Hey guys. I don't need the entire board and little metal box for my goal - so I've pulled one of the small potentiometers off and out of the containing metal box, and off the board also.
Problem is now that when I check it using the Arduino UNO R3 board, emulating the board as a joystick input device on PC, I get some odd voltages...
For some background and I'll try to keep it short. I've had two separate 2 Axis potentiometers hooked up (http://www.parallax.com/product/27800), and they worked great.
I had 2, 2axis thumb sticks running on a controller - I decided I only need 3 axis total, and to save some space, I removed the 3rd potentiometer from the metal box, and off the circuit board it came with (in link). Prior to doing this the X,Y, and Z axis worked fine (I didn't need a 4th axis), but since I've done that, the the X axis of the first thumbstick influences the Z axis, and I'm unable to use the Z axis potentiometer for any type of input anymore. It fluctuates slightly also when hooked up and monitored (when I mean slightly, it jumps around often 2-3K within the 32K range of reading)
I'm pretty new to doing this kind of thing... so I figured I would try to add a inline 10K resistor to see if that helped the problem...
So rather then just buy a brand new potentiometer with a build in resistor and move on - I want to understand why, and where the resistor even is in this little thing, and why when I change the condition of it being on the metal mount, and board, to just the device itself it has these resistance issues, and how to over come them?
Keep in mind, I'm a novice. Maybe its not even a resistance thing. I can however simply plug in the second thumbstick, and use as intended without any issue. The second I try to just use the the single potentiometer that I pulled off, I ran into all kinds of problems.
Help?
Thanks guys.