I mean all this because I have seen

several examples of hobbyists gutting

appliances and modifying them
completely, or sometimes just to “recover”
components, as if they were nutrients for
uncertain future projects.

It is preferable that they rest in peace (the

artefacts, of course) complete, well kept if
we have a storage place, until the day
when, for example, a child asks for one of
them.

Dad, what is that? - A phone, son. What

you see is a phone and if you put your
forefinger there you will see that you can
turn it and it will dial a number.- And does
it work Dad, can we use it?
Yes, of course …erm, I think we would
have to stirp the wire because we don’t
have a plug like that at home, but …well,
we better leave it for another day.

This conversation is absolutely real; and

the device that worked in my great-
grandmother’s house, made in Sweden a
long time ago, is still waiting for me to one
day find or conform something that works
for it, because we really don’t want to alter
its plug.

If you are in panne in the middle of the

Sahara desert and one of these
personages appears to you, surely he will
ask you to please draw a lamb for him.
The request is not like a court order, but it
is just as irrevocable.

Dad, I remember that I saw that you had a

joystick stored in a box. May I take a look
at it?

Zas! He is already 7 years old (the child,

the joystick more than 20) and he is very
interested in everything that may attract
his attention, which by the way is quite a
lot. And he has also just discovered that
there are very realistic flight simulation
programs and that no matter how skilled
you are whith the keyboard…

May I… May I… May I take a look at it?

MAY DAY!!!

Inside the box actually rests the joystick,

impeccable, with its very brief instructions
manual, and its purchase receipt dated
December 2000.

Aha! DB-15, in other words, a plug to

connect to the game port of the sound
card of the old computer, with 15 pins!

Arduino will surely give us a hand; we will

see.

Second question

(Since the first was “May I take a look at

it?” repeated several times)
Can you connect this device or similar
through an Arduino board and get any
results?
Answer: Yes.

The sense of including this question and

its answer here is for those who have
seen that it works, for example the KY-023
joystick module in Arduino UNO with
which you can turn on LEDs arranged in a
cross or also act on servo motors, but it
wouldn’t behave like a joystick connected
to a computer as expected.

I should also mention that it was the first

thing we did. I went to our box of 37
sensors to check if there were one of the
famous KY-023 to do the first tests as you
can see in Figure 2, before moving on with the
big one. Because at this point I had
already inferred that there should be
several lines of code to read and some
libraries to download.
But I didn’t know that we should acquire
something new for our beloved and
modestly supplied collection of electronic
components.

So, third question.

Could the joystick (with its 15 pins

plug) through the Arduino board
comunicate with the flight simulation
program and take advantage of all its
features (buttons, rudder, throttle)?
Answer: Yes but no but yes.

Yes, but not if you use the usual boards

such as UNO, Nano or Mini based on the
ATmega 328 chip (*). And the answer
would be yes if you choose the Pro Micro
board equipped with the ATmega 32U4
chip (**), and in this particular case We
find and recommend the variant that
instead of the micro usb connector, it
brings a mini usb, more manageable and
resistant. (Although we actually get it for
less than u$s 5, remember that users may
be under 8 years old!)

(*) There is a way to do this , it consist in reprogramming

the usb protocols translator chip ATmega16U2 -which is
the other or second chip- in the UNO board, but it
surpasses this work (also mi knowledge), although at
first glance we realize that we would have half of
resources. By the way the ATmega32U4 chip is very
powerful and makes the Pro Micro board a nice
masterpiece.

(**)The Arduino Leonardo and Micro are also

microcontroller boards based on the ATmega32U4, and
of course they would work the same way.

Ok so what do we need besides the Pro

Micro?

Solder. You don’t have to be an expert by

any means, but the Pro Micro board
(unless we already have it) can come with
the pins without soldering. And it is also
necessary to solder resistors, some wires,
and connector terminals to each other.

One DB15 Female D-Sub Solder Type

Connector

Four 100KΩ resistors

Six Dupont Jumper Wires Male to Male

20 cm Length (which will be cut in half to
connect its terminals to the breadboard
and solder the opposite ends to the DB-15
connector), preferably of different colors,
because they are soldered and with the
connector clamped in place, it is difficult to
identify them and connect the
corresponding pin.

