Anyone have any leads on the steering wheel controller that uses a 15 pin connector?

[waialua359]

Better than a USB so we can save on spending 129.99 for a chicklet!
Since I dont own a PS2, I see a lot of PS2 steering wheels for sell at gamestop. Is that a direct fit with the OI?

Thanks!

[RyanN]

A PS2 controller is NOT a direct fit to the OI. We bought a PS2 steering wheel the other day, and what we did is:
Take the steering wheel apart.
Tear out the motherboard
Find the potentiometer connected to the steering mechanism
Solder on 3 longer wires
Connect it to a gameport plug
Plugged it into the OI.
And finally... programmed the robot to work with it.

Refer to the OI section on ifirobotics.com on how to wire it to the gameport.

[MrForbes]

We're thinking of using one of these R/C car controllers, removing the guts, wiring up the potentiometers to a cable, and put a 15 pin plug on the end of it.

Seems like the nicest way to drive a robot like the one we're planning on building...which is essentially a huge R/C car.

[Andy L]

Saitek R100 coems in a 15 pin variant make sure that if you get one (we got ours on eBay) it's not USB

[MrForbes]

this is how you convert that RC car controller to use with the OI, you'll get to learn a little bit about electronics when you do this. It's not difficult.

[waialua359]

We just bought the saitek R100 from amazon.com.

[windell747]

Hi, I was looking at the operater interface documentation and it said that only 100K potentiometers can be used on the ports. I just bought a steering wheel and after tearing it apart I realized that it had a 10K pot and not a 100K pot. Can I still use this?

I was thinking that just to be safe I would like to buy a wheel that already uses 100K pots. Do any of you have any leads?

Thanks,
Windell
#2477

[Phyrxes]

We were orginally going to use a PS2 wheel and convert it to USB using a fabricated adapter. After a student found the plans for such an adapter but dismissed it as taking the steering wheel apart and wiring the potentiometers would be much easier. Apparently the PS2 sends multiple signals over the same pins so it you have to create a circuit to convert it to anything else.

Edit: misread the fact that you were trying to avoid buying the chicklet if at all possible.

[MrForbes]

If you look at the wiring diagram for the joysticks suggested in the IFI documentation, you'll see that they show that the 100k pots are only connected to signal and +5V, and not to ground. Last year we connected all the pots on to the OI using 3 wires each: ground, signal, and +5v, and everything worked fine. This makes the pot into a voltage divider, and the signal voltage is proportional to how far the pot is moved towards the +5V end.

You might want to ask IFI is this is an acceptable way to wire up a pot to the OI before you try it.

We wired up that Futaba controller to the 2007 robot OI this way and it works fine.

[Tapoore]

The Saitek R100 is available here for $15.00 if anyone is interested...

[waialua359]

thank you. it never dawned on me to check their site directly as I thought it was some kind of old device.
We didnt receive ours from amazon for some reason, so we ordered two more just now.

[Steve_Alaniz]

Originally Posted by windell747

Hi, I was looking at the operater interface documentation and it said that only 100K potentiometers can be used on the ports. I just bought a steering wheel and after tearing it apart I realized that it had a 10K pot and not a 100K pot. Can I still use this?

I was thinking that just to be safe I would like to buy a wheel that already uses 100K pots. Do any of you have any leads?

Thanks,
Windell
#2477

You can use these but you'll have to do some scaling to get the full range of the controller. (Look in the Chicklet documentation, they give a routine for scaling that you can add to your program).
Was this a USB and did you take out an interface board? It was probably set up to give full range for 10k potentiometers. The best solution would be to find replacement 100K potentiometers and replace the 10Ks.
A simple test would be to wire it up, plug it into the OI, setup dash board to read the OI and see what values you get.

good luck

Steve

[windell747]

Yeah, it was a USB....actually a really nice steering wheel and pedal with force feedback and everything, but I disconnected all the unecessary parts so that there were only the wheel and pot. Yeah I'm thinking about just replacing the pots with 100Kohm ones.

Thanks!

[windell747]

Is it illegal for us to modify our steering wheel and replace the potentiometers with 100K ones?

[RyanN]

Originally Posted by windell747

Is it illegal for us to modify our steering wheel and replace the potentiometers with 100K ones?

Perfectly legal.