Joystick

Interfacing a Joystick

Hardware Required

• ARDUINO UNO
• Connecting Wires
• Joystick

About ARDUINO

Arduino is a popular open-source development board for engineers and makers to develop electronics projects in an easy way. It consists of both a physical programmable development board (based on AVR series of microcontrollers) and a piece of software or IDE which runs on your computer and used to write and upload the code to the microcontroller board.

About Joystick

A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal control device in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a center stick or side-stick. It often has supplementary switches to control various aspects of the aircraft's flight.

Connections

• Connect VCC to VCC
• Connect GND to GND
• Connect VRX to analog pin(A0)
• Connect VRY to analog pin(A1)

Tutorial About

This tutorial is about using the joystick to move the robot forwards, backwards, right, left.

Circuit Diagram

Code

int x = 0;

int y = 0;

void setup() 

{

Serial.begin(9600);// initialize serial communication

pinMode(A1,INPUT);

pinMode(A2,INPUT);

pinMode(10,OUTPUT);

pinMode(11,OUTPUT);

pinMode(12,OUTPUT);

pinMode(13,OUTPUT);

}
void loop()

 {

  x = analogRead(A1);   

   if (((( x ) > (1021) ) ) && ((( x ) < (1024) ) )) //Moving the robot forward

{ 

 digitalWrite(12, HIGH); 

  digitalWrite(17, LOW);

 digitalWrite(10, HIGH); 

digitalWrite(11, LOW);

 }

if (((( x ) > (501) ) ) && ((( x ) < (504) ) ))//Stopping the robot if the joystick isn't moved

 {

digitalWrite(12, HIGH);

digitalWrite(17, HIGH); 

digitalWrite(10, HIGH); 

digitalWrite(11, HIGH);

 } 

  if (((( y ) > (1021) ) ) && ((( y ) < (1024) ) ))//Moving the robot left

 { 

 digitalWrite(12, HIGH);

 digitalWrite(13, HIGH);

 digitalWrite(10, HIGH);

 digitalWrite(11, LOW);

 }

 if ((( y ) == (0) ) )//Moving the robot Right

  { 

digitalWrite(12, HIGH);

digitalWrite(13, LOW);

digitalWrite(10, HIGH); 

digitalWrite(11, HIGH); 

} 

  if (((( x ) > (1021) ) ) && ((( x ) < (1024) ) ))

 {

  digitalWrite(12, HIGH); 

  digitalWrite(13, LOW);

 digitalWrite(10, HIGH); 

digitalWrite(11, LOW);

 }

 if ((( x ) == (0) ) )// Moving the robot forward

  {  

digitalWrite(12, LOW);  

digitalWrite(13, HIGH); 

digitalWrite(10, LOW); 

digitalWrite(11, HIGH);

 }  

 y = analogRead(A2); 

  Serial.println("y:");

  Serial.println(y);  

}

Code explanation

In the loop, we'll declare that the variable x holds the input of the analog pin 0 and the variable y holds the input of analog pin 1. So whenever we want to give a condition to the controls of the joystick we can use the variables.

To know the value of the joystick of the selected position we'll serial print the values.

 Serial.println("y:");

 Serial.println(y);

  ^These commands are used for printing the values for y(horizontal controls). the same can be done for x(vertical control).