One 170-point mini breadboard (usually

comes with double-side tape).

Pliers, tweezers, wire strippers, soldernig

gadgets, magnifying glass, enought light,
etc.

Any piece or assembly of parts that

allows something similar to what we
achive with pieces of a Meccano game,
and whose final weight of 75 grams is
enought to remain stable even if the
cables move.

There is almost always more than one way of doing

things. We opted to develop a detachable device. In a
matter of hours we can find something, like for example
an RC plane, and we would have to recover our Pro
Micro board if it was useful for the new project.
Although my children are delighted to "lend" me their
toys, including Arduinos, so that we can do new
experiments, we all know that they must return to their
original state immediately at the slightest requirement.
They know exactly what each piece of Lego is and what
place it ocuppies in what can be a clock hand, or a
plastic separator between shields and supports. But it is
not a prodigy of memory, but a relentless power of
control!
Of course, if you are not harassed by a couple of
Sheriffs of Nottingham, or you are looking for something
smaller and more permanent, soldering everything to an
experimental board, without having to have printed
circuit, may be the best solution. Among the pages I
have read as research for this project, I found mention
of distortions in the signals received by the PC due to
connection failures to the breadboard, so it is
recommended to solder. So far in our tests everything
works perfectly as we have arranged.

This joystick consists of four

potentiometers, two that respond to the X
and Y axes, another for the throttle and
another for the rudder, with variable
resistance values that could be between
zero and 100 kΩ approx. In each of them,
one end of the potentiometer is connected
to the 5 volt input pin and the center
contact is connected to the analog input of
the joystick. The other contact of the
potentiometer is left unconnected. This
arrangement requires ground discharge
through four 100kΩ resistors, one for each
analog input from the four joystick
potentiometers, as we will see in the
schematic circuit. The digital pins
correspond to the operation of the
buttons.

To use the Pro Micro board, you need

to download and install a driver.
Here is the link for downloading and
installation instructions for both Linux,
Mac or Windows:
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/pro-
micro--fio-v3-hookup-guide#installing-
windows

And now the code for the Arduino IDE

// To make use of this Joystic Library, we

must first download it at the address:
// https://github.com/MHeironimus/
ArduinoJoystickLibrary

#include <Joystick.h>

#define BUTTON_1 4
#define BUTTON_2 5
#define BUTTON_3 6
#define BUTTON_4 7

#define DELAY 100

Joystick_ Joystick;

void setup() {
 pinMode(BUTTON_1, INPUT_PULLUP);
pinMode(BUTTON_2, INPUT_PULLUP);
pinMode(BUTTON_3, INPUT_PULLUP);
pinMode(BUTTON_4, INPUT_PULLUP);
Joystick.begin();
Joystick.setYAxisRange(1023, 0); // You
can reverse the order of these values to
shift up or down
Joystick.setXAxisRange(1023, 0);
Joystick.setThrottleRange(1023, 0);
Joystick.setRudderRange(1023, 0);
}

void loop() {
Joystick.setXAxis(analogRead(A0));
Joystick.setYAxis(analogRead(A1));
Joystick.setThrottle(analogRead(A2));
Joystick.setRudder(analogRead(A3));

if (digitalRead(BUTTON_1) == LOW) {
Joystick.setButton(0, 1);
}
else{
Joystick.setButton(0, 0);
}

if (digitalRead(BUTTON_2) == LOW) {
Joystick.setButton(1, 1);
}
else{
Joystick.setButton(1, 0);
}

if (digitalRead(BUTTON_3) == LOW) {
Joystick.setButton(2, 1);
}
else{
Joystick.setButton(2, 0);
}

if (digitalRead(BUTTON_4) == LOW) {
Joystick.setButton(3, 1);
}
else{
Joystick.setButton(3, 0);
}

delay(DELAY);
}

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -

From now on you can fly alone, it’s part of

the game.