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

[Mike Hendricks]

A tad bit late, but I'll post this ..

1388 has been using Saitek R100 wheels for the last 3 (going on 4) years now. I find them on ebay for between $0.01 and $15 .. they seem to work great, and have buttons on the wheel for shifting. There are USB versions, so confirm it's the 15 pin version before buying. They work fine without the pedals attached.

[eugenebrooks]

It is important that you do not connect the ground on the 100K
pots wired to the OI. Follow IFI's instructions for the wiring.
If you actually get the wiper connected to the ground the OI
will send 127 and not 0 to the RC. This "feature" is a safety
measure to keep robots from running wild when a connection
is lost. If you can actually turn the pot far enough to get it
connected to ground the robot will suddenly stop instead of
doing what was intended.

This safety measure does not exist for pots connected to the RC
and you connect the ground on these.

Eugene

Originally Posted by squirrel

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.

[ALIBI]

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/29882

I have no clue what was done internally to make it work. But, to answer your question, our programing team has it figured out. Before they put it back together I remember seeing lots of soldered connections and electrical tape.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by eugenebrooks

It is important that you do not connect the ground on the 100K
pots wired to the OI. Follow IFI's instructions for the wiring.
If you actually get the wiper connected to the ground the OI
will send 127 and not 0 to the RC. This "feature" is a safety
measure to keep robots from running wild when a connection
is lost. If you can actually turn the pot far enough to get it
connected to ground the robot will suddenly stop instead of
doing what was intended.

Thanks for the explanation!

We'll work on getting the right resistance pots on the controller for the new robot, and only connect them to power.

[eugenebrooks]

Originally Posted by squirrel

Thanks for the explanation!

We'll work on getting the right resistance pots on the controller for the new robot, and only connect them to power.

If you are stuck with a pot that is not 100k, the OI circutry is tuned for that value, you can measure the voltage for the trip point and then work out the value of an additional resistor to connect between the pot and ground to keep the voltage above, say, twice the trip point. This will allow you to successfully use a pot that is not 100K. We employ this trick when we need to use a 10 turn pot on the OI. We have never been able to find a 100K ten turn pot.

[WaterFreak]

Currently, Team 708 plans to use somewhat cludgey, but think it should work.

We have a steering wheel that went to a PS2/GameCube/Xbox (not 360).

We bought an adapter from here: sewelldirect.com to convert it to USB.

We have the USB chicklets from IFI to convert it over to 15 pin.

Will do all the programming necessary to make it work hopefully.

Have no clue if this is actually going to work, but time will tell.