are two-dimensional, having two axes of movement, but one and three-dimensional joysticks do exist.

An analogue joystick is a joystick which has continuous states of the movement in any direction in the plane and a digital joystick gives only on/off signals for four different directions, and mechanically possible combinations.
Additionally joysticks often have one or more fire buttons, used to trigger some kind of action. These are simple on/off switches. Some joysticks have feedback capability. Most I/O interface cards for PCs have a joystick port. Modern joysticks mostly use a USB interface for connection to the PC.

11/9/2013

RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi

o DESIGN

The basic idea of a joystick is to translate the movement of a plastic stick into electronic information, a computer can process. The various joystick technologies differ mainly in how much information they pass on. The simplest joystick design, used in many early game consoles, is just a specialized electrical switch.

The base of joystick is a circuit board that sits directly underneath the stick. The circuit board is made up of several "printed wires," which connect to several contact terminals.
The circuits just carry electricity from one contact point to another. When the joystick is in the neutral position all but one of the individual circuits is broken.

11/9/2013

RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi

o HOW IT WORKS

Joysticks pull off a really neat trick. They take something entirely physical - the movement of your hand - and translate it into something entirely mathematical - a string of ones and zeros (the language of computers).
When the computer picks up a charge on a particular wire, it knows that the joystick is in the right position to complete that particular circuit. Pushing the stick forward closes the "forward switch," pushing it left closes the "left switch," and so on. In some designs, the computer recognizes a diagonal position when the stick closes two switches. The firing buttons work exactly the same way - when you press down, it completes a circuit and the computer recognizes a fire command.

11/9/2013

RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi

In the conventional system, a card inside the computer handles this with a very crude analogue-to-digital converter. The basic idea is to use the varying voltage from each potentiometer to charge a capacitor. By discharging the capacitor and then calculate how long it takes it to recharge, the converter can determine the position of the potentiometer, and therefore the joystick. The measured recharge rate is a numerical value the computer can recognize. The computer performs this operation whenever it needs to get a read on the joystick.

11/9/2013

RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi

o SOME OTHER APPLICATIONS

Joysticks are also used for controlling machines such as cranes, trucks, underwater unmanned vehicles, surveillance cameras etc.
Miniature finger-operated joysticks have been adopted as input devices for smaller electronic equipment such as mobile phones. Also specialist joysticks, classed as an assistive technology pointing device, are used to replace the computer mouse for people with fairly severe physical disabilities. They are also used on electric powered wheelchairs for control since they are simple and effective to use as a control method.

11/9/2013

RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi

o PICTURES

11/9/2013

RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi

Thank You

11/9/2013

RCBS, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi