[mluckham]

I want to add a dead zone on the joystick. so like the robot wont move the split second you touch the joystick

There is already a dead zone built into the Victor speed controllers. But whether you realize that or not, the joysticks must not be giving the response you want.

You could try something simple like this, to basically ignore the values near the centre of travel:

if ((joy >= 120) && (joy <= 140))  joy = 127;

Or a more sophisticated "exponential" method:

speed = joy - 127;
newspeed = ((speed * speed) / 127) * sign(speed);

I have attached a Labview 8 application that demonstrates various joystick response curves.

Good luck,

Mike