Emulating a Joystick

[heydowns]

Originally Posted by Geek 2.0

As far as I understand, the FIRST Control System requires joysticks to use the DirectInput API. I know it would be an extremely complex task, but would anyone know how I could go about making an external microcontroller look like a joystick to the driver's station? My point being I want to be able to communicate via USB with the driver's station, sending digital and analog data, NOT going through the FirstTouch I/O board (because of data size/speed limitations). Anyone know where to start?

Our team did this last year, with the blue box, because we ran out of I/O for our operator interface console (pic: http://rollingthunder.smugmug.com/20...23_SWiHf-M.jpg)

We used this Microchip board (PIC18F87J50) as a basis:
http://www.microchip.com/stellent/id...ame =en532010

We then wrote firmware for it to talk USB HID (their SDK comes with an example that acts like a mouse - we changed to act like a gamepad).

Caution, however - this little device was a pain to wire to because of the pin-out.

Here's a pic of the underside of our operator console, held by the student that put it together; the pic device is on the right in the picture:
http://rollingthunder.smugmug.com/20...50_LMRhS-M.jpg