Leonardo or Mega (Newbie's question)

Hi I'm newbie of working with Arduino, if I'm writing in wrong section I'm really sorry.
So let's begin. I decided to make my own steering wheel using Arduino. I bought UNO, my friend said that "It's clone, original has diffrent colour" I tried to make it as a Unojoy but there was an error, even tried to install FLIP's Drivers but it was impossible. It looks like the original but that's not a point of my speech. Now I have money for buy a new device and I heard that Leonardo can be run as a gamepad, does Mega can be run the same or it need a extra applications (like FLIP) for that?
Thank you :slight_smile:

The Leonardo (and Micro) use the 32U4 microprocessor and can pretend to the PC to be a keyboard or mouse. The Uno, Nano and Mega cannot do that.

You have not provided enough info about your non-working cone for us to help. There is nothing in principle wrong with using a clone.

I am asking the Moderator to move your Thread to the Project Guidance section as it has nothing to do with the way this website works.

...R

A Leonardo or Pro-Micro (as mentioned above) can BOTH act as an HID (human input device) when connected to a PC.

Its a pretty straight forward principle to implement as well.

No clue what Unojoy is (or why you'd need it).. nor any clue what FLIP(s) drivers are? or why you'd need them either?

What are they for?

You can get a Pro-Micro for a couple bucks (USD) off of ebay..

Official Uno and Mega boards have an ATmega16U2 microcontroller that does the USB-to-Serial conversion. You can use Atmel's Flip software to perform a DFU and replace the virtual COM port firmware with a different firmware, that can emulate a different USB type, like HID, joysticks, MIDI ...

However, most Chinese clones use the CH340G as USB-to-Serial converter. Unlike the ATmega16U2 microcontroller, this chip is single-purpose, and can't be programmed as a USB joystick.

If you want to create a joystick, I'd recommend an Arduino that has a USB connection in the main MCU. As mentioned above, these include the Arduino Leonardo, Micro, Pro Micro, Due, Zero and LilyPad USB.
Teensy boards have great joystick support as well. (Teensyduino: Using USB Joystick with Teensy on the Arduino IDE)

Pieter

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