Hello, I am designing a control grip for my company's flightsim lab. I am planning on connecting a mini force transducer w/ pushbutton like this one...
(http://www.bgsystems.com/products/Fmt-PB.html)
...into an Arduino Mega. The transducer is basically a miniature omni-directional joystick to be controlled with the user's thumb. I am planning on using an Arduino Ethernet Shield to interface the input data (through UDP) to send/receive data from X-plane.
Does anyone have any experience with force transducers? Any tips on how I could approach this challenge would be great.
BTW, my control grip will look something like this:
The device appears to produce an output voltage proportional to the distance that the joystick moves with separate outputs from X and Y axes. If that is the case then connect the GND from the joystick to GND on the Arduino and each axis output from the joystick to separate analogue pins on the Arduino. Use analogRead() to read the values from the 2 input pins. You should get values proportional to the amount that the joystick is moved on each axis. Once you have the values you can use them how you wish.
Your suggestion seems logical to me, it sounds like the code for this wouldn't be too different from reading a pair of potentiometers. +1 karma to you good sir.