reworking radio control for joysticks
 

does anyone know if its possible to replace the thumb sticks used on most hobby radios with a more traditional FIRST style joystick?

my thought here is to bypass the internal thumbsticks on a hobby radio and wire those connections directly to the pots on a more user friendly chFlight stick.

i'm thinking of ways to take advantage of the low cost hobby radios but still give my drivers a chance to simulate controls more similar to something we might build during the regualr season.

well.. you can there are just pots inside the radio, however i dont know the value of theise pots... but i am working on a white paper that may include such information that I hope to publish soon

Most R/C radios these days have a provision for what is known as a "buddy" box. Usually it is a round connector something like what they used to use for a mouse or keyboard. The idea is that an inexperienced pilot can hook a friend's transmitter up to his. If he gets in trouble, just flick a switch and the buddy can take over from his own transmitter.

It should be possible to build an analog of the buddy transmitter and plug it in to the existing port. Also putting the transmitter in "buddy" mode could be a good way to figure out just what signals are required.

Well due to some time problems, and my computer currently dieing a slow death, it looks like the white paper wont happen any time soon...
however this site will give lots of good info on the ins and outs of most r/c radios, and if you look closely you will also see that our radios have an 7 channel encoder.. all you have to do is interface with the extra pins (unground them first btw)

http://www.rchelibase.com/radio/index.html

Re: reworking radio control for joysticks
 

Sure this will work. Just make sure the pots in the joysticks are the same value as the ones in the transmitter. If you need some more specifics or anything IM me post here or send me an email.

Re: reworking radio control for joysticks
 

It is fairly easy to hook up a joystick to the buddy port. There is one problem. You will need to build a device that will convert the analog joystick signal into a PPM signal.