joystick

Hello,

I am currently building an application using a joystick and I need help building/finding one. I managed to build one using 4 pushbuttons (one for each direction), but these are taking up too many digital pins, which I need for other things.

I would like to use the variant using 2 potentiometers (one for each axis) like we see in the tutorial here: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/JoyStick. I have never seen something like this before, and I don't really know how it works.

Is the joystick in the picture something you can buy at an electronics store? Does anyone have a part number for a joystick using 2 potentiometers that I can buy?

If not, can anyone give me pointers on how to build something like that? How can you use one "stick" to control 2 potentiometers going in different directions?

Thanks for the help,

-Elie

You can by potentiometer joysticks. They are sometimes hard to find. Sometimes they are calle "analog joystick".

I recently bought a couple from www.elfa.se search for stock nr 64-135-95

You could also try to find some old IBM or Apple joysticks (very old).

Or go to a fleamarket and find a couple of cheap Wingman joysticks (Logitech i think) ( for PC games), DO NOT BUY THE Wingman DIGITAL.

in germany, you can order joysticks as spare parts from doepfer (www.doepfer.de). i guess this is not the cheapest way, though.

i actually found exactly what i wanted at http://www.digi-key.ca/
just do a search for 'joystick potentiometer'